Roman lettering

Roman lettering or Trajan lettering refers to the use by artists and signwriters of Roman capitals in modern lettering, particularly in Britain.

Around the early twentieth century, British artists in the Arts and Crafts movement led by Edward Johnston came to see Roman capitals as an attractive, timeless form of letters, the ideal for artistic use. Artists who worked in this style included Johnston's pupils Eric Gill, Graily Hewitt, Percy Delf Smith and MacDonald Gill, as well as Reynolds Stone and many other professional signwriters and letter engravers. Roman capitals were used along with lower case, Arabic numerals, italics and calligraphy in a complementary style.

The style has been used for lettering where a feeling of timelessness was wanted, for example on First World War memorials and government buildings, but also on shopfronts, posters, maps, and other general uses. The popular name "Trajan" for this style of lettering came from the lettering on the base of the Trajan Column, copies of which were often used (in theory, at least) as models by lettering artists. Phil Baines commented that it became "Britain's standard style of official lettering".

Use


The main source studying the history of Trajan lettering in Britain is Professor James Mosley's 1964 article Trajan Revived; and research by Dr. John Nash and biographers of individual artists.

Roman capitals were one of the main forms of lettering of the ancient world. During the Renaissance, there was considerable interest in Roman capitals, with typefaces based on them. However, in the eighteenth and nineteenth century types and lettering in the Didone or modern serif style tended to a style with sharp contrast in stroke contrast and capitals of near equal width. This was copied into display typefaces and lettering of the time, like fat faces and sans-serifs.

Johnston and his pupils
The use of Roman capitals in lettering grew out of the Arts and Crafts movement, which promoted individual craftsmanship and traditional styles of art with respect for the past.

On 11 April 1898, the architect and historian William Lethaby offered Edward Johnston a job teaching illuminating and calligraphy at the Central School of Arts and Crafts in London, and Johnston began to teach classes on 21 September 1899. Lethaby was keen to increase students' interest in the aesthetic value of letters. Johnston rapidly built up a school of pupils very impressed with his work.

According to M. C. Oliver, Lethaby introduced the Trajan's Column inscription to Johnston and as professor of design at the Royal College of Art put casts of the inscription of Trajan's Column as a standard for students to follow. (At the time it was normal to use custom lettering for signs because of the inflexibility of printing and reproducing large fonts before the arrival of computer font technologies.)

Mass use
In his 1906 textbook Writing and Illuminating and Lettering, Johnston commented "the Roman Capitals have held the supreme place among letters for readableness and beauty. They are the best forms for the grandest and most important inscriptions" and more pithily "when in doubt, use Roman Capitals." Lettering based on Roman capitals rapidly began to appear in many design manuals as a model. Nicolete Gray commented that in the early twentieth century "it was taught in all art schools".

Johnston himself generally did not do monumental and inscription design: he tended to prefer calligraphy and many of his commissions were creating documents, like charters, ornamental record books and certificates. However, his pupils such as Eric Gill and Percy Delf Smith rapidly secured commissions creating lettering in the Roman capital style that were widely seen, for example Gill created standard lettering for W. H. Smith used on their storefronts from about 1904. The lettering used by British artists did not always follow the Trajan capital model, often adding changes such as serifs on the top of the 'M' and 'N', and of course the lower case, Arabic numerals and italics which the Romans did not have. Phil Baines commented in 2007 that "it is difficult for us now to realise how fresh the Trajan letter–with its light colour and capitals of varying width–must have appeared at that time...it swept [other designs] away and became the norm within a very short space of time."

A reason for this codification to come soon after was the First World War, where savage loss of life led to the creation of many monuments and memorials. The job of designing a standard alphabet for the war grave headstones for military casualties went to Johnston pupil MacDonald "Max" Gill, and he designed an alphabet in the Roman style. Many of the collective monuments erected by British communities to First World War and later Second World War casualties also used Roman lettering, often designed by Johnston's pupils or people they had taught or worked with. The style was used very widely, however; Nash comments that "the English tradition in lettering and typography...owed a great deal to its charismatic pioneers, such as Lethaby, Johnston, Gill and [Stanley] Morison. However its strength lay in the army of unsung craftsmen and women who absorbed their ideas".

Roman-style lettering also became used for major institutions such as the Post Office, and (later) by the Ministry of Works, on many British street signs, using a design by David Kindersley,  and on London blue plaques.

Printing types and lettering models
Some lettering artists who worked in the Roman lettering style designed typefaces. Johnston was commissioned in 1915 to design a sans-serif typeface for London Underground, which it still uses. Gill designed several serif typefaces for clients and for Monotype such as Perpetua, as well as his Gill Sans sans-serif typeface. Other designers who created typefaces in the style included Reynolds Stone and (more loosely) Will Carter.

Other designers such as Delf Smith created lettering manuals, or models for their students and assistants. In the United States, Frederic Goudy also designed several typefaces based on Roman capitals. Other typefaces based on the style have been published as digital fonts (see below).

In other countries
Roman capitals were widely used throughout the Roman Empire. The wide use of Roman capitals as a "house style" dominating design in the first half of the twentieth century was limited to the UK; Nicolete Gray commented in 1960 that "it has been a purely English movement, and one sees no traces of it on the Continent. One does, however, see many examples in [the] U.S.A. where apart from English influence the work of the letter carver John Howard Benson has been important."

However, other artists in the previous century had followed similar directions. In 1846 printer Louis Perrin in Lyon introduced his "Caractères Augustaux" typeface, based on Roman capitals in local collections, and added a lower case in a complementary style inspired by old-style serif typefaces from before the nineteenth century. Other typefaces reproducing Roman capitals were produced in France in the nineteenth century, for instance for scholarly publications.

In the twentieth century there was also interest in Roman capitals in other countries, including Russia.

Modern situation
Examples of Roman-style lettering can be seen in many places across Britain. Kindersley's street sign font is one of the most common designs for street signs in Britain. Use of the Trajan style of lettering has declined somewhat due to changing tastes, with a desire for new styles of lettering. Additionally, custom lettering and signwriting in general has declined in use due to the arrival of phototypesetting and desktop publishing, making it possible to print from a computer font at any size. Meanwhile, some lettering artists who do create artistic work have switched to other more expressive styles, including sans-serifs. Among historians of lettering, Gray and Mosley both were interested in other styles of lettering, with Mosley particularly arguing for the importance and beauty of the "vernacular" lettering styles that Trajan-style lettering tended to replace.

Among digital fonts, Adobe Systems' digital typeface Trajan by Carol Twombly is one of its most popular typefaces. Several digital fonts specifically based on British artists' use of Trajan lettering have also been published.