From My Father's Collection - Typographic Literature & Caxton

Back in 1995, when I was ten years old, my dad was studying Information Technology & Society at Portsmouth University as a mature student. The course looked at how the media influences society and my dad did Typography for his dissertation. During these years my dad wrote to many type foundries and asked for free fonts and type specimens. A lot of the foundries and typographers sent him specimen packs, filled with leaflets, booklets and posters.

Back then the only way for the foundries to distribute their fonts was through these leaflets and catalogues. You would then mail order the fonts you needed and they would send them out to you on a floppy disk formatted for either Windows 3.1 or Macintosh. Then later, as technology advanced, CD-ROMs became available and now most fonts are distributed online.

My dad graduated with his degree and put all of his typography catalogues into the loft and forgot about them, where they gathered dust for over fifteen years. Recently my dad dug out these old gems and handed them down to me; some of the graphic design and layouts haven't stood the test of time and look a bit outdated, though there are a few which still look modern and well-designed. That's not to say they aren't fascinating to look through.

Whilst at university my dad also created his own font called Caxton using Corel Draw. The font contains the full upper and lower case alphabet and also included in the character set are a selection of thirteenth century tile patterns from Winchester Cathedral.