Trajan - The Original Roman Serif March 30, 2008
We’ve all seen this font before -it’s quite popular for use with books, magazines, posters, and billboards. The dead giveaway is the lack of serifs on the capital N’s top-left and bottom-right.
Trajan is an actual replica of ancient Roman letterforms found at the base of Trajan’s column in Rome. The specific style is called square capitals, and only uppercase letters are available. This typeface was used for inscriptions and signage for cultural events, decrees, imperial arches, architecture, etc. It was first painted on marble with a brush, followed by chiseling into the stone. Sometimes holes were bored into the etched type to support melted bronze subsequently poured in.
Here’s a quick mock book/movie title I’ve made with it - I was first thinking of going all silly and calling it “The Briefcase”, but “The Public Defender” looked better:
The name comes from the Roman emperor Trajan; the digital typeface was designed by Carol Twombly for Adobe in 1989.
Additional information available at: Wikipedia and Typophile
One more for the road…this video introduced me to the font and pokes fun at its ubiquity within the U.S. film industry:
Official YouTube Link
I love that video! Have you seen his “Everybody Loves Lists” video? Good stuff.
Todd, I’ll have to check that out. Anywhere we can poke fun at art, society, and culture is the best…