ITC Stone
Sumner Stone is an introspective, thoughtful person. He was trained as a mathematician and his approach to creating a new typeface is a logical one, in which design decisions are reached after careful contemplation and a great deal of trial and error.
In creating ITC Stone, an extended family of designs originally intended to help neophyte designers combine typefaces in a foolproof way, Stone’s logical plan had an unexpected result: these three groups of related type designs are as popular with the most sophisticated graphic designers as they are with beginners.
The ITC Stone series includes three sub-families: serif, sans serif, and informal. To succeed, all of these designs had to interrelate with each other perfectly and still be able to stand on their own as distinctive typestyles. Stone’s solution was to base all the ITC Stone faces on a common underlying model: they have the same cap height, the same lowercase x-height, and the same stem weights. In Stone’s words, “Each design is a manifestation of an underlying skeletal set of letterforms.”
ITC Stone’s range of applications is virtually limitless. Fine books, annual reports, restaurant menus, business correspondence, corporate identity programs, movie credits and advertising campaigns have all been set with various faces from the family. Even the Informal, which was originally intended for business communications, has been used in applications as diverse as a children’s book and an American Express advertising campaign. ITC Stone is an exceptionally versatile ITC Classic.
ITC Stone Serif
ITC Stone Serif was conceived as a typeface with a blend of written and sculptural forms, slightly condensed and with a large x-height. Stone’s intention was to create a conservative design that would be suitable for continuous text, but which would also have enough personality and verve to be useful in display applications.
ITC Stone Sans
ITC Stone Sans combines humanistic sans serif letterforms and the proportions of ITC Stone Serif. Faces like Gill Sans and Hans Meier’s Syntax (available from fonts.com) were strong influences on ITC Stone Sans. The design has a moderate but visible contrast in stroke weight. Terminals are clipped at right angles to the stroke, as in faces like Kabel and Syntax.
ITC Stone Informal
Stone created ITC Stone Informal for use in business communications. The design looks almost like an upright italic with an obvious handwritten influence, but it is clearly a typographic font, not a copy of any calligraphic hand. ITC Stone Informal is low in stroke contrast and has somewhat rounded shapes and stroke endings. It also features a distinctive handling of its serifs.