Souvenir Font:
Souvenir Font is a serif font with a soft texture appearance. That has rounded serifs and little contrast between thick and thin strokes. It was first designed in 1914 by Morris Fuller Benton. It was later redesigned in 1970 by Ed Benguiat.
Also, it was a staple of Choose Your Adventure books, Dungeons and Dragons manuals, and Bee Gees album covers. But it also spawned the kind of backlash that afflicted Comic Sans and Papyrus decades ago.
Designed by Morris Fuller Benton:
Souvenir Font is a serif typeface that was designed in 1914 by Morris Fuller Benton for the American Type Founders. Its clean and soft texturing and smooth italic styles make this font perfect for short or long headlines. It is available for free on the internet and can be used for personal projects. It is also available for commercial use with a license.
Souvenir is a friendly and undemanding typeface that was one of the first to be hailed as a classic by the graphic design cognoscenti. It was a popular choice for display types and advertising, an important part of ATF’s business at the time. However, ubiquity is never kind to a typeface, and it soon became overexposed, leading to a decline in popularity. But despite its loss in popularity, Souvenir is still widely used.
It has a softer look than many other old-style faces and rounded serifs, with little contrast between thick and thin strokes. It is reminiscent of the Arts and Crafts Movement, but it does not fit into any specific historical style. A 1970s redesign by Ed Benguiat, adding extra styles and an italic, gave the face renewed appeal.
A prolific type designer, Benton headed the design department at ATF from 1900 to 1937. He was responsible for 221 original and revival typefaces, including Franklin & News Gothic, Cheltenham, Century series, and Hobo. He was also responsible for the reorganization of the ATF-type catalog and the purging of obsolete and duplicated designs.
Designed for American Type Founders:
The Souvenir font is a serif typeface designed in 1914 through Morris Fuller Benton for American Type Founders. It is an early example of a serif typeface with rounded edges and a soft look. It also has a light face and little contrast between thin and thick strokes. That is a very popular font among designers. But, it is used in a variety of design projects including T-shirt designs and branding product designs. This extraordinary typeface works well with a wide range of other types including sans serif, slab serif, and script.
In his book American Metal Typefaces of the Twentieth Century, Mac McGrew says that Souvenir is “a good, very usable typeface, which feels like the typographic soul of its era.” It was influenced by two German designs from Schelter & Giesecke, and the open-bottom lowercase ‘g’ and narrowed top aperture of the uppercase ‘U’ are distinctive features.
In 1967, Ed Benguiat adapted Souvenir for phototype and fleshed it out with additional weights and swashes. The finished version was rechristened ITC Souvenir and quickly became a best seller. Its popularity led to it being cast on matrices for Linotype and by Matrotype, in regular and demi-bold weights with matching italics. It was also digitized by various companies and is available through most font distributors. It is a common choice for use on websites because of its legibility and familiarity.
Designed by Ed Benguiat:
Ed Benguiat was a versatile creative force: a type designer who helped usher in the era of phototypesetting, an associate director of Esquire magazine (whose logo he designed), a World War II veteran and avid pilot, an accomplished jazz percussionist, and a teacher at the School of Visual Arts for nearly six decades. He died last year at 92.
Also, He worked with Morris Fuller Benton on several of ATF’s most renowned fonts, including Souvenir and Caslon, the font used in Choose Your Adventure novels and early Dungeons and Dragons manuals. So, He also worked as the lettering artist on the covers of magazines like Playboy and Sports Illustrated, and he served as an assistant art director on the film The Life of Emile Zola.
During his time at Photo-Lettering Inc., the company that eventually became ITC, Benguiat designed over 600 fonts and reworked the logos of many films, publications, and album covers. He remained a freelancer throughout most of his career, though he did hold some permanent 9-to-5 jobs for short periods.
One of the fonts he designed for ITC was called Newlock, inspired by the typefaces of Herb Lubalin and Aaron Burns. It’s a friendly serif that feels both lowbrow and meticulously crafted. Its ligatures and swashed letters are lively hoppity-hops, and its serifs seem reminiscent of your grandmother’s cross-stitched pillowcases.
Designed for ITC:
Souvenir Font is a serif font designed by Morris Fuller Benton and revived 50 years later by Ed Benguiat for the International Typeface Corporation (ITC). They have a soft look that sets them apart from other old-style faces. Also, It has rounded serifs and little contrast between thick and thin strokes. It is a versatile font that works well in many applications. So, It pairs well with both sans-serif and slab-serif fonts. Its design makes it easy to read and can be used for short or long headlines.
The font was originally drawn by Benton in 1914 as a single weight for the American Type Founders company. It was subsequently revived in 1967 by Photo-Lettering and optimized for phototypesetting equipment. ITC was subsequently formed in 1971 and, with the help of photo filtering, introduced Souvenir as one of its first font families. In 1983, Ned Bunnel released ITC Souvenir Monospaced, a monospace version of the font.
Souvenir has become a staple of graphic design and is often used for titles and headings. It has a distinctive appearance that has made it popular with designers and consumers alike. However, its ubiquity has also led to criticism of the font. In some circles, it has been described as a cliche, but the fact remains that it is an attractive, readable typeface.
