Morgan - Rockwell

HISTORY

The Inland Type Foundry created the Rockwell typeface in 1910. The company later merged with 22 other type foundries to form the American Type Founders (ATF) in 1912.

ATF represented about 85 percent of all type manufactured in the United States at that time. ATF revised Rockwell in the 1920’s under the direction of Morris Fuller Benton.

Benton was the chief type designer at ATF from 1900 to 1937 and is known today as one of the most prolific type designers in history. Benton completed 221 typefaces, including: Franklin Gothic, Bank Gothic, Broadway, ATF Bodoni, most of the Century Type Family and many more. Benton’s strong aesthetic design sense and success in technology was probably influenced by his father, Linn Boyd Benton, who invented the pantographic engraving machine, which was considered advanced for its time in typeface design. Morris worked on many of these machines with his father at ATF, where the machines were revised to impressive levels of precision.

The Monotype Corporation, a company specializing in typesetting and typeface design, produced a new version of Rockwell in 1934. Under the supervision of Frank Hinman Pierpont, some errors occurred during this revision where Rockwell was referred to as Stymie Bold, which created some confusion about Rockwell’s identity that still exists today.

Despite this speculation, Rockwell is known today as a popular slab serif. The Rockwell font family includes: Regular, Italic, Bold, Bold Italic and Extra Bold. Rockwell is mono-weighted, characterized by its geometric feel with thick, block-like serifs. Because of this nature, it is not best for lengthy bodies of text, but great for advertisements, headlines, posters, logos or album covers.



CONCEPT

Rockwell was passed around to a lot of different designers, including one who misnamed him and created some uncertainty of his true identity. I get this feeling that Rockwell is this orphan baby that doesn't know his real parents. He is in an identity crisis after being circulated to multiple foster homes and has yet to receive closure because many people speculate that he is not Rockwell, but rather Stymie Bold. In order to cope and move on, Rockwell grows up and creates his own family. I think it would be cool to display his family in picture frames or old silhouette photos.