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Structure of the numeral 4 in older type specimens.
Posted by sevenfingers in
9 Dec 2002 — 1:51am
9 Dec 2002 — 1:51am
I got my hands on a type specimen book from 1889 and liked it alot. One thing confused me though and I was hoping for some help from my dear typophiles.
Almost every single '4' was drawn in this fashion(excuse my sloppy modification... but something along the lines of this):
Notice the angular cut, I can't remember seeing this in any recent design, or any 'traditional' (besides in this very specimen book) typeface for that matter either. 'Regular' 4's are AFAIK either closed or drawn with a cut that is not angular but horizontal.
Is this still used today, was it popular before, yaddfa yadda... please shed some light over my neophyte type knowledge. will ya? 
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9 Dec 2002 — 8:34am
Perhaps it was an obsession with stencils? Or they were used to the idea of stencils.
9 Dec 2002 — 9:49am
One advantage of this design is that it might be the only way to make a decent open "4" that can maintain its structure in darker weights. Do the specimens include darker weigths?
hhp
9 Dec 2002 — 10:04pm
Tifanny, yeah... that would be a plausible explanation if there were more characters looking like this, but it was limited only to the 4's.
Hrant, yes, some of them. Quite a few were bold in their original cuts also.
Anyway, I'm not negative about it or anything, I was just surprised that it was so common.
Thanks.