size matters

increasing the size of a font wasn’t always as easy as hitting ctrl+shift+p in microsoft word. back in the 1800’s, if you wanted a bigger grunge font for the garage sale flyer that you were working on, you would have needed to purchase the larger size and redo the ENTIRE flyer. major bummer!

to keep track of all the different sizes, old skool printers gave them names. and if you think about it, this is really no different than giving each month or day of the week a name, rather than a number. too bad these names for sizes have all but faded into oblivion.

• 4pt—diamond
• 5pt—pearl
• 6pt—nonpareil
• 7pt—minion
• 8pt—brevier
• 9pt—bourgeois
• 10pt—long primer
• 11pt—philosophy
• 12pt—pica
• 14pt—english
• 18pt—great primer
• 20pt—paragon
• 48pt—canon