[ page update: 2020-XI-01; 16nov2021ED; 2022-I-14; mjw ]
Typefaces used for the Nomenclatura Oligochaetologica series
Original, printed series of Nomenclatura Oligochaetologica
The original, printed series of Nomenclatura Oligochaetologica included the first volume – Nomenclatura Oligochaetologica [N.O.] (Reynolds and Cook, 1976: x + 217 pp.), the first supplement – Nomenclatura Oligochaetologica Supplementum Primum [N.O.S.P.] (Reynolds and Cook, 1981: v + 39 pp.), the second supplement – Nomenclatura Oligochaetologica Supplementum Secundum [N.O.S.S.] (Reynolds and Cook, 1989: v + 37 pp.), and the third supplement – Nomenclatura Oligochaetologica Supplementum Tertium [N.O.S.T.] (Reynolds and Cook, 1993: vi + 33 pp.).
The text throughout the original N.O. series was set in 10-point Times Roman. This typeface, a serif font, was first designed by Victor Lardent (a British advertising designer and drafstman), who was commissioned to create a more appealing font for use by The Times of London newspaper soon after Stanley Morrison (a most influential British typographer, designer and historian) published an article that criticized the newspaper for its poor print and antiquated typography. Being a seasoned typographer, Morrison then supervised the redesign of the Times Roman font being drawn by Victor Lardent, thus becoming the Times New Roman font. This font made its debut in The Times on 3 October 1932, remaining its standard broadsheet font for 40 years. Historically, Times New Roman became one of the most widely used typefaces. It has remained a very popular typeface in book typography, magazine, and paperback, particularly because it is compact and easy to read, and today remains a commonly used font in text softwares developed for computers.
The nomenclators {Nomenclator Generum, Nomenclator Subgenerum, and Nomenclator Specierum} in the original serics were set in 9 point Roman italic and 10 point Times Roman on columns of 15 picas. The original volume (N.O., 1976) was printed on white Kelmscott Smooth finish paper (140M) and bound in Lasalle PN 131 medium green. The three supplements in the original series were printed on similar paper. Because each of the supplements had fewer pages than the original volume, they were stapled (imperfect binding) into a dark green card-stock cover.
Nomenclatura Oligochaetologica Editio Secunda (N.O.2) – the first web-based format (2014–2021)
With the exception of a few specific areas, the text throughout the NO2 website was ‘set’ using Arial font (12 or 14 point) – a sans-serif typeface and set of computer fonts. The Arial typeface was designed in 1982 by a team of designers working with the company, Monotype Typography® – and comprises over 28 styles (e.g., the primary styles referred to as Regular, Italic, Medium, Bold, Bold, Black, Light, Narrow, Condensed, Rounded, Monospace, plus multiple designs and configurations of these primary styles). Initially created for IBM®, Microsoft® later chose the Arial font for inclusion in a suite of system fonts for the Windows® 3.1 operating system. Since then, fonts in the Arial family have been integrated with almost every computer, and with nearly all textual applications. This font has been bundled with Windows® and Apple® Mac OS X® operating systems, and has been embedded in nearly all PostScript®-based laser printers. While only a few Arial fonts are bundled with operating systems and hardware products, there are a large number of variants in the family available to graphic communicators.
As much as we liked the Times New Roman font – having used it for many of our reports, publications, wet and dry specimen labels in our collections, and in other forms of printed media – we chose the Arial font (14-point) for use throughout NO2 for its first website presentation; being a sans-serif font, it is much easier to read on screen in this virtual medium.
Nomenclatura Oligochaetologica Editio Secunda (N.O.2) – current web-based format (2021–)
The recent migration of the NO2 website pages from the previous content management system to WordPress resulted in the decision to present the new content using the Lato font family. One or more of the Lato fonts is now used on over 10 million websites, likely resulting in a billion+ views per day.
About the Lato typeface and font family ¹
Lato – a sanserif typeface family – was designed in the summer of 2010 by Warsaw-based designer Łukasz Dziedzic [Lato is Polish for ‘summer’] . In December 2010 the Lato family was published under the open-source Open Font License by his foundry tyPoland, with support from Google.
In 2013 – 2014, this font family was greatly extended to cover 3000+ glyphs per style. The current Lato 2.010 family now supports 100+ Latin-based languages, 50+ Cyrillic-based languages as well as Greek and IPA phonetics. During the extension process, the metrics and kerning of the fonts in this family were revised, to include four additional weights.
The easiest way to use the new 2.0 version of the Lato font family on the web is through Adobe Typekit. The older version (1.0) of the Lato font family is available on Google Fonts. [No information discussing the availability of Lato 2.0 on Google Fonts was available when posting this colophon].
Over the past 10+ years (during which Łukasz had been designing various types), most of his projects had been rooted in a particular design task that needed solving – and these tasks were similar for Lato. Originally, the family was conceived as a set of corporate fonts for a large client — one that eventually chose a different stylistic direction, resulting in the Lato family becoming available for public release.
When developing the Lato font family, Łukasz tried to carefully balance some potentially conflicting priorities – to develop a typeface that would seem quite “transparent” when used in body text, yet would display some original traits when used in larger sizes. He chose to use classical proportions (those particularly visible in uppercase) to give letterforms familiar harmony and elegance. Congruently, he created a sleek sanserif look, evidence that Lato was designed in 2010 — even though it does not follow any current trend. }
¹ {The text above pertinent to the Lato font family was paraphrased from the Lato Font website.}
Pages throughout this new NO2 website (2021–) uses the Lato Thin and Lato Thin Italics (200 weight) font – primarily for titles, and Lato Medium and Lato Medium Italics (50¹0 weight) – for content on most of the other pages (including the text on this colophon page).
You are encouraged to visit the Lato Font website, to view the Lato font set, and – if using a recent version of browsers (e.g., IE, Firefox, Safari or Chrome (though not Opera) – you can edit samples of text in the various weights and styles of the Lato font family to see what your text will look like after typesetting in one of the 18 Lato font sets.
col·o·phon, noun {ˈkä-lə-fən, -fän }
The term ‘colophon’ is derived from the Latin word, colophon, from the Greek kolophōn (κολοφων), meaning finishing, or finishing touch, or ‘summit’).
In early printed books the colophon (when included), was a brief description about the printing and publication processes associated with the book, summarizing some or all of the following information:
date of publication, place of publication and/or printing (sometimes also including the address and name of a city), and the name(s) of the printer(s) and publisher(s), when different. Occasionally, the name(s) of the proof-reader(s), editor(s), and other relevant details may have been included.
For many of the oldest books in which a colophon had been included, it had been placed at the end of the main body of the text, often following any register or index. In books published after ~1500, a colophon was more commonly found associated with the title page or masthead.
Please note: Reference to a colophon in the greater concept of traditional (paper) and virtual publications should not be confused with Colophon, an ancient city in Asia Minor, after which rosin (ronnel, or ‘colophony’) is named.