Perpetua

Perpetua is a serif typeface that was designed by the English sculptor and stonemason Eric Gill for the British Monotype Corporation. Perpetua was commissioned at the request of Stanley Morison, an influential historian of printing and adviser to Monotype around 1925, when Gill's reputation as a leading artist-craftsman was high. Perpetua was intended as a crisp, contemporary design that did not follow any specific historic model, with a structure influenced by Gill's experience of carving lettering for monuments and memorials. Perpetua is commonly used for covers and headings and also sometimes for body text and has been particularly popular in fine book printing. Perpetua was released with characters for the Greek alphabet and a matching set of titling capitals for headings. Perpetua is named for the Christian martyr Vibia Perpetua, an account of whose life was used in one of its first showings. Its companion italic is named "Felicity" for her companion of that name. The choice had appeal to Morison and Gill, both of whom were converts to Catholicism. Design Perpetua is often classified as a transitional serif font, with a delicate structure somewhat similar to British fonts from the eighteenth century such as Baskerville and stonecarved (lapidary) inscriptions in the same style. However, it does not directly revive any specific historical model. Characteristic "transitional" features in Perpetua include considerable contrast in stroke width, crisp horizontal serifs, a delicate colour on the page and a reasonably vertical axis, with letters such as 'O' having their thinnest points at the top and bottom.