Fancy & French

Francis Thibadeau

Parisian Typesetter Francis Thibaudeau was determined to create the first rational system for categorizing type. He worked as a French typographer who designed type catalogues for Renault and Marcou and later Debergny and Peignot.

Because of the density and disorganization of the type libraries for these foundries, Thibaudeau was determined to create a new system for typeface classification. He presents his conclusions across two books: Letter Printing (1921) and then a revised version in French modern typography Manual (1924).

Originally, his system only had four main categories: Roman (Elzévirs), Didot, Egyptian (L’Egyptienne) and Antique. We have two problems with the original system: the peculiar choice to use Antique to describe sans-serif faces, which were being popularized in Greece at this time, and being French, Thibaudeau chooses to name his Modern category for the French Modern type drawn in the 19th century by printer Firmin Didot. This is a tradition that continues into the next half-century when the Vox System is released in 1954 before it reverts to Modern with the 1961 ATypI revision.

In his second book, Thibaudeau adds Scripts (Écritures) and Display (Fantaisies) to over the typefaces being used in early 20th century advertising (#tgod).

Of the systems of his time, the Thibaudeau Classification was the simplest, which we totally value. But he could have gone deeper. We want to go deeper; that’s always been the goal.