What is "caslon"

Caslon is a group of serif typefaces designed by William Caslon I (1692–1766) in London. Caslon worked as an engraver of punches, the masters used to stamp the moulds or matrices used to cast metal type. He worked in the tradition of what is now called old-style serif letter design, that produced letters with a relatively organic structure resembling handwriting with a pen. Caslon established a tradition of designing type in London, which had not been common, and so he was influenced by the imported Dutch Baroque typefaces that were popular in England at the time.

In Caslon's fonts, the 'A' has a concave hollow at top left, the 'G' is without a downwards-pointing spur at bottom right and the sides of the 'M' are straight. The 'W' has three terminals at the top and the 'b' has a small tapered stroke ending at bottom left. Ascenders and descenders are short and the level of stroke contrast is modest in body text sizes. However, Caslon created subtly different designs of letter at different sizes, with increasing levels of fine detail and sharp contrast in stroke weight at larger sizes. In italic, Caslon's types have a varied angle of slant, with particularly sharp slanting on the A. The Q, v, w, and z all have flourishes or swashes in the original design, something not all revivals follow.

Caslon's typefaces were popular in his lifetime and beyond, and after a brief period of eclipse in the nineteenth century remain common, particularly for setting printed body text and books. Many revivals exist, with varying faithfulness to Caslon's original design. Modern Caslon revivals also often add a matching bold and 'lining' numbers at the height of capital letters, neither of which were used in Caslon's time.

Caslon usually refers to William Caslon (I) of United Kingdom (1692-1766), who was an English gunsmith and designer of typographic fonts. His Caslon typefaces were used in the first printed version of the American Declaration of Independence.

Caslon may also refer to:

• Lucy Caslon, (since April 2014 Lucy Herron) the founding trustee of the London based charity Msizi Africa.
• Caslon, a family of typeface, created by William Caslon.
• Caslon Antique, a decorative American typeface that was designed in 1894 by Berne Nadall.
• Caslon Roman, a Unicode typeface, designed by George Williams.