Ringold Typeface Research & Development

By Dan Rhatigan, Bijou Type

Rhatigan on the typeface concept:

The Ringold series started with an attempt to re-envision Egyptienne Bold Condensed, Letraset’s version of a 19th century condensed Clarendon style that has been adapted by many foundries over the decades. In particular, I hoped to adapt the idea for the kind of solid, all-caps typesetting made possible by transfer type for things like the logo of Drummer magazine, as well as headlines in many other gay publications I had been researching. As I developed what would become Ringold Clarendon at the same time as I gathered scores of vintage gay magazines to get a feel for the way they used typefaces, I realized that I could take the structure and proportions of Ringold’s core style and adapt the stylistic details to change the overall tone.  This became a family of easily-mixed styles with the same overall weight and text color, expanded into a palette of choices that captured the dense, squarish, "masculine" vibe cultivated by so many magazines from the mid-20th century onward.