Why is Bold Italic a bastard stepchild?

[Member Ren…]

This topic was imported from the Typophile platform

There are fonts that include R, I, B but no bold italic.

There are mega font families (e.g., 33 fonts) that include shadow, outline, light, semi-bold, medium, yada, yada, yada, but no bold italic.

What's with that?

[Member J W…]

Where are you looking? Hardly know any typeface without a bold italic …

[Member Ric…]

Because it is.

[Member Ren…]

Because it is.

Duh! I know that! But why? Or why should it be? Is it because some type designers think they know what's best for me?

[Member dan…]

No, it is because some type designers know what is best for their typefaces. In many cases, Bold Italic is just too much of a difference from the main face. Why emphasize text in Bold Italic when just a single level of emphasis (e.g., Bold, Italic, small caps, underlining, letterspacing, switching to a different typeface, etc.) would be enough?

There are plenty of typefaces that have Bold Italics. If you want to use a Bold Italic, pick a typeface family that offers it. I don’t see why is should be a requirement, just because it is so commonplace.

[Member Ric…]

I meant that bold italic is a bastard stepchild in itself, historically and design-wise, as Dan explains.

[Member Flo…]

Sumner Stone chose to omit an accompanying Italic for some of his Bolds (or Semibolds), see Cycles, Arepo, SFPL.

[Member hra…]

And his Silica doesn't even have any Italic! Bravo.

hhp

[Member hra…]

Because it's the least useful of the four.

But excluding it has become very old-fashioned. The only recent typeface that I remember not having a B-I (at least when first launched) is Whitman.

hhp

[Member Ber…]

Purists consider italics and roman to be different species… I find mixing them problematic too and prefer slanted forms in longer texts (and for all I care designers may call these italics).

[Member hra…]

Do you mean like this?
http://www.themicrofoundry.com/other/nour&patria/dev/nour-latin.gif
I would love to see Harrier used for an entire book one day.

hhp

[Member Ber…]

To clarify: slanted instead of italic… for distant matter in roman.

[Member Ric…]

A previous discussion on the same topic: https://typography.guru/forums/topic/18029-forwarding

[Member Fro…]

The four core weights — Regular, Italic, Bold & Bold Italic — became a “standard” with MS Office, no? They had the b and the i and clicking both triggered the bi, so perhaps it is just plain lazyness? If you need the bi, you’re probably designing something so complex those four “core” styles wont do anyway. A medium/semibold, or a smaller optical size is much more useful.

[Member eli…]

Why emphasize text in Bold Italic when just a single level of emphasis (e.g., Bold, Italic, small caps, underlining, letterspacing, switching to a different typeface, etc.) would be enough?

One use-case where emphasis-within-emphasis comes particularly in handy is when titles appear in bold (say, a section heading named "Summer Blockbusters from Jaws to Independence Day").

[Member Ren…]

prefer slanted forms in longer texts (and for all I care designers may call these italics). Oops, is this bold italic?

If designers want to eschew true cursive italic in favor of slanted Roman, why charge the same price for an oblique as for the Roman, when the difference is a few mouse clicks? Why shouldn't I just buy Roman and let my program create an oblique?

Thanks, Craig, for the example. Apparently some folks need to know why there is a need for BI, although I wouldn't have thought so on Typophile.

[Member hra…]

A good slanted-Roman is never merely obliqued, not even in a sans.

And you should pay more for a slanted-Roman because it does a better job. Just like you pay more for a designer who uses two fonts instead of five on a job.

hhp

[Member Ren…]

Delightful reply, Hrant.

Would that this were always so: A good slanted-Roman is never merely obliqued, not even in a sans.

I guess the key word is "good." When I see a merely obliqued Roman, I think "slothful."

[Member hra…]

Same here. It's where Morison fell victim to his own dogma (and dragged a couple of otherwise good designers down with him).

But making a traditional italic could also be seen as slothful, ideologically. Just because something takes a lot of time doesn't make it good.

hhp

[Member Ren…]

Just because something takes a lot of time doesn't make it good.

So true—and it applies to everything from fonts to writing to music to parenting.

And just because something is good doesn't mean that it doesn't take a lot of time. Hat tip to type designers who take the time to make type good.

[Member Aar…]

I bought the bold italic font of a family just the other day, for the reason Craig Eliason described. But I didn’t buy it months ago, when I only got the regular, italic, and bold fonts.

I didn't need it until I needed it.

[Member Nic…]

I usually include it, but sometimes it's just too much effort to draw. (Figgins Sans).

[Member qua…]

Historically, if you go 'way back, there was just one style of type in a given document. That style might have been blackletter, or it might have been Roman.

I've seen printed books from the 20th Century (or maybe the 19th) that actually used blackletter for emphasis in a predominantly Roman text.

Italics, when they first came along, thanks to Aldus Manutilus, were a way to print books more economically.

Eventually, though, the use of italics for emphasis (as opposed to letterspacing for emphasis, a once-common practice) did become standardized.

Boldface came along much later. Using blackletter, or a different Roman typeface with a heavier weight, for emphasis or headings preceded the design of bold weights of a given typeface.

A very few typefaces later had bold italics designed for them, but this was generally regarded as a novelty. The frequent use of different levels of emphasis - italics, bold, small capitals - is generally deprecated, as good taste in typography has been generally regarded as that which is understated.

Victorian posters, of course, are the extreme example of the opposite of this - and the needs of advertisers are one major reason why a few typefaces had a bold italic designed for them.

[Member hra…]

> Italics, when they first came along, thanks to Aldus Manutilus, were a way to print books more economically.

AFAIK this "classical" opinion has been debunked. I used to repeat that myself, but if you think about it it never made any sense to begin with (except for something like poetry).

hhp

[Member Ber…]

Not more economically, but to imitate a much admired scribing style of the time. (At least that’s what my memory is from what I was taught and have read.)