Perpetua was designed by eric gill in 1925 for the monotype Foundry. Gill was an English letter-cutter who collaborated whith Stanley Morison to create Monotype's first original typeface design. Perpetua was designed to resemble stone-cut lettering, which gives it an engraved quality and dignified appearance. With medium contrast, sharp serif, and a small x-height, it is not perfectly suited for books, and as a result is not considered a mainstream typeface. Morison Himself expressed that Perpetua has "a note of particularity and self-conscious-ness not universally acceptable."
What makes Perpetua unique is that it is sometimes categorized as both an Old Style as well as a transitional typeface. Though it was designed as an Old Style book face, many of its features are closer to Transitional characteris-tics. In this book, several of Perpatua's traits, such as serif, size, and stress will be compared to typeface of different classifications, including Old Style, Transitionalm and Modern.
Interestingly, Perpetua does not fit into either of these categories pompletyly. Some of its letters, like the lowercase o, have a vertical stress. Others, such as the e, havean oblique stress, causing Perpetua of fall somehere between Old Style and Transitional.
Even in letters that are constructed similarly, Perpetua shows its uniqueness. The axis of the lowercase b is oblique, making it more similar to Old Style types, while the p has a vertical stress, closer to Transitional typefaces. From this alone it is apparent that Perpetua is a difficult typface to categorize.
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