Times New Roman is a serif typeface commissioned by the British newspaper The Times in 1931, created by Victor Lardent.[1] It was commissioned after Stanley Morison of the English branch of printing equipment company Monotype criticised the Times for being badly printed and typographically antiquated.[2][3][a][6]
The font was supervised by Morison and drawn by Victor Lardent, an artist from the advertising department of The Times, before final refinement by the Monotype drawing office team. Morison proposed an older typeface named Plantin as the basis for the design, but revisions were made to increase legibility and economy of space. The new design made its debut in the 3 October 1932 issue of The Times newspaper.[7] After one year, the design was released for commercial sale. The Times stayed with Times New Roman for 40 years, but new production techniques and the format change from broadsheet to tabloid in 2004 have caused the newspaper to switch typeface five times since 1972. However, all the new fonts have been variants of the original New Roman typeface.
Some experts believe that the design was based on an earlier original work of William Starling Burgess.[8] This theory remains controversial.[9]
Although no longer used by The Times, Times New Roman is still frequent in book typography, particularly in mass-market paperbacks in the United States. Especially because of its adoption in Microsoft products, it has become one of the most widely used typefaces in history.