mrs eaves

The typeface mrs eaves was designed in 1996 by a designer named Zuzana Licko. In 1996 the president was Bill Clinton. Internet Explorer three came out. A tank of gas was $1.22. Popular musical artists or groups were The Spice Girls, Maraiah Carey, Madddona, 2pac, and The Foo Fighters. Popular movies that came out in 1996 were 101 Dalmatians, Mission Impossible, Twister, and Independence Day. The Dallas Cowboys won the superbowl, and Kentucky won the NCAA Basketball Championship.

Zuzana Licko was born in 1961 in Bratislava, Czecholoakia. She got a degree in Graphic Communication from theUniversity of California at Berkely in 1984. In 1984, with her husband Rudy Vanderlans, she founded Emigre Magazine. Zuzana Licko (Slovak: Zuzana Ličko; born 1961) is a typeface designer based out of the San Francisco Bay Area who was born in Bratislava, Czechoslovakia. Licko came to the United States when she was a child along with her family. She studied architecture, photography and computer programming before earning a degree in graphic communications at the University of California at Berkeley. Zuzana’s father was a bio-mathematician and at the University of California, San Francisco and through his job she became involved with computers during the summer months when she helped him with data processing work. When she first started attending the university her goal was to earn a degree in architecture but she then changed to a visual studies major because she believed becoming an architect was in her eyes, too similar to going to business school. While at Berkeley, Zuzana took a calligraphy class, which happened to be her least favorite due to the fact that she had to write with her right hand even though she was left handed. This experience later influenced her when she started working on type design, which was more computer-based. In an interview featured in Eye (No. 43, Vol. 11, Spring 2002), Licko described her creative relationship with Vanderlans:

We met at the University of California at Berkeley where I was an undergraduate at the College of Environmental Design and Rudy was a graduate student in photography. This was in 1982-83. After college we both did all sorts of design-related odd jobs. There was no direction. Then, in 1984 the Macintosh was introduced, we bought one, and everything started to fall into place. We both, each in our own way, really enjoyed this machine. It forced us to question everything we had learnt about design. We both enjoyed that process of exploration, of how far you could push the limits. Rudy is more intuitive; I’m more methodical. Yin and yang. It seemed to click, and still does.

Mrs Eaves is named after Sarah Eaves, the woman who became John Baskerville's wife. As Baskerville was setting up his printing and type business, Mrs. Eaves moved in with him as a live-in housekeeper, eventually becoming his wife after the death of her first husband, Mr. Eaves. Mrs Eaves is a revival of the types of English printer and punchcutter John Baskerville, and is related to contemporary Baskerville typefaces.

Like Baskerville, Mrs Eaves has a near vertical stress, departing from the old style model. Identifying characters, similar to Baskerville's types, are the lowercase g with its open lower counter and swashlike ear. Both the roman and italic uppercase Q have a flowing swashlike tail. The uppercase C has serifs at top and bottom; there is no serif at the apex of the central junction in uppercase W; and the uppercase G has a sharp spur suggesting a vestigial serif.

Licko's revival is less academic than some, basing as many of its details on contemporary methods of reproduction: the flatness of offset lithography in comparison to letterpress printing, and the resolution of set devices, and on-screen display. The overall stroke weight of Mrs Eaves is considerably heavier than most other revivals, countering the often anemic reproduction of smaller point sizes in other digital revivals of Baskerville, and restoring some of the feeling of letterpress printing's unpredictability.

Issue 38, The Authentic Issue, saw the first extensive use of Mrs Eaves in Emigre Magazine. [1]

Licko's selection of the name Mrs Eaves reveals an interesting story. Like his types, John Baskerville was, himself, a controversial character. He hired Sarah Eaves as his housekeeper. Eventually her husband Richard abandoned her and their five children, and Mrs Eaves became Baskerville's mistress and eventual helpmate with typesetting and printing. She married Baskerville within a month of her estranged husband's death. Selection of the name Mrs Eaves honors one of the forgotten women in the history of typography.

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Mrs eaves is a transitional serif font, and comes in several different versions. It comes in Roman, Bold, Italic, Fractions, Petite Caps, and Small Caps. The typeface was named after Sarah Eaves, who was John Baskerville mistress and later wife. Mrs eaves is heavily influenced by the Baskerville typeface that was created by John Baskerville in 1757. It is much more feminine than Baskerville. John Baskerville original font was much heavier and bolder, mrs eaves is considered to be a heavier revival of a classic font.

She uses vertical stress from the old style model. Licko reduced the contrast while retaining the overall openness and lightness of Baskerville by giving the lower case characters a wider proportion. She reduced the x-height relative to the cap height to avoid increasing the set width. Some of mrs eaves characters are awkward, narrow, wide, and some strokes lead to serifs that are different and unpronounced. Some say that the spacing of mrs eaves is too loose and large for large bodies of text. Typographers criticize it for its very loose an uneven spacing, and for only having a few kerning patterns. As a whole though the mrs eaves is an imperfect, but pleasing font.

         Mrs eaves has had commercial success and is a popular typeface. It is most commonly used on book covers and spines. It can be seen on Penguin Classics from Penguin Books. Mrs eaves can also be seen on album covers like Blacktree Quicksilver and Radiohead’s 2003 album Hail to the Thief. NBC even used is on their show “For Love or Money.”