Legibility Group

They were developed in-house by Linotype's design team, led by Chauncey H. Griffith, and released from 1925, when the first member, Ionic No.

[5] To this end, the designs have low contrast in stroke weight, wide open counters and ball terminals, intended to make the letters clearly distinguishable even when printed on poor-quality newsprint paper.

[a] In 1972, British printing manager Allen Hutt commented that "the majority of the world's newspapers are typeset in one or another of the traditional Linotype 'Legibility Group', and most of the rest in their derivatives.

"[1] The family became a large group due to the creation of slightly different designs for different printing conditions, such as levels of inking used in different newspaper production processes and versions with different x-heights.

[14] Hutt suggests that the design was based on the popular family of the name Ionic from Miller & Richard and copies from other foundries, slightly bolder than was considered normal for body text during the late nineteenth century.

Sample of Linotype Textype, a Legibility Group typeface
A "modern" or Didone font of the nineteenth century with three derivatives. At the bottom, Haas Clarendon shows reduced contrast and a wide, display-oriented structure. The text faces Century Schoolbook and especially Linotype Excelsior, a variant on Linotype Ionic, have text-oriented structures with narrower letterforms and smaller serifs than the Clarendon, but they show reduced contrast and more open letterforms to increase legibility compared to the Modern, particularly visible on Excelsior's "e", "c" and "a". [ d ]
Miller and Richard 's Ionic No. 2 typeface of the nineteenth century.