Guillaume is a small family of text fonts with its roots in the French sixteenth century. The roman is based on the types of Guillaume Le Bé (c.1525–1598), and the italic on those of Claude Garamont (Garamond) (d. 1561). Garamont’s romans have inspired countless modern interpretations, but his italics, despite their merit, have attracted much less attention. Guillaume offers extensive support for European languages, and is best suited for use in applications that support OpenType. Among its OpenType features are ligatures, small caps, several sets of numerals, contextual alternates, intelligent implementation of long ‘s’ and other period features, and fractions. For more detail, please see the pdf available in the Gallery.

This family was inspired from the French edition of Hypnerotomachie de Poliphile ("The Strife of Love in a Dream") attributed to Francesco Colonna, 1467 printed in 1546 in Paris by Jacques Kerver. He was using a Garamond set (look at our 1592 GLC Garamond), including two styles: Normal and Italic (Normal carved by Claude Garamond, Italic we don't know; it was an Italic pattern very often in use in Paris at that time). We have modified the slant angle of the Capitals used with Italics because the Normal capitals were used in both styles in the original. The present font includes all of the specific latin abbreviations and ligatures used in this edition (with a few differences between the two styles). Added are the accented characters and a few others not in use in this early period of printing. Decorated letters such as 1512 Initials, 1550 Arabesques, 1565 Venetian, or 1584 Rinceau can be used with this family without anachronism.