Iowan Old Style

Iowan Old Style is a digital serif typeface designed by John Downer and released by Bitstream in 1991.^[1]

Iowan Old Style

Category	Serif
Classification	Old-style
Designer(s)	John Downer
Foundry	Bitstream

Iowan Old Style is inspired by serif typefaces from Renaissance Italy, now called the “old-style” or Venetian model of typeface design, with influence from Downer’s work as hand-painter of signs.^[2][3][4]

Compared to the historical models it is based on, Iowan has a higher x-height, meaning that the lower-case letters are taller and appear larger and wider, producing a design that is suitable for display and on-screen use.^[5] It is used as a default font on the Apple Books application and is included as a system font on iOS and macOS.^[6][7]

Design

Downer has described the design "more Venetian than Aldine" and influenced by lettering.^[4] It has diamond-dots (tittles) on the “i” and “j” similar to the Arts and Crafts-influenced Goudy Old Style.^[1]

Iowan began as a design for ITC, but after the company dropped plans to release it, the font was bought up by Matthew Carter of Bitstream, who digitized and released it.^[4] Bitstream later revisited the design, adding ornaments and titling capitals.^[1] The character set includes small capitals and ligatures, as well as Cyrillic characters. Stephen Coles, an expert on digital fonts, describes its design as “hardworking.”^[8]

Gallery

• 
  An extended setting of a text by Oscar Wilde in Iowan Old Style, showing justified text and leading between the lines.

• 
  Iowan Old Style’s x-height compared to other serif fonts: higher than Caslon and Bembo, used in fine book printing, but lower than Lucida Bright which is intended for maximum legibility.