The Baskerville Project

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Mrs Eaves, designed by Zuzana Licko from Émigré (www.emigre.com) is a recreation of Baskerville, and named after the typefounder’s wife. When Licko designed the typeface her main aim was to produce a font that was softer and more open than the original Baskerville.

An aspect of Baskerville's type that I intended to retain was that of overall openness and lightness. To achieve this while reducing contrast, I gave the lowercase characters a wider proportion. In order to avoid increasing the set-width, I reduced the x-height, relative to the cap-height. Consequently, Mrs Eaves has the appearance of setting about one point size smaller than the average typeface in lowercase text sizes.

Mrs Eaves, is a feminine version of Baskerville and when set as body type, is particularly legible whilst retaining a sense of lightness to the page.

In an interview featured in Eye (No. 43, Vol. 11, Spring 2002), Licko explained why she thought Mrs Eaves was a successful typeface:

I think Mrs Eaves was a mix of just enough tradition with an updated twist. It’s familiar enough to be friendly, yet different enough to be interesting. Due to its relatively wide proportions, as compared with the original Baskerville, it’s useful for giving presence to small amounts of text such as poetry, or for elegant headlines for use in print adds. It makes the reader slow down a bit and contemplate the message,

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