Trajan is a serif typeface created by Carol Twombly for Adobe in 1989. It is based of the letterform of capitalis monumentalis and Roman square capitals which were used at the base of Trajan's Column. From which the font got its name.
Its is a font in all capitals. For the Romans square capitals, as the name suggests, did not use lowercase letters. The first official lowercase font being the handwritten Carolingian minuscule which was used around 780 AD until the 12th century.
As mentioned earlier the font got its name from Trajan's Column. A triumphal column located in Rome, Italy. Twombly got the inspiration for the design of her font from a picture rubbing of the inscription found at the column's base. There are many fonts predating Twombly's. Like “Weiss” of 1926 by Emil Rudolf Weiss, “Goudy Trajan” by Frederic Goudy in 1930 and “Trajanus” by Warren Chappell in 1939. Many of these other incarnations of Trajan-inspired fonts have an invented lowercase. Which makes Twombly's the most accurate and faithful to the original with which the font shares its name. Twombly's TRAJAN is also considered more crisp than the others.
The PRO version is an expansion on Twombly's version released in 2001 which includes a lowercase form called small cap lettering. All capital letters but in the size of lowercase letters.
It is this crisp feeling which makes it a particularly popular font. As it it used for countless of book covers, television shows and movie posters. A recent example of this is the 2016 American Broadway musical Hamilton by Lin Manuel Miranda. Another example is the recent movie adaption of the book Hidden Figures.
Aside from packaging purposes it is also often used for other type of advertisements. It's clear and elegant design lends itself very well to both the worlds of luxury items and brands and Graphic design. In this sense it is similar to other fonts like Bodoni, which we have come to associate with fashion due to it being used on the cover of VOGUE. Trajan is also quite often used for logos which want to give off a professional vibe. Such as universities and hospitals. With both Bodoni and Trajan being 'display face' neither is suitable for large bodies of text. Thus it is more often used as a header and combined with a different font suitable for the content.
Due to it popping up frequently in not only the creative industry but also the professional industry Trajan has started to gain a bit of a “bad egg” reputation. Many feel it is becoming overused and misused. An easy way out to make something look nice even when it is not used in an appropriate way. They see its future going down the road of the Avant Garde font in the following years. In the sense that designers may end up turning away from using it because of the reputation and the feeling that they would be seen as “just another Trajan user” with nothing creative and fresh to bring to the table.
1. “Trajan (typeface)”, last modified March 4, 2017, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trajan_(typeface)
2. “Trajan Font Presentation”, Gage Kalkbrenner, last modified February 1, 2016, https://prezi.com/1kothkms1f78/trajan-font-presentation/
3. “How Trajan rose from the grave to become the new Helvetica”, John Brownlee, last modified september 15, 2014, https://www.fastcodesign.com/3035488/how-trajan-rose-from-the-grave-to-become-the-new-helvetica
4. “Trajan Pro: The typeface I love to hate”, last modified October 10, 2010, http://www.writingfordesigners.com/?p=4316
vaporwave
stormborns
turnnoffyourmind
gracieabrams
gamechangershow