Bookish Font: David Bergsland’s Jenson Starting Point and Page Proofs

David Bergsland’s first-person Bookish account begins with his affection for Jenson and explains a wish for a softer, more comfortable interpretation of an old favorite. He says he built it on the vertical metrics of his Librum Publishing Group, while explicitly distinguishing this family from that group. He also leaves the ideal companion unresolved in that account. The official Bookish listing offers Regular, Italic, Bold and Bold Italic. Do not turn a shared metric starting point into a claim that any two families will automatically align in every layout.

Use a real passage containing a short italic phrase, a bold term, quotation marks and a number. Read the paragraph before examining isolated shapes. Decide whether emphasis is noticeable enough without breaking its rhythm, and check whether the italic alters the line ending in an awkward place. Preserve the approved wording while making changes so you can distinguish typographic effects from editing. Include an ordinary paragraph without emphasis alongside it; that gives a baseline for assessing how much contrast the chosen treatment introduces.

Set a brief run-in heading followed immediately by its paragraph. Compare the proposed companion and the main text on the same baseline in the production application. Inspect the apparent size, punctuation spacing and transition between the two faces rather than relying only on numerical point size. Repeat the proof with the longest likely heading. If the pairing needs local adjustment, record it in the paragraph or character style instead of nudging a single instance until it looks acceptable. A shared historical metric decision is useful context, not a substitute for this proof.

Create two facing-page proofs using the intended trim size, margins and line spacing. Compare the dense and sparse portions of the actual manuscript, including a caption or short note if the project requires one. Explore EB Garamond, Lora and Source Serif 4 as independent reading directions; they are not Bookish previews or established companions selected by its designer. Save the selected original styles and layout settings with the final proof. Follow Hackberry’s original resource for the font and intended usage terms rather than distributing its software through this page.