Mauritius Font

Mauritius was Georg Trump’s final typeface, developed after Trump Mediaeval as an exploration of the transitional serif genre. Work began in 1965. Weber of Stuttgart previewed the design as Barock-Antiqua in a 1967 pamphlet and issued roman, bold and italic metal fonts in 1968. Canada Type explains that the industry’s movement toward newer typesetting systems limited its exposure before the foundry’s closure, leaving the design comparatively little known.

Read the publisher’s family page for the source account and the edition currently offered. Keep a family name distinct from its particular release, width or optical branch.

Canada Type’s digital Mauritius revisits a family whose surviving printed specimens presented problems of consistency, fitting and precision, particularly in the italic. The digital interpretation addresses those issues and expands the original scope to three weights and two widths. Its place in the transitional serif tradition distinguishes this project from a simple reproduction of an old specimen: the revival also develops a more flexible family for present-day composition.

Use the original publisher specimen to inspect those features. An alternative can share a broad role without having the same letter shapes, metrics or character coverage.

For a literary journal, begin with a full paragraph and a facing title rather than judging Mauritius from a single word. Compare the available widths using the same column measure, then choose the one that produces comfortable line endings. Use the italic for a short quotation or title emphasis and inspect its spacing beside punctuation. Keep running heads and page numbers restrained so the serif family can establish the publication’s main tone.

For independent comparisons, try Source Serif 4 and Lora. Use the same wording and approximate output size. The related style guide provides broader design context.

Use Canada Type to try the original and investigate the files, styles and terms for your intended workflow. This site does not distribute or serve Mauritius font software.

The editable alternatives here have their own source profiles and included licenses. For the difference between a font file and copied characters, read Unicode text versus fonts.