In the early 1960s, the German masterprinters’ association requested that a new typeface be designed and produced in identical form on both Linotype and Monotype machines so that text and technical composition would match. Walter Cunz at Stempel responded by commissioning Jan Tschichold to design the most faithful version of Claude Garamond’s serene and classical roman yet to be cut. The boldface and particularly the italic are limited by the twin requirements of Linotype and Monotype hot metal machines. Bitstream’s Cursive is a return to the form of one of Garamond’s late italics, recently identified. Punches and matrices for the romans survive at the Plantin-Moretus Museum.

The name refers to Jacques Sabon, who introduced Garamond’s romans to Frankfurt, although the typefaces that Sabon himself cut towards the end of the sixteenth century have a faintly awkward style of their own.

Of the other Garamonds, Granjon, Stempel Garamond, and Berthold Garamond are also based directly on Garamond’s work. Garamond 3, Monotype Garamond, and Simoncini Garamond, with Deberny & Peignot’s Garamont, are based on the work of Jean Jannon, an early seventeenth century French punchcutter whose work was confused with Garamond’s early in the twentieth century, a mistake that was not corrected until 1926 by Beatrice Warde. ITC Garamond is a distant derivative of Jannon, while Ludlow Garamond can be considered an original Middleton design with little to do with Jannon or Garamond.