J is for Janson

Janson is an oldstyle serif typeface whose design can be traced back to the matrices of Miklós Tótfalusi Kis, a Transylvanian Protestant priest and schoolteacher. Kis was sent to Amsterdam to help print a Hungarian Protestant translation of the Bible, and his resulting interest in printing led to a second career as a punchcutter. Janson was named for Leipzig printer and punchcutter Anton Janson, but research in the 1970s and 1980s led to the conclusion that the typeface was Kis’s design. Janson was digitised by Linotype as Janson Text, and by Bitstream as Kis.