Ionic No. 5™

Faced with the poor printing qualities of the Industrial Moderns in general use for newspaper text, C.H. Griffith at Mergenthaler took Lanston’s sturdy 6 point Monotype Ionic 156-J as a starting point, and in five trials produced the first contemporary typeface designed specifically to solve the technical problems posed by stereotyping and high speed printing. The advent of this typeface changed newspaper typography world-wide. Intertype borrowed Ionic as Ideal.