Skip to content
Skip to main content

Century® Schoolbook

by Bitstream
Individual Styles from $29.99 USD
Complete family of 6 fonts: $171.99 USD
The Century Schoolbook Font Family was designed by Morris Fuller Benton and published by Bitstream. Century Schoolbook contains 6 styles and family package options.

More about this family

About the family


Century Schoolbook was released in 1920. Its designer, Morris Fuller Benton, of American Type Founders, had been interested in the early studies into typographic legibility and readability. When a schoolbook publisher approached ATF, looking for a new typeface family for his business, it seemed a natural project to test some of Benton’s new theories. He began his work by doing further research into the relationship between legibility of type and the eyesight of children. It was, however, Benton’s intuition and skill as a type designer, more than clinical research, that made Century Schoolbook the typeface it is.

The design became the basis of many “legibility” fonts created for newspapers and other periodical publications. Century Schoolbook has seamlessly transitioned into the digital age. Today, it is a trusted choice for edtech platforms, online courseware, and digital textbook fonts, where clarity and comfort in extended reading are essential. Optimized for screen environments, Century Schoolbook’s sturdy letterforms maintain legibility – even at smaller sizes – on tablets, e-readers, and adaptive learning dashboards, making it equally suited for online learning typography.

Designers: Morris Fuller Benton

Publisher: Bitstream

Foundry: Bitstream

Design Owner: Bitstream

MyFonts debut: Jan 1, 2000

Century® Schoolbook is a trademark of Monotype GmbH registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and may be registered in certain other jurisdictions.

About Bitstream

Bitstream is known among type enthusiasts and professionals alike as being one of the companies that lead the way towards the democratization of type. For centuries, the type world had been the exclusive domain of skilled typographers who worked large, cumbersome presses. With the birth of digital type though, came a revolution in the industry that enabled Bitstream, one of the first digital type foundries, to help grow the desktop publishing industry. The company’s founders shared a vision in which desktop publishing and digital type would open up doors and allow for the access of previously exclusive typefaces to a broader public audience. Eventually, this idea of opening up the type market led to the development of fonts like Amerigo and New Lincoln Gothic; designs that played huge roles in the launching, and eventual success, of desktop publishing. With best-selling typefaces like Futura in its line up, this library made an enormous impact on the type industry and helped to form it into what it is today.

Read more

Read less