Claude Garamond begot a typeface that has survived eponymous imposters, a fanatical Cardinal, a forensic female typographer, hot and cold typesetting, and competitive digital fonts. There are more versions of the Garamond typeface than any other font ever created.

Our story begins in France when he is born around 1480 in Paris, but does not end when he died in 1561 in the same city. In 1510 he began his training as a punch-cutter with Simon de Colines. In 1520 he was a student with Geoffroy Tory and in 1530 Garamond’s first type is used in an edition of a book by Erasmus. It is based on Aldus Manutius’ 1455 type De Aetna. In 1520 Robert Estienne, celebrated Parisian editor-printer, approached Garamond to order a roman font. King Francis I commissioned Garamond to cut a Greek type and the ensuing Grec du Roi was also used by Estienne. Garamond went on to sell the typeface to other printers, making him the first typefounder.

From 1545 onwards he also worked as a publisher. After Garamond’s death, Christoph Plantin from Antwerp, the Le Bé type foundry, and the Frankfurt foundry Egenolff-Bermer acquire a large proportion of Garamond’s original punches and matrices. The latter were used to print the famous specimen sheet of the Egenolff-Berner foundry of Frankfurt in 1592, a specimen which associated for the first time the roman of Garamond with the italic of Granjon. The typefaces Garamond produced are considered typographical landmarks in the history of the serif typeface.