Times New Roman (series 327) — Quarter strength jobbing

In 1929 the advertising manager of The Times solicited from the Monotype Corporation a full-page advertisement in The Times Printing Supplement at £1000 a page, offering to write the copy and have it set up at Printing House Square by the compositors of The Times. When Morison heard this he said he thought it would be better to pay The Times £1000 not to set up any advertisement for the Corporation, because the paper was in such need of typographical reform. The Times management asked Morison what they should do about it and eventually appointed him as their typographical adviser. He proposed in October 1930 'that the type faces used in the editorial and advertising columns of The Times be re-designed and brought up to the standard of the average book as brought out by London publishers.

After experiments with pages set in existing newspaper faces and some Monotype book faces on a curved stereo plate, Morison's choice settled on a 'modernised Plantin' as a basis for a new type face.

Times New Roman first appeared in the issue of The Times of 3 October 1932. For a year Times New Roman was the exclusive property of The Times, although with the permission of the proprietors, the September/October 1932 issue of The Monotype Recorder, a special issue on 'The Times and its new roman type' was printed at Cambridge in the new type face. When the restriction was lifted Times New Roman was cut for Linotype and other composing machines as well as for foundry type. Despite its origin as a newspaper face it was found suitable for a great range of work; its utility was expanded by the cutting of a number of related series, included a wide version for the composing of lines longer than the short lines of narrow newspaper columns, and a semi-bold version. Times New Roman has become one of the most successful of all type faces cut this century.