IM Fell Great Primer

Try IM Fell Great Primer

Weights and styles

• Regular 400IM Fell Great Primer Regular Italic

About IM Fell Great Primer

IM Fell Great Primer is an old-style serif that reproduces a historical printing type together with its imperfections. The outlines keep the wobble and ink spread of letterpress: stems are slightly uneven, serifs are blunt and irregular, and the numerals are old-style figures that hang below and rise above the x-height. In the specimen the Q has a long tail that runs under the following letter. The source is the Great Primer roman and italic of the Fell Types, the punches and matrices gathered by John Fell, Bishop of Oxford, and bequeathed to the University of Oxford on his death in 1686. The official notes record that Fell's own type-founder, Peter de Walpergen, cut this and the other larger sizes. Igino Marini made the digital version, which has two styles, Regular and Italic, and 388 glyphs.

Where IM Fell Great Primer works

Historical book design

Uneven outlines and old-style figures reproduce the look of a seventeenth-century page.

Titles and epigraphs

Great Primer was one of the larger bodies of the Fell Types, and the rough detail shows clearly at heading sizes.

Quotations with italic

A true italic from the same historical source sets titles and emphasis inside roman text.

Theatre, museum and heritage print

Programmes and labels gain a period voice without scanned artwork.

Fantasy maps and game props

Irregular serifs and ink-worn edges pass for old printed documents.

Glyphs

Language support

The family contains the core letters these languages are written with:

• English
• French
• German
• Spanish
• Portuguese
• Italian
• Dutch
• Swedish
• Norwegian
• Danish
• Finnish
• Icelandic
• Catalan
• Turkish
• Polish
• Czech
• Slovak
• Hungarian
• Romanian
• Croatian
• Slovenian
• Lithuanian
• Latvian
• Estonian

Character sets found in the files: latin, latin-ext. The language list is a check of required letters against the font, not a promise of typographic quality in each language.

License

Fonts that pair with IM Fell Great Primer

Suggestions come from simple rules on the records: a contrasting classification and enough weights to carry body text. They are a starting point, not a verdict.

Use IM Fell Great Primer on the web

Download the family and host the files on your own site, then declare them in CSS. Please do not link to the files on trendhub.net: preview files here are subsets and their addresses change.

@font-face {
  font-family: "IM Fell Great Primer";
  src: url("/assets/fonts/IMFellGreatPrimer-Italic.ttf") format("truetype");
  font-weight: 400;
  font-style: italic;
  font-display: swap;
}
@font-face {
  font-family: "IM Fell Great Primer";
  src: url("/assets/fonts/IMFellGreatPrimer-Regular.ttf") format("truetype");
  font-weight: 400;
  font-style: normal;
  font-display: swap;
}

body {
  font-family: "IM Fell Great Primer", serif;
}

Or load it from the official source. Google Fonts serves IM Fell Great Primer with this markup:

<link rel="preconnect" href="https://fonts.googleapis.com">
<link rel="preconnect" href="https://fonts.gstatic.com" crossorigin>
<link href="https://fonts.googleapis.com/css2?family=IM+Fell+Great+Primer:ital,wght@0,400;1,400&display=swap" rel="stylesheet">

Things to know

Deliberately rough

The irregular edges belong to the design: the digitisation preserves the printed impression of the original type.

Roman and italic, no bold

The family offers one weight in upright and italic form. No bold is provided.

Old-style figures

Numerals vary in height and alignment, as the specimen shows, which suits text but not tables.

FAQs

Similar fonts

Other families in the same classification, ordered by shared use tags. All serif fonts