Joanna® Nova

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What is the Joanna® Nova font?

The Joanna® Nova design, by Monotype Studio designer Ben Jones, is an extensive update to Eric Gill’s original Joanna typefaces and brings this much admired – but underused – slab serif typeface into the 21st century. Joanna Nova features 18 fonts – more than twice as many as the original Joanna – with a wide range of weights including thin and ultra black, which were not available in the original design. More…
Every glyph has been redrawn using a variety of reference sources, including Gill’s original sketches and the copper patterns used in Joanna’s initial production. When Jones set out to design Joanna Nova, he saw that the ‘real Joanna’ was not immediately evident. “Some of Gill’s original drawings have a sloped ‘M’; there is also a ‘K’ and ‘R’ with a curled leg and a letter ‘d’ without the flat bottom,” he explained. “Is this Joanna? Or is it the version used to print Gill’s Essay on Typography? Or is it the digital version with which most people are surely more familiar than any other version? Ultimately, I think, none of these and all of these were ‘Joanna’ because, as with any typeface, it is more the idea or concept behind the typeface that makes it what it is. My approach was to create a version of Joanna that appears in your mind when you think of Joanna.”
Jones noted that one of the most distinguishing aspects of Joanna is the italics; and that, for reasons unknown, many of the characters in the current versions are much more condensed than those in the hand-set fonts of metal type., The newer designs being almost unusable at small sizes. The italics in Joanna Nova have been reworked to be more legible and closer to their original widths.
Joanna Nova expands the original Joanna in several ways that open up new typographic possibilities, These additions include several new weights, support for Greek and Cyrillic scripts, small caps for all scripts in both upright and italic styles, several numeral options and a host of context-sensitive ligatures.
The Joanna Nova typeface family is part of the new Eric Gill Series, drawing on Monotype’s heritage to remaster and expand and revitalize Eric Gill’s body of work, with more weights, more characters and more languages to meet a wide range of design requirements. The series also brings to life new elements inspired by some of Gill’s unreleased work, discovered in Monotype’s archive of original typeface drawings and materials of the last century.

Joanna® Nova Font families

The Joanna® Nova includes the following font families:

  • Joanna Nova Thin
  • Joanna Nova Thin Italic
  • Joanna Nova Light
  • Joanna Nova Light Italic
  • Joanna Nova Regular
  • Joanna Nova Italic
  • Joanna Nova Book
  • Joanna Nova Book Italic
  • Joanna Nova Medium
  • Joanna Nova Medium Italic
  • Joanna Nova Bold
  • Joanna Nova Bold Italic
  • Joanna Nova Extra Bold
  • Joanna Nova Extra Bold Italic
  • Joanna Nova Black
  • Joanna Nova Black Italic
  • Joanna Nova Ultra Black
  • Joanna Nova Ultra Black Italic

Joanna® Nova Preview

Here is a preview of how Joanna® Nova will look. For more previews using your own text as an example, click here.


Is Joanna® Nova a free to download font?

I'm afraid not. Joanna® Nova is not free to download. You will need to pay for it with your hard earn money. Most fonts that we feature on PimpMyFonts.com is a premium font. We do have a Free Fonts category where we showcase all of the best free fonts that you can download. Trust me when I say, don't waste your time searching for a free download of Joanna® Nova. You will not find a link anywhere.

It is highly unlikely that you'll be able to find Joanna® Nova for free. You might see a few websites that will say "Free Download" of Joanna® Nova font, but these are just attempts to get you to click on a link which will either take you to an ad landing page or you risk getting viruses on your computer. In the rare occasion that you do find a free download for Joanna® Nova remember that it's illegal to use a font if you didn't pay for it!

If you really want Joanna® Nova and you want to truly own it the legal and safe way, then click here to visit the download and purchase page on MyFonts.com. Here you will be able to obtain the proper license. The designer and publisher deserves to be paid for their work, as they have put in the hours and the creativity to produce such an amazing font. Good luck with your purchase and future use of this font. :)