What do the City of Westminster logo, Ronald Reagan’s 1984 campaign materials and the first Apple Macintosh advert all have in common? This is not the start of a bad joke – all three use a version of the typeface Garamond. Named for French engraver Claude Garamond (c 1510–61), the typeface has come to signify a certain kind of knowing refinement. The Garamond man has opinions about which knot to use in his tie according to occasion; his catchphrase is ‘well, actually…’; he dusts his books. These associations, played out in the nerdier forms of popular culture, stem from the typeface’s supposed pedigree. 

But in the 1920s, that was called into question. After the First World War, every foundry worth its salt released a version of Garamond, all based on a design used by the French Royal Printing Office. But if this truly was the work of Claude Garamond, where were all the 16th-century books containing the typeface? In 1926, one Paul Beaujon wrote an article on Garamond for the typographic journal The Fleuron. After the text had been set and the pages proofed, Beaujon, who had visited the North Library in the British Museum to check a date, was flicking through a collection of title pages when he saw the typeface in question staring back at him. Except this was the work not of Claude Garamond, but of the lesser-known printer and punchcutter Jean Jannon (1580–1658). 

Beaujon jumped on a night boat to Paris to examine Jannon’s specimen book, rewrote the article and, remarkable though it may seem, made a name for himself. His discovery caused such a stir in typographic circles that the head of the Lanston Monotype Company offered him a job editing the