Good Bible Typography

Carl Shank • November 10, 2021

Good Bible Typography. In a recent issue of Bible Study Magazine (November–December 2021), Mark Ward, editor, provided a well written and visual article "A Revolution in Bible Design: Meet the People Who Designed Your Bible." In that piece he reviewed the work of Bible designers and crafts people who design today's versions of the Bible, noting the typeface designs used and paper quality. In fact, in a YouTube segment, Mark has an entire talk on Bible typography well worth your time (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tu4t9FKn9M4).


He quotes Dan Farrell, VP of Design Crossway (who publishes many modern Bibles, especially the ESV version today) on the best Bible font — "Bram de Does created two of the finest typefaces ever designed when he developed Trinité and Lexicon for Enschedé in the late 80s and early 90s. Lexicon is especially well suited to Bible design because of its option for shorter ascenders and descenders, its tall x-height, and its readability at small sizes. It has a calligraphic elegance without being delicate. For these reasons, I think it's a timeless typeface that will continue to be highly effective in Bible typesettings many decades from now." Indeed, a Google search for the type used in Bible today lists Lexicon as the most used Bible typeface with masterful Trinité N°2 Roman used in the ESV edition published by Crossway. (See Sample 1 Below)


There are a multitude of de Does Lexicon fonts available at various weights — two main groups: Lexicon No.1 and Lexicon No.2. Lexicon No.1 has short stems (ascenders and descenders); Lexicon No.2 has 'normal' stems. Both groups share the same widths thus making it possible to change fonts without reflowing text. Each main group contains 12 weight variants, six upright weights (A to F) and six italic weights (A to F), where A is the regular weight and F the boldest weight. These are expensive, asking over $4,000 for the complete set, and over $2,000 for set No. 1 or No. 2. (See Sample 2 Below).


Why is Bible typography important? The older KJV (King James Version) two-column Bibles often used by congregants were ill-designed, hard to read at small sizes, and each verse a separate paragraph with verse numbers and other markers interrupting the flow of the textual thought. They were not reader-friendly Bibles, and they often separated biblical thoughts and gave unfortunate fuel to "biblicism," that is, quoting verses and thoughts out of context. Atomistic quoting of single verses became the trend of preachers and well-intentioned Bible study leaders. Contexts were ignored, and through bad typography verses were clumped together in an unfortunate manner. Mark Ward offers some notable examples and instances of this in his YouTube talk.


Those who appreciate the biblical text want it read accurately and legibly. Paragraph divisions were incorporated into the Biblical Hebrew (Old Testament) and Greek texts (New Testament) arbitrarily. Even the verse numbers and divisions were arbitrary, supposedly for better study of the inspired Word, but led to unfortunate theological problems and even heretical points of view. The point I am making is that while we need to study the Bible as the Word of God to us and pore over the biblical theology therein, we need better Bible typography to do so.

Successful Layout & Design

More on Variable Fonts (2)

By Carl Shank • September 5, 2026
Google’s variable font selection includes IBM Plex Sans, Inter, Newsreader, Open Sans, Playfair Display, Express Fraunces and Roboto. FF Meta Variable is now a licensed font from Monotype (myFonts.com). Formata Variable is a demonstration only font from CARE Typography. We consider two Google Variable typefaces here — Playfair Display and Express Fraunces. Playfair Display Playfair Display is a high-contrast transitional/display serif typeface designed by Claus Eggers Sørensen and released through Google Fonts in 2011. It was designed primarily for large display sizes, especially headlines, titles, and editorial typography. Its appearance draws inspiration from the late eighteenth-century transition from traditional broad-nib writing toward pointed steel pens, as well as from the elegant typefaces associated with the European Enlightenment and neoclassical period. Playfair Display is a contemporary high-contrast serif designed primarily for display typography. Its visual ancestry lies in the 18th-century transitional period, particularly the movement from broad-nib calligraphic forms toward the sharper, more vertical forms that ultimately produced Didot and Bodoni.

More On Variable Fonts

By Carl Shank • September 5, 2026
More On Variable Fonts Open Type Variable Fonts ( REFERENCE ) (Some of this Blog from previous Blog on Dec 9. 2025. See REFERENCE above) Open Type Variable fonts build directly on the technology introduced to TrueType by Apple in the QuickDraw GX graphics environment. Of similar vintage, Adobe’s multiple master format approached similar concepts in a different way. How do we know that Variable Fonts don’t also have a declining future? The need for more compact dynamic webfonts is part of the answer. “Variable fonts also have the potential to enable new kinds of typography for electronic documents, responsive to things like device orientation or even viewing distance. Compact and faster fonts also provide significant advantages for embedding fonts in devices, especially for East Asian (CJK) and other fonts with very large glyph sets and character coverage. The smaller device and disc footprint of variable fonts has been a major factor in encouraging support for the technology in software companies.” ( https://medium.com/variable-fonts ) An Open Type Variable font contains one or more axes that each provide particular variation between different extremes of a typeface design. The format also allows for the possibility of intermediate designs, for the whole glyph set or for individual glyphs, to provide finer control over the design as it changes across the variations design space. Unlike MM fonts, an Open Type Variable font contains only a single set of glyph outlines “and the other extremes or intermediate shapes are defined as deltas from those outlines. So, for example, a font may contain a set of glyph outlines that correspond to the regular weight and width of a typeface, and the lighter, heavier, narrower, and extended designs will be expressed in the font data as movements of outline nodes relative to that outline.” (Medium.com) Any position within the design space can be a named instance. Variable fonts allow a continuous design space containing potentially thousands or millions of possible instances. For typography, this means greater control over hierarchy, responsive design, spacing, readability, branding, and visual expression, while often requiring fewer font files.
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