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Sabon-Antiqua. Frankfurt am Main: D. Stempel, 1967
“After he returned to Switzerland, leaving Penguin design in the good care of Hans Schmoller, he continued to design, but his reforming zeal seems to have spent itself. But it is from this period that this one significant typeface, Sabon (1966), dates. Its achievement was as much in what cannot be seen as in what can. In the early 1960s a group of German printers decided they needed a type which could be set on Monotype or Linotype equipment, or in a foundry version by hand, with no perceptible difference on the page. This meant that all the drawbacks of both composing machines, the Monotype unit width grid and the Lynotype’s inability to kern, had to be resolved in a design which should look, the specification said, like a Garamond made a whisker narrower for economy’s sake (...) Sabon is an admirable face, strong and yet restrained, with only a hint of Garamond about it. It is called after Jacob Sabon, a punchcutter from Lyon, who is thought to have brought some Garamond’s matrices to Frankfurt. The roman capitals in particular are so handsome that one regrets that no titling fount was produced, and that Tschichold never designed any classical display letters.”
Sebastian Carter. Twentieth century type designers. New ed. London: Lund Humphries, 1995 (p. 127)