The popular practice of creating a new typeface that closely hews to existing designs. Famous revivals include the various 20th century interpretations of the types of Claude Garamond, generally bearing his name; Bruce Roger’s Centaur, a revival of Nicolas Jenson’s types; and Helvetica, a revival of turn of the century grotesks such as Akzidenz Grotesk. The difference between “revival” and “plagiarism” is mainly a matter of acknowledging one’s influences; revivals are controversial within typographic circles precisely because they bespeak a lack of imagination on the part of the designer. At the same time, waves of revivals typically accompany each new typesetting technology, as typographers try to replace beloved favorites from earlier generations of technology. Much of digital typography has revolved around revivals when there hasn’t been outright piracy of existing designs.

The term is also fairly flexible, encompassing not only close copies of existing designs. Therefore Stanley Morison’s Times New Roman can be said to be a revival of Plantin types, and Zuzana Licko’s personal and idiosyncratic Filosofia can be called a revival of Bodoni.