One of the more elegant French typefaces ever designed, Les Cochins, was produced in 1912 by Georges Peignot for the Paris foundry G. Peignot et Fils (future Deberny & Peignot headed by his son Charles) and was based on the copperplate engravings of French 18th-century artist Charles-Nicolas Cochin, from which the typeface also takes its name. The font has a small x-height with long ascenders. Georges Peignot also created the design Nicolas-Cochin as a looser variation in the same style. The Cochins were used for headlines and captions in Rolling Stone during the early years and then in the late 1980s. It retains a timeless elegance—an all too common phrase but with true significance in the type universe. Below is an excerpt from the original G. Peignot et Fils specimen booklet.
