(ca. 1480 – 1561) was a Parisian publisher . He was one of the
leading type designers of his time, and is credited with the
introduction of the apostrophe , the accent and the cedilla to
the French language. Several contemporary typefaces , including
those currently known as Garamond , and Sabon , reflect his
influence. Garamond was an apprentice of Simon de Colines ;
later, he was an assistant to Geoffroy Tory , whose interests in
humanist typography and the ancient Greek capital letterforms,
or majuscules , may have informed Garamond's later work.
Garamond came to prominence in 1541, when three of his Greek
typefaces (e.g. the Grecs du roi (1541)) were requested for a
royally-ordered book series by Robert Estienne . Garamond based
these types on the handwriting of Angelo Vergecio , the King's
Librarian at Fontainebleau , as well as that of his ten-year-old
pupil, Henri Estienne . According to Arthur Tilley , the
resulting books are "among the most finished specimens of
typography that exist." Shortly therea