Fairfield is an old style serif

Serif

In typography, serifs are semi-structural details on the ends of some of the strokes that make up letters and symbols. A typeface with serifs is called a serif typeface . A typeface without serifs is called sans serif or sans-serif, from the French sans, meaning “without”...

 typeface

Typeface

In typography, a typeface is the artistic representation or interpretation of characters; it is the way the type looks. Each type is designed and there are thousands of different typefaces in existence, with new ones being developed constantly....

 designed by Rudolf Ruzicka as a text font

Font

In typography, a font is traditionally defined as a quantity of sorts composing a complete character set of a single size and style of a particular typeface...

. Released in 1940, its design is rooted in the forms of Venetian Old Face types. Fairfield Medium was released in 1947.

Ruzicka on the typeface: “The limitations accepted were those tending to the greatest economy of means, rather than those supposedly inherent in the machine. For this reason ligatures (which only add to the number of characters) were confined to the f combinations required by usage. The lowercase f’s, both roman and italic, fit not only all the characters, but even themselves – the twenty six leaden soldiers could fight their battles untied yet in accord.”

The designer Alex Kaczun has redone and expanded upon the typeface.