The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog
Knockout vs Caslon Pro
A loud American gothic against a quiet English old-style. Knockout is Jonathan Hoefler's 32-style sans built from 19th-century wood-type grotesques for headlines and sports graphics, while Adobe Caslon Pro is Carol Twombly's text-size revival of William Caslon's 18th-century specimens. They solve opposite problems, so the choice is usually about the job rather than taste.
Knockout is a commercial font, so it is shown here in Oswald, its closest free alternative. All free alternatives to Knockout → Caslon Pro is a commercial font, so it is shown here in Libre Caslon Text, its closest free alternative. All free alternatives to Caslon Pro →
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog
- Knockout is a display grotesque spanning nine widths and 32 styles, numbered by boxing weight class from No. 26 Junior Flyweight to No. 94 Sumo Heavyweight, and it is not meant for body text.
- Adobe Caslon Pro is an old-style serif drawn from Caslon's own 1734 to 1770 specimen pages and tuned for running text at roughly 6 to 14 point, which is why The New Yorker sets its body copy in it.
- Caslon Pro's OpenType build folds in the old expert sets: small caps, old-style figures, swash letters, ligatures, fractions, and matching ornaments for book-style typography.
- Knockout began in 1994 for The New York Times Magazine and was finished in 1998 for the Sports Illustrated redesign, so its condensed, punchy widths are built for stacked headlines and tight columns.
- Both are commercial: Knockout is licensed from Hoefler&Co, while Adobe Caslon Pro comes with an Adobe Fonts subscription through Creative Cloud or as a separate purchase for app embedding and self-hosting, so licensing cost applies on either side.
Knockout
Reach for Knockout when you need compressed, high-impact headlines, posters, sports and editorial graphics, or a width system that can fill any column at any size.
Caslon Pro
Reach for Adobe Caslon Pro for long-form text in books, magazines, and corporate print, where its old-style forms, small caps, and figures carry a page without drawing attention.