Garamond是一类西文衬线字体的总称，也是旧衬线体的代表字体。这个名字源于法国的一位铅字铸造师克洛德·加拉蒙（Claude Garamond, 1480年－1561年）。后来大部分被命名为Garamond的字体都是出自于另一位铅字铸造师——让·雅农（Jean Jannon）。Garamond和现在字体的直接关系可以从Sabon, Granjon，和Adobe Garamond的衬线字中看出来。

Garamond在16世纪40年代开始流行。最初是从希腊字母字体中借鉴，为法国国王弗朗索瓦一世制作拉丁字母字体。后来法国的法院使用Garamond的衬线版来印刷，从此传向法国各地和整个西欧。Garamond应该是从阿尔杜斯·马努提乌斯的印刷所里参照了Venetian旧体。Garamond的小写字母参照了弗朗索瓦一世的书记员Angelo Vergecio的手写体。由于Garamond并没有制作斜体，因此斜体和大部分现代字体是基于加拉蒙德的助手罗伯特·格兰迪昂（Robert Grandjon）的斜体版本制作的。

Garamond is the name given to many serif typefaces, after the Latinized name of the 16th-century French artisan Claude Garamond, often written as 'Garamont' in his lifetime.

Garamond worked as an engraver of punches, the masters used to stamp matrices, the moulds used to cast metal type. He worked in the tradition of what is now called old-style serif letter design, that produced letters with a relatively organic structure resembling handwriting with a pen but with a slightly more structured and upright design. Although Garamond himself remains considered an eminent figure in French printing of the sixteenth century, historical research over the last century has increasingly placed him in context as one artisan among several active at a time of rapid production of new typefaces in sixteenth-century France, operating within a pre-existing tradition defined by the work of printers of the preceding half-century, in particular Aldus Manutius and his punchcutter Francesco Griffo.