I released Byington on March 29, 2005, as a commission for Roxio. They wanted a typeface for DVD menus in their Toast software, something with the authority of Trajan but adaptable to video resolution. Trajan itself had no lowercase, so I developed one by referencing Sabon. I scanned an old metal type version of Sabon and used it on a background layer for guidance, but I adjusted ascenders, descenders, and x-height to harmonize with the Trajan-style capitals. The result was a lowercase set that avoided pen-like details and kept to a chiseled, constructed look.

To ensure it worked well on television screens, I tested the design in unhinted, low-resolution previews throughout the process. I avoided subtle, thin details that would vanish under interlace and designed serifs to be thicker and more rugged than in a conventional Trajan. Byington was released commercially in three styles: Regular, Italic, and Bold. The italics were modestly slanted but not heavily stylized, since the priority was legibility on DVD menus rather than decorative flair.

On May 25, 2021, I updated Byington with technical refinements. These included repairing an inconsistency between the space and non-breaking space, redesigning the fraction slash, improving fraction support, and removing obsolete characters such as L with dot and E with breve. I also added prime marks at Unicode 2032 and 2033, corrected Panose font ID settings, and adjusted vertical metrics for better cross-browser compatibility. The core design was unchanged.

Byington never appeared in notable projects beyond its use in Roxio’s software, but it sold reasonably well.