Bodoni

Bodoni, Giambattista, 1740-1813, Italian printer b. Piedmont. He was the son of a printer and worked for a time at the press of the Vatican. Under the patronage of the duke of Parma, he produced stately quartos and folios with impressive title pages and luxurious margins. With Baskerville in England and the Didot family in France, Bodoni was a leader in originating pseudoclassical typefaces. These were distinguished from the "old style" of Caslon by emphasizing the contrast of light and heavy lines and by long, level serifs. Bodoni's most notable publications include folio editions of Horace (1791), Vergil (1793), The Divine Comedy (1795), and Homer (1808). His coldly elegant books were frankly made to be admired for typeface and layout, not to be studied or read. He was apparently indifferent to the quality of the text he printed and to editing and proofreading. William Morris considered Bodoni's mechanical perfection in typography the ultimate example of modern ugliness.

(born Feb. 16, 1740, Saluzzo, Piedmont—died Nov. 29, 1813, Parma, French Empire) Italian typographer. Son of a printer, he served an apprenticeship at the press of the Roman Catholic Church in Rome. In 1768 he assumed management of the Royal Press of the duke of Parma. By the 1780s he was designing his own typefaces; the Bodoni typeface appeared in 1790 and is still in use today. He became internationally known and collectors sought his books. His many important works include fine editions of Horace (1791), Virgil (1793), and Homer's Iliad (1808).

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(born Feb. 16, 1740, Saluzzo, Piedmont—died Nov. 29, 1813, Parma, French Empire) Italian typographer. Son of a printer, he served an apprenticeship at the press of the Roman Catholic Church in Rome. In 1768 he assumed management of the Royal Press of the duke of Parma. By the 1780s he was designing his own typefaces; the Bodoni typeface appeared in 1790 and is still in use today. He became internationally known and collectors sought his books. His many important works include fine editions of Horace (1791), Virgil (1793), and Homer's Iliad (1808).

Learn more about Bodoni, Giambattista with a free trial on Britannica.com.

Bodoni is the name given to a series of serif typefaces first designed by Giambattista Bodoni (1740–1813) in 1798. The typeface is classified as didone modern. Bodoni followed the ideas of John Baskerville, as found in the printing type Baskerville, that of increased stroke contrast and a more vertical, slightly condensed, upper case, but taking them to a more extreme conclusion. Bodoni's typeface has a narrower underlying structure with flat, unbracketed serifs. The face has extreme contrast between thick and thin strokes, and an overall geometric construction.

Bodoni admired the work of John Baskerville and studied in detail the designs of French type founders Pierre Simon Fournier and Firmin Didot. Although he drew inspiration from the work of these designers, above all from Didot, no doubt Bodoni found his own style for his typefaces, which deservedly gained worldwide acceptance among printers.

Many digital versions of Bodoni suffer from a particular kind of legibility degradation known as "dazzle" caused by the alternating thick and thin strokes, particularly from the thin strokes being very thin at small point sizes. In Typographic Design: Form & Communication, the authors describe Bodoni’s uppercase R as a "dazzling contrast and vigorous proportions of modern-style typography. The thick-and-thin scotch rules echo and complement the thick-and-thin stroke weights."

Revivals and variants

There have been many revivals of the Bodoni typeface; ATF Bodoni and Bauer Bodoni are two of the more successful. ATF Bodoni was drawn by Morris Fuller Benton in 1907, and released by American Type Founders. The Bauer version was drawn by Henrich Jost in 1926. The Bauer version emphasizes the extreme contrast between hairline and main stroke. ATF captured the flavor of Bodoni’s original while emphasizing legibility rather than trying to push against the limits of printing technology. Other revivals include Bodoni Antiqua, Bodoni Old Face, ITC Bodoni Seventy Two, ITC Bodoni Six, ITC Bodoni Twelve, Bodoni MT, LTC Bodoni 175, WTC Our Bodoni, Bodoni EF, Bodoni Classico, TS Bodoni, and Filosofia by Zuzana Licko. Jess Brightley loves Jason Farrar x

Digital Bodoni types

Digital Bodonis typically suffer from a particular kind of legibility degradation. Personal computers generate different sizes of type from a single font of type outlines using mathematical scaling, while printers working with metal type use fonts whose designs have been subtly adjusted to provide optical compensation for improved legibility at specific sizes—for example, opening up counters and expanding the character widths at small sizes. Typefaces like Bodoni tend to highlight these differences of technological application. Many digital revivals are based on designs adjusted for relatively large sizes, making the already thin hairlines very thin when scaled down. Some digital type designers are rediscovering the older lore of "optical scaling", and subsequently turning out more sensible revivals aimed at pleasing human eyes. Zuzana Licko's Filosofia has none of the problems of dazzle, and meets the test of text reversal even in smaller point sizes.

Poster Bodoni

It is a variant designed for posters, designed by Chauncey H. Griffith.

Applications

Bodoni has been used for a wide variety of material, ranging from eighteenth century Italian books to 1960's periodicals.

Poster Bodoni is used in Mamma Mia! posters.

References

• Carter, Rob, Ben Day, and Philip Meggs. Typographic Design: Form and Communication. John Wiley & Sons, Inc: 1993. ISBN 0-471-28430-0.
• Dodd, Robin. From Gutenberg to Opentype. Hartley & Marks Publishers, Inc.: 2006. ISBN 0-88179-210-1.
• Friedl, Friedrich, Nicholas Ott, and Bernard Ott. Typography: an Encyclopedia Survey of Type Design and Techniques Throughout History. Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers, Inc: 1998. ISBN 1579120237 .
• Frey, David. X-Height FontHaus’ Online Magazine. DsgnHaus, Inc. 2006.
• Lawson, Alexander S., Anatomy of a Typeface. Godine: 1990. ISBN 978-0879233334.
• Nesbitt, Alexander The History and Technique of Lettering Dover Publications: 1975. ISBN 0-486-20427-8

External links

• Review of various Bodoni fonts
• Bodoni Poster Font Family - by Chauncey H. Griffith