Giambattista Bodoni in the context of Museo Glauco Lombardi


Giambattista Bodoni in the context of Museo Glauco Lombardi

⭐ Core Definition: Giambattista Bodoni

Giambattista Bodoni (/bəˈdni/, Italian: [dʒambatˈtista boˈdoːni]; 16 February 1740 – 30 November 1813) was an Italian typographer, type-designer, compositor, printer, and publisher in Parma.

He first took the type-designs of Pierre Simon Fournier as his exemplars, but afterwards became an admirer of the more modelled types of John Baskerville; and he and Firmin Didot evolved a style of type called "Modern", in which the letters are cut in such a way as to produce a strong contrast between the thick and thin parts of their body. Bodoni designed many typefaces, each one in a large range of type sizes. He is even more admired as a compositor than as a type designer, as the large range of sizes which he cut enabled him to compose his pages with the greatest possible subtlety of spacing. Like Baskerville, he sets off his texts with wide margins and uses little or no illustrations or decorations.

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Giambattista Bodoni in the context of Bodoni

Bodoni (/bəˈdni/, Italian: [boˈdoːni]) is the name given to the serif typefaces first designed by Giambattista Bodoni (1740–1813) in the late eighteenth century and frequently revived since. Bodoni's typefaces are classified as Didone or modern. Bodoni followed the ideas of John Baskerville, as found in the printing type Baskerville—increased stroke contrast reflecting developing printing technology and a more vertical axis—but he took them to a more extreme conclusion. Bodoni had a long career and his designs changed and varied, ending with a typeface of a slightly condensed underlying structure with flat, unbracketed serifs, extreme contrast between thick and thin strokes, and an overall geometric construction.

When first released, Bodoni and other didone fonts were called classical designs because of their rational structure. However, these fonts were not updated versions of Roman or Renaissance letter styles, but new designs. They came to be called 'modern' serif fonts; since the mid-20th century, they are also known as Didone designs.

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Giambattista Bodoni in the context of Didone (typography)

Didone (/diˈdni/) is a genre of serif typeface that emerged in the late 18th century and was the standard style of general-purpose printing during the 19th century. It is characterized by:

  • Narrow and unbracketed (hairline) serifs. (The serifs have a nearly constant width along their length.)
  • Vertical orientation of weight axes. (The vertical strokes of letters are thick.)
  • Strong contrast between thick and thin lines. (Horizontal parts of letters are thin in comparison to the vertical parts.)
  • Some stroke endings show ball terminals. (Many lines end in a teardrop or circle shape, rather than a plain wedge-shaped serif.)
  • An unornamented, "modern" appearance.

The term "Didone" is a 1954 coinage, part of the Vox-ATypI classification system. It amalgamates the surnames of the famous typefounders Firmin Didot and Giambattista Bodoni, whose efforts defined the style around the beginning of the nineteenth century. The category was known in the period of its greatest popularity as modern or modern face, in contrast to "old-style" or "old-face" designs, which date to the Renaissance period.

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