He wrote several books on handwriting, including A Handwriting Manual (1932), many times reissued, e.g., in 1954 by Faber and faber in London. In 1921, he co-founded the Society of Scribes and Illuminators, and was honorary secretary from 1931 to 1933. Student at the Central School of Arts and Crafts, disciple (in his own words) of Edward Johnston. Selection of fonts based on Manutius's work. The alphabet was widely copied, and the style is known as italic, after its country of origin.ĭigital typefaces derived from his work: 1501 Manutius (2001) by Klaus-Peter Schäffel. Although Aldus even had a papal decree to protect this style of alphabet, it was as difficult then as it is now to protect a typeface design. Their collaboration broke up over a copyright dispute, primarily over the ownership of the cursive type typeface that Griffo developed under the direction of Aldus. Griffo created many innovative type designs that are still admired for their beauty and readability. One of the many great talents working for Aldus was Francesco Griffo, a gifted type designer. His expensive beautiful books were far from today's paperbacks, mind you. Among the many contributions of Aldus was the popularization of small, portable books.

Aldus Manutius (1450-1515) was a printer, entrepreneur, a great ego, and publisher of over 1200 titles. Pioneers such as Erhard Ratdolt and Nicolas Jenson had already begun working on adapting the roman alphabet for metal type by the time Aldus Manutius established his press in 1494, with the intention of publishing all the Greek classics. Let's celebrate 500 years of Bembo! In the mid fifteenth century printing quickly spread to Italy from Germany, and by the 1470's Venice had became the center of the printing industry, home to over 100 printing companies.

And in fact, the design continued to evolve until the 1499 publishing of the spectacular Hypnerotomachia Poliphili. Kevin Steele explains in 1996: Some sources cite the publication of Cardinal Bembo's De Aetna as 1493 or 1495. Bembo, Cloister Italic and Poliphilus can be traced back to him. His typefaces were all designed and cut by the brilliant Francesco Griffo, a punchcutter who created the first roman type cut from study of classical Roman capitals. Late 15-th century Venetian scholar and printer, b. The list:Ĭredit for some images below: Danielle West. PDF file compiled by the jury: Stephen Coles, Jan Middendorp, Veronika Elsner, Roger Black, Ralf Herrmann, Claudia Guminski (FontShop) and Bernard Schmidt-Friderichs. There is a lot of good information about each of the fonts mentioned. German FontShop-sponsored site listing the hundred best fonts of all times, compiled by a jury in 2007. TYPE DESIGN INFORMATION PAGE last updated on

Bembo typeface 1945