You don't need to be a professional graphic designer to have a favourite font, you can indeed be just a reader or a writer and feel more at ease reading a book printed with a specific font or typing with it. Among the most classical ones there is the Bodoni font: created in 1798 by Giovanni Battista Bodoni (1740-1813), typographer, type-designer, printer and engraver of punches, this is an elegant font in which thick and thin lines are alternated and the emphasis is set on the verticality of the character that gives it a clean and elegant look.
Font fans may be happy to hear that there is currently an exhibition dedicated to Bodoni at the Galleria Petitot at the Biblioteca Palatina (Palatina Library) in Parma, Italy.
Bodoni was born in Saluzzo in 1740, he learnt the art from his printer father and started working as a compositor in the Vatican printing office.
He worked in Rome for ten years and then moved to Parma to establish a fine printing office at the request of Duke Ferdinand of Parma. In his first works Bodoni copied the types cast by Pierre Simon Fournier, but soon started developing his own style and cutting punches for types. Bodoni was admired as a compositor and a type designer, and achieved great technical refinement, also thanks to the large range of sizes which he cut and that enabled him to compose his pages with the greatest possible subtlety of spacing.
Organised by the Bodoni Museum in Parma (that preserves around 80,000 original tools and items, plus very rare books), "Segni esemplari" (Exemplary Signs) (until 18th May) celebrates the 200th Anniversary of Bodoni's Manual of Typography.
The manual was published posthumously in two volumes by Bodoni's widow, and includes 265 pages of roman characters, declining in size, romans, italics, and script types; 125 capital letters; 181 pages of Greek and Oriental characters; 1036 decorations and 31 borders and 20 pages of symbols, ciphers, numerals, and musical examples, plus an introduction in which Bodoni explains his method and modus operandi.
Bodoni had previously published another book of characters in 1788, this volume didn't have any introduction and was probably inspired by Fournier's Manuel typographique (1764), bu there was one major difference between the books - Fournier's manual was a sort of description of characters, Bodoni's was more a collection of his own characters and decorative elements.
The 1818 volume is a hybrid volume, a sort of summary of Bodoni's life, in the preface he states: "It is proper here to offer the four different heads under which it seems to me are derived the beauties of type, and the first of these is regularity – conformity without ambiguity, variety without dissonance, and equality and symmetry without confusion. A second and not minor value is to be gained from sharpness and definition, neatness and finish. From the perfection of the punches in the beginning comes the polish of the well-cast letter which should shine like a mirror on its face."
The installation at the Biblioteca Palatina tries to retrace his life and achievements via books, letters, archival documents and punches and matrices that were preserved in a monastery during the Second World War and therefore escaped the library bombing in 1944. It also offers the chance to all sorts of visitors and not just to experts and font fans the possibility to learn more about manuals and specimen by Bodoni and by other designers.
The "exemplary signs" in the title of the event are to be intended not just as the marks left by Bodoni, but also as the visual interventions of typographers and printers and the evolution of his typeface in the works of contemporary graphic designers who were inspired by Bodoni.
The event features indeed a section dedicated to a group of international artists, including British graphic designer Patrick Thomas, who worked with the Bodoni typeface and tried to present a futuristic vision of the font.
Once you finish your visit at the library, put into practice what you've learnt: the Bodoni typeface is very used for street and shopping signs in Parma, so enjoy yourself having a walk and spotting it.
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