The type used for the text became instantly popular. “In February 1496, Aldus published a rather insignificant essay by the Italian scholar Pietro Bembo.
Then Aldus decided he needed a new typeface that he would use first to publish an essay titled De Aetna by the famed scholar Pietro Bembo. If you recognize Aldus’ name, it may be because the company that created Pagemaker, the first widely used layout software, and that spurred the whole desktop publishing revolution, was named Aldus, and used his image as their logo.įor the design of his italic Aldus turned to Francesco Griffo, who made the molds in which the type would be cast. He invented pocket editions of books with soft covers that were affordable for a wide range of readers, organized the scheme of book design, normalized the use of punctuation, and used the first italic type. Aldus’s sign also included the latin phrase Festina lente, or “hasten slowly.”Īldus was an entrepreneur and an innovator, and soon became the most prolific publisher and printer in Renaissance Italy. This same symbol, by the way, was used for many years as a logo by Doubleday Books. Aldus took as his symbol the image of a dolphin around an anchor, which is derived from the ancient symbol for Beirut, Lebanon. Note anchor and dolphinThe art of the printed book spread quickly for the times, moving from the innovations of Gutenberg around 1450 near Mainz, Germany, to other cities in Europe.Īldus Manutius, a humanist himself, set up his Aldine Press in Venice around 1490. Drill down a little more and another layer of cultural history falls open, with surprising connections.
Aldus, Francesco and Pietro Come Callingīut there’s more in Bembo’s DNA than the traces of calligraphers copying old Greek and Roman originals. I talked about how the original letterforms came from type designers imitating the strokes of a scribe’s square-nibbed pen. When I started to study typography and book design, I was fascinated by the history behind the styles we use, the people who created them, and the stories of how they came into being.Ī few weeks ago I wrote about one of my favorites, Bembo, and used it to show how you can recognize oldstyle typefaces. I grew up with huge, heavy American Type Foundry type sample books in our living room, and would spend hours looking at the designs.
Typefaces have always exerted a powerful force on my imagination.
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