Griffo's roman typeface, with several replacements of capitals, continued to be used by Manutius's company until the 1550s, when a 'wholesale change' brought in French typefaces which had been created by Garamond, Pierre Haultin and Robert Granjon under its influence. In France, his work inspired many French printers and punchcutters such as Geoffroy Tory and Claude Garamond, even though the typeface of De Aetna with its original capitals was reportedly only used in about twelve books between 14. ![]() Modern font designer Robert Slimbach described Griffo's work as a breakthrough leading to an "ideal balance of beauty and functionality." One of the main characteristic that distinguished Griffo's types from earlier Venetian forms is the way in which the ascenders of the lowercase letters stand taller than the capitals. Griffo was the first punch-cutter to fully express the character of the humanist hand that contemporaries preferred for manuscripts of classics and literary texts, in distinction to the book hand humanists dismissed as a gothic hand or the everyday chancery hand. A second version of the roman face followed in 1499 and this type was used to print the famous illustrated Hypnerotomachia Poliphili. Six years later Griffo was responsible for the first italic types, cut for Aldus. The face was first used in February 1496 (1495 more veneto), in the setting of a book entitled Petri Bembi de Aetna Angelum Chabrielem liber, a 60-page text about a journey to Mount Aetna written by the young Italian humanist poet Pietro Bembo, later a Cardinal and secretary to Pope Leo X. Griffo cut punches for the Venetian press of the humanist printer Aldus Manutius. Type specimen by Aldus Manutius, from Pietro Bembo's De Aetna, 1495–96. ![]() It has held lasting popularity since as an attractive, legible book typeface.Prominent users of Bembo have included the Everyman's Library series, Penguin Books, both Oxford and Cambridge University Press and Edward Tufte. The revival was designed under the direction of Stanley Morison for the Monotype Corporation around 1929, as part of a revival of interest in the types used in renaissance printing. My choice is based on the fact that is one of the first fonts authorised by UK publisher Penguin under Jan Tschichold – the head of typography (imagine that!). It is based on a design cut by Francesco Griffo for printer Aldus Manutius around 1495, and named for his first publication with it, a 1496 edition of writing by the poet and cleric Pietro Bembo. Font of the Day: Bembo is a 1929 old-style serif typeface.
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