Typing in Bodoni Font

Giambattista Bodoni (Wikipedia photo)

This is a test run for Bodoni typeface. I learned today upon reading the latest post on The Writer’s Almanac, that today is the birthday of the Italian printer, Giambattista Bodoni, born in 1740.  According to The Writer’s Almanac, “He came from a family of engravers, and by the time he died, he had opened his own publishing house that reprinted classical texts, and he had personally designed almost 300 typefaces. His typeface Bodoni is still available on almost any word processing program.”

According to an article in Wikipedia, “Bodoni achieved an unprecedented level of technical refinement, allowing him to faithfully reproduce letterforms with very thin ‘hairlines’, standing in sharp contrast to the thicker lines constituting the main stems of the characters. He became known for his designs of pseudoclassical typefaces and highly styled editions some considered more apt ‘to be admired for typeface and layout, not to be studied or read.’ His printing reflected an aesthetic of plain, unadorned style, combined with purity of materials.”

So today, for the first time in my recollection, I type in Bodoni font. It is in celebration of a life I previously knew nothing of, in recognition of a typeface that had eluded me heretofore, and in the free use of a typeface tool at my fingertips made possible by some amazing digital technology. It is a technology unforeseen by Giambattista Bodoni, even as he made use of and elaborated upon the new technology of his day.

He left his mark on moveable type, and his mark endures today by way of electronic technology. Here is hope that all of us may, in some small way, leave our mark, regardless of what typeface we use.

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