Celebrated Parisian designer (b. Paris 1764, d. Mesnic-sur-l'Estrée, 1836), son of the printer François Ambroise Didot, and grandchild of the Didot printing business founder, François Didot. Designer of a sloped script face called Anglaise (1809). He became the director of the Imprimerie Impériale type foundry in 1812. Along with Giambattista Bodoni of Italy, Firmin Didot is credited with establishing the use of the Modern classification of typefaces. The types that Didot used are characterized by extreme stroke contrast, by the use of straight hairline serifs and by the vertical stress of the letters. Pic.

Regarding digitizations of his typefaces: Linotype Didot has 12 weights, and was digitized in 1991 by the Linotype crew and Adrian Frutiger. Hoefler type foundry makes a 42-weight Didot HTF, which I believe is superior to the Linotype version. And LetterPerfect has made a Didot LP family. His Initiales Grecques (ca. 1800) was digitized by ARTypes in 2007: see here. Biography by Nicholas Fabian. Linotype link. FontShop link. MyFonts link. Wikipedia.

EXTERNAL LINKS
Firmin Didot
 [Designer info]
Google search page

INTERNAL LINKS
Type designers ⦿ Type designers ⦿ History of type ⦿ Type design in France ⦿ Modern style [Bodoni, Didot, Walbaum, Thorowgood, Computer Modern, etc.] ⦿

Luc Devroye ⦿ School of Computer Science ⦿ McGill University Montreal, Canada H3A 2K6 ⦿ lucdevroye@gmail.com ⦿ http://luc.devroye.org ⦿ http://luc.devroye.org/fonts.html