TYPE DESIGN INFORMATION PAGE last updated on Wed Nov 20 11:41:09 EST 2024

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ABOUT

Aldus Manutius

Late 15-th century Venetian scholar and printer, b. 1449, Bassiano, d. 1515, Venice. He founded the Aldine Press in 1495. His typefaces were all designed and cut by the brilliant Francesco Griffo, a punchcutter who created the first roman type cut from study of classical Roman capitals. Bembo, Cloister Italic and Poliphilus [aka Aldus Manutius' Roman] can be traced back to him. Example of his Italian Antiqua, 1499.

Kevin Steele explains in 1996: Some sources cite the publication of Cardinal Bembo's De Aetna as 1493 or 1495. And in fact, the design continued to evolve until the 1499 publishing of the spectacular Hypnerotomachia Poliphili. Let's not split hairs. Let's celebrate 500 years of Bembo! In the mid fifteenth century printing quickly spread to Italy from Germany, and by the 1470's Venice had became the center of the printing industry, home to over 100 printing companies. Pioneers such as Erhard Ratdolt and Nicolas Jenson had already begun working on adapting the roman alphabet for metal type by the time Aldus Manutius established his press in 1494, with the intention of publishing all the Greek classics. Aldus Manutius (1450-1515) was a printer, entrepreneur, a great ego, and publisher of over 1200 titles. Among the many contributions of Aldus was the popularization of small, portable books. His expensive beautiful books were far from today's paperbacks, mind you. One of the many great talents working for Aldus was Francesco Griffo, a gifted type designer. Griffo created many innovative type designs that are still admired for their beauty and readability. Their collaboration broke up over a copyright dispute, primarily over the ownership of the cursive type typeface that Griffo developed under the direction of Aldus. Although Aldus even had a papal decree to protect this style of alphabet, it was as difficult then as it is now to protect a typeface design. The alphabet was widely copied, and the style is known as italic, after its country of origin.

Digital typefaces derived from his work: 1501 Manutius (2001) by Klaus-Peter Schäffel.

Selection of fonts based on Manutius's work.

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INTERNAL LINKS
History of type ⦿ Type designers ⦿ Type designers ⦿ Type design in Italy ⦿ Garalde or Garamond typefaces ⦿ Greek/Coptic ⦿ Bembo ⦿