The son of a
printer, Giambattista Bodoni was born on February 16, 1740
in Saluzzo, Italy. At the age of 18, he left home for
a printing apprenticeship to the Vatican. Bodoni learned
his trade well and in 1768 he was given the position of Director
of the Stamperia Reale, the Royal press for the Duke of Parma, where
he remained the rest of his life.
While in the
service of the Duke, he produced manuscripts in Italian, Greek and
Latin and printed materials for court use. In the beginning
his typefaces were all decorative in the french style of Fournier
le jeune, but by 1787 he was influenced by more of the "modern"
typefaces and his manuscripts became devoid of decoration and he
created his own type faces. These new typestyles were
influenced by the french printer Didot. In 1790 the Bodoni
typeface was created.
His most noted
accomplishments were his lavishly beautiful collectable books, and
most importantly in 1788 he created the "Manuale Tipografico"(The
Inventory of types). This was a collection of 291 roman
and italic typefaces along with samples of Greek, Russian and other
types. Bodoni's passion was type design. Bodoni said,"Philosophy
and the best literature impel a cultured taste more and more toward
simplicity and restriction to essentials and toward a preference
over all others for the beauty which has no borrowed plumes... the
type is the one thing which is inevitably necessary, and to it all
else is subserviant". Giambattista Bodoni died on
November 29, 1813 in Parma, Italy.
click
here for the Bodoni font family
Examples of Bodini's
works
Sources:
Encyclopedia
Britannica: biography on Giambattista Bodoni
Typographic
Exemplars from the RIT Library for Giambattista Bodoni
Graphion:
Giambattista Bodoni (1740-1813)
Biography
and information on Giambattista Bodoni from Parma, Italy
Giambattista
Bodoni Manuale Tipografico
Commentary by David Pankow
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