The origin of the ubiquitous typeface Celebrated printer and type designer Giambattista Bodoni set the standard for printing the alphabet with his Manuale Tipografico (1818). The two-volume set--published posthumously in a limited edition of 250--features 142 sets of roman and italic typefaces, a wide selection of borders, ornaments, symbols, and flowers, as well as Greek, Hebrew, Russian, Arabic, Phoenician, Armenian, Coptic, and Tibetan alphabets. Official printer for the Duke of Parma, Bodoni (1740-1813) declared that well-designed type derived its beauty from four principles: uniformity of design, sharpness and neatness, good taste, and charm. His typefaces display an unprecedented degree of technical refinement, and epitomize purity and grace. The culmination of more than four decades of work, the Manuale Tipografico represents one of history's greatest typographical achievements. The Bodoni typeface is still widely used even today, both in digital media and in print, and TASCHEN's meticulous reprint of Bodoni's masterwork gives readers a rare opportunity to explore the origins of the Bodoni typeface and learn about its creator.
Nefarious Crimes, Contested Justice also traces shifting attitudes toward illegitimacy and paternity from the late sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries. Both the Catholic Church and the Republic of Venice tried to enforce moral discipline and regulate sex and reproduction. Unmarried pregnant women were increasingly stigmatized for engaging in sex. Their claims for damages because of seduction or rape were largely unproven, and the priests and laymen that they were involved with were often acquitted of any wrongdoing. The lack of institutional support for single motherhood and the exculpation of fathers frequently led to abortion, infant abandonment, or even infant death.
This book takes a close look at the key developments, movements and practitioners of design around the world, from the beginnings of industrial manufacturing to the present day. Organized chronologically, it locates design within its technological, cultural, economic, aesthetic and theoretical contexts. From the high-minded moralists of the 19th century to the radical thinkers of modernism the book provides in-depth coverage of a subject that touches all our lives. Iconic works that mark significant steps forward or that characterize a particular era or approach - such as Marcel Breuer's Wassily chair of 1925, Eliot Noyes' corporate identity work for IBM in the 1950s and Matthew Carter's Verdana typeface, designed to be read on screen - are analysed in detail, while the text sets out the framework of ideas, intent and technology within which differing approaches to design have evolved. From the cars we drive and the products we buy to the graphics that surround us, we are all consumers of design.
This is the first English-language biography of the relentlessly ambitious and incomparably talented printer Giambattista Bodoni (1740-1813). Born to a printing family in the small foothill town of Saluzzo, he left his comfortable life to travel to Rome in 1758 where he served as an apprentice of Cardinal Spinelli at the Propaganda Fide press. There, under the sponsorship of Ruggieri, he learned all aspects of the printing craft. Even then, his real talent lay in type design and punchcutting, especially of the exotic foreign alphabets needed by the papal office to spread the faith. His life changed when at age 28 he was invited by the Duke of Parma to abandon Rome for that very French city to establish and direct the ducal press. He remained in Parma, overseeing a vast variety of printing, some of it pedestrian, but much of it glorious. And all of it making use of the typefaces he personally designed and engraved. This fine book goes beyond Bodoni's capacity as a printer; it examines the life and times in which he lived, the turbulent and always fragile political climate, the fascinating cast of characters that enlivened the ducal court, the impressive list of visitors making the pilgrimage to Parma, and the unique position Parma occupied, politically Italian but very much French in terms of taste and culture. Even the food gets its due. The illustrations—of the city, of the press, of the types and matrices—are captivating, but most striking are the pages from the books he designed, especially pages from his typographic masterpiece, the Manuale Tipografico, which displayed the myriad typefaces in multiple sizes that Bodoni had designed and engraved over a long and prolific career. Intriguing, scholarly, visually arresting, and designed and printed to Bodoni's standards, this title belongs on the shelf of any self-respecting bibliophile. It not only makes for compelling reading, it will be considered the biography of record of a great printer for years to come.
Along the undisturbed shores, especially of the Mediterranean Sea and the European North Atlantic Ocean, is a quite widespread plant called Beta maritima by botanists, or more commonly sea beet. Nothing, for the inexperienced observer's eye, distinguishes it from surrounding wild vegetation. Despite its inconspicuous and nearly invisible flowers, the plant has had and will have invaluable economic and scientific importance. Indeed, according to Linnè, it is considered "the progenitor of the beet crops possibly born from Beta maritima in some foreign country". Recent molecular research confirmed this lineage. Selection applied after domestication has created many cultivated types with different destinations. The wild plant always has been harvested and used both for food and as a medicinal herb. Sea beet crosses easily with the cultivated types. This facilitates the transmission of genetic traits lost during domestication, which selection processes aimed only at features immediately useful to farmers and consumers may have depleted. Indeed, as with several crop wild relatives, Beta maritima has been successfully used to improve cultivated beet’s genetic resistances against many diseases and pests. In fact, sugar beet cultivation currently would be impossible in many countries without the recovery of traits preserved in the wild germplasm. Dr. Enrico Biancardi graduated from Bologna University. From 1977 until 2009, he was involved in sugar beet breeding activity by the Istituto Sperimentale per le Colture Industriali (ISCI) formerly Stazione Sperimentale di Bieticoltura (Rovigo, Italy), where he released rhizomania and cercospora resistant germplasm and collected seeds of Mediterranean sea beet populations as a genetic resource for breeding and ex situ conservation. Retired since 2009, he still collaborates with several working breeders, in particular, at the USDA Agricultural Research Stations, at the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Science (CAAS), and at the Athens University (AUA). He has edited books, books chapters and authored more than 150 papers. Dr. Lee Panella is a plant breeder and geneticist with the USDA-ARS at Fort Collins, Colorado. He earned his B.S. in Crop and Soil Science from Michigan State University, an M.S. in Plant Breeding from Texas A&M University, and a Ph.D. in genetics from the University of California at Davis. His research focus is developing disease resistant germplasm using sugar beet wild relatives. He is chairman of the USDA-ARS Sugar Beet Crop Germplasm Committee and has collected and worked extensively with sea beet. Dr. Robert T. Lewellen was raised on a ranch in Eastern Oregon and obtained a B.S. in Crop Science from Oregon State University followed by a Ph.D. from Montana State University in Genetics. From 1966 to 2008 he was a research geneticist for the USDA-ARS at Salinas, California, where he studied the genetics of sugar beet and as a plant breeder, often used sea beet as a genetic source to produce many pest and disease resistant sugar beet germplasm and parental lines, while authoring more than 100 publications.
"To the layman, all printing types look the same. But for typographers, graphic artists and others of that lunatic fringe who believe that the letters we look at daily (and take entirely for granted) are of profound importance, the question of how letters are formed, what shape they assume, and how they have evolved remains one of passionate and continuing concern. Lawson explores the vast territory of types, their development and uses, their antecedents and offspring, with precision, insight, and clarity. Written for the layman but containing exhaustive research, drawings and synopses of typefaces, this book is an essential addition to the library of anyone s typographic library. It is, as Lawson states, not written for the printer convinced that there are already too many typefaces, but rather for that curious part of the population that believes the opposite; that the subtleties of refinement as applies to roman and cursive letters have yet to be fully investigated and that the production of the perfect typeface remains a goal to be as much desired by present as by future type designers. Anyone aspiring to typographic wisdom should own and treasure this classic."--Amazon description.
