wherefore art thou bembo...?

Dean Allen writes: “In its metal version, Bembo is my favourite thing to read; with acknowledged subjectivity, it is the most beautiful and readable text face of all.” I agree with Mr Allen; I also agree with his opinion on the digital incarnation, which is indeed thin, wispy, and squat.

We can apparently blame the 8 point size in metal, for it served as the master from which the digital version was designed. Walter Tracy, in Letters of Credit, writes (pp54–55): “When photo-composition became a reality in the 1950’s the manufacturers of typesetting machines had to make an important decision: whether or not to carry forward into the new system the principle of optical compensation, when the plain and tempting fact was that the photographic part of the system was capable of producing a considerable range of type sizes from just one font. To abandon the principle altogether was to risk forfeiting a substantial part of a reputation for typographic quality.” He continues, “Some [manufacturers] apparently thought that increasing the x-height of the faces would be an acceptable alternative. It is not....The Bembo face, an admirable example of optical compensation by the Monotype drawing office, demonstrates the point.” Tracy here refers to a figure in which the metal version of Bembo at 24, 12, 8, and 6 pt is compared to a film version derived from the 8 pt – essentially identical to digital Bembo.

While Edward Tufte has admirably continued to use metal Bembo, what recourse is there for those of us who must work in the digital realm? One option is to use Poliphilus, a typeface constructed from tracings of letters in the Dream of Poliphilo. It has not become obsolete as quickly as Stanley Morison predicted (see A Tally of Types, pp46–56), but its faithfulness to the original impressions limits its use.

Another alternative may be found in Jack Yan’s Aetna. In fact, this face comes as close as anything I’ve seen to metal Bembo. In the upper half of this figure, metal Bembo and JY Aetna are shown first and second, respectively, while in the lower half, the upper and lower case letters, text figures, and ligatures are displayed at 24 pt in Aetna Roman. This face cannot be considered a digital incarnation of metal Bembo at 12 or 24 pt – there are too many subtle deviations. And not so subtle is the lower case a, in which the Aetna glyph appears to lack the modulation of stroke seen in the metal analogue, as well as in several of the other Aetna glyphs. But you can mourn the lack of a digital Bembo based on its 12 pt metal antecedent, or you can compromise. And if you’re willing to compromise, Jack Yan’s Aetna is perhaps your best bet.

05-July 2002