itc bodoni: 16 of 20

It seems to me that digital type foundries “go live” at the rate of about one per week. There’s a nearly constant stream of emails and announcements to the effect that someone somewhere is licensing something and has opened wide the URL and turned on the SSL and it’s therefore time to choose and charge.

I wish I had a decent handle on all this, but it’s kind of like watching a troupe of jugglers who keep adding more balls and torches to the mix. (How many are they tossing up now? I dunno – a whole lot!) Indeed, I feel guilty and irresponsible as a result of my sloppy accounting; after all, I consider myself a certified voyeur in this field.

At the very least, I should duly note and append each opening to the long list; were I fully self-actualized, I’d unquestionably celebrate every one of these announcements. We in our tight little domain, whether we be players or peripherals, almost share a necessary compulsion to root for one another. Noblesse oblige, so they say.

But then, every once in a blue moon, there’s a communiqué that transcends mere noteworthiness; truly, one that plants a deep and immutable footprint in the fresh pavement of Albert Gore’s very own superhighway; in short, really big stuff. And as the bytes land in our inboxes, jaws drop and eyes pop as we join in a transcontinental chorus of “Huzzah!”

Well on Friday, my friends, we had ample reason to sing our song, for the renowned type designer Sumner Stone premiered his long-awaited online font shop, to be found at stonetypefoundry.com.

For those of you who may be unfamiliar with Mr Stone, let me tell you what I know. Oh, he’s a polymath to be sure – the rare sort of designer who blurs the distinctions between the Greek ideals of paideia and techné. He is at once an artist and a craftsman; a mathematician, calligrapher, designer, and teacher. He worked first for Hallmark, did a short stint at Autologic, then was Director of Typography for four years at Adobe. He established the Stone Type Foundry in 1990.

Stone is not, relatively speaking, the prolific sort; but his work is influential and important. Enough already; open your favorite browser and examine his wares. You’ll see:

1. Arepo – Stone’s serifed display face which is compatible with Stone Print, SFPL, or Cycles (conspicuously absent)
2. Basalt – An all-caps font used initially for signage in Stanford’s Green Library
3. ITC Stone – Archetype of the digital era’s dawn; a superfamily of serif, sans, and informal fonts; read about it in Stone’s article in Fine Print on Type (pp 136–139)
4. SFPL – A trizygotic triplet of Cycles and Stone Print, having roughly the width of the former and the x-height of the latter; developed for the San Francisco Public Library
5. Silica – Stone’s humanized slab-serif in six weights
6. Stone Print – An economical, unadorned serifed face

And finally, you’ll find a link to ITC Bodoni, a typeface that many consider to be the truest digital interpretation of any Bodoni available. In crafting this revision, which was made publicly available in 1994, Stone supervised a team that consisted of Holly Goldsmith, Jim Parkinson, and Janice Prescott Fishman. The foursome voyaged twice to Parma, Italy and used Bodoni’s posthumously published Manuale Typografico (1818) as the definitive reference (see D.B. Updike, Printing Types, 3rd ed, v2, figs 308 and 309, inter alia). They subsequently drew six-point and 72-point masters. Interestingly, the cut of ITC Bodoni that is perhaps used most often – the 12-point – was not designed directly but rather is the result of an electronic interpolation between the small and large sizes.

The ITC interpretation is exactly what we were taught a Bodoni could not be: readable. (For a monthly attestation, see How magazine.) It’s a Romantic face, but reads more like one from the Renaissance. ITC Bodoni entirely lacks the stasis – or in Dave Farey’s words, the “hard geometry” – of other digital versions, such as Bitstream’s. And in contrast to FF Bodoni Classic, which is another faithful interpretation, the ITC issue is far less showy. Its contrast between thick and thin strokes isn’t as great, its serifs aren’t as exaggerated, its x-height is less petite, and its numerals are decidedly no-nonsense; a Bodoni that’s just a bit rumpled, perhaps, or as Stone says, “grouchy.”

And so it goes; another little type foundry has made its foray into online commerce. In this case, however, there are few unknowns: the goods are top-notch and we’re all darned familiar with the proprietor. Big news indeed, then, and it’s not too late to join the chorus.

27-July 2003