Best Bodoni? (Or other moderns?)

[Victor Caston]

Two questions:

1. What are members' favorite versions of Bodoni (or other modern typefaces, such as Walbaum)?

2. What are the best uses of modern faces? Can any be successfully (interestingly, attractively) used for text? (Concrete examples welcome!)

I ask this because in reading books on typography, I have felt sympathetic to (what appears to be) the widespread reaction against modern faces, above all as too dazzling in color and not well suited to extended reading.

But I feel that I have adopted this too much as a knee-jerk reaction and am wondering what good uses of modern faces there are. And surely there are.

Two things have led me to reconsider my attitude.

The first was the observation that the look (and readability) of modern faces depends very much on how they're printed and on what paper. I can't remember where I read it, but I think Bodoni himself was very particular about the type of paper. But you can see the effect very clearly in the different samples of paper in H. Spencer's book on business typography. It also seems to me that it must matter whether one is using letter press or offset or laser or whatever. (I'd wager that an impressed modern looks much better than one that is offset.)

The second thing that led me to reconsider was seeing in Tschichold's Asymmetric Typography that, in spite of his abhorrence of 19th century types generally, he thinks a printer setting up shop should consider both Scotch Roman and Walbaum as "classical" type faces in his range of type faces. And if Tschichold in his revolutionary phase could stand them, maybe I ought to think about them again.

Victor

[Don McCahill]

I have seen Bodoni used effectively for display work, in larger sizes. I think it would be annoying in a textbook, however (for body text).

[Ramón G Castañeda]

Bodoni needs very generous leading to breathe properly. That alone would make its use in long text passages very problematic.

I like both Bauer Bodoni and Morris Fuller Benton‘s ATF Bodoni, but if I were compelled to use it as a text face, Bauer Bodoni would have the edge.

Ramón

[Thomas Phinney]

I like the ITC Bodoni best as a Bodoni revival. The presence of different optical size masters is critical in a modern typeface such as Bodoni. Too bad we don't have it in our library.

However, I think the all-around best rendition of the modern aesthetic (albeit with humanist touches) is Robert Slimbach's Kepler. It is also particularly notable for the range of weight, width, optical sizes, and additional typographic goodies included.

<http://www.adobe.com/type/browser/browser_K.jhtml>

Regards,

T

Thomas Phinney
Fonts Program Mgr.
Adobe Systems

[Victor Caston]

I had wondered about the ITC family, at least as the most authentic. (Didn't Sumner Stone work on that, from the originals in the Bodoni museum? I remembered something like that.)

Can you elaborate, Thomas, on why a modern face especially benefits from optical sizes? (I'm imagining that the contrasts might shift significantly at different sizes, but perhaps the hairline serifs too.)

I also wondered about Berthold Bodoni Book, and whether it really did work as a text face.

Victor

[Thomas Phinney]

Yes, Sumner was one of the principals of the team that made ITC Bodoni. They did research at the Bodoni Museum in Parma, Italy, and at RIT's Cary Library in Rochester, NY (the Cary is unusual in North America for having two copies of Bodoni's Manuale Tipografico).

If you ever have a chance to look at a copy of the Manuale, take it! it is quite striking how elegant and refined his typefaces are, in comparison to most of the "Bodoni" fonts people have made since.

As for why optical size variants are so important for "modern" designs such as Bodoni, it does indeed have to do with contrast and the hairlines, both in serifs and in other horizontal parts of the letter.

I'll simplify it a bit, and say that for legibility, there is a physical constant for how thin you want those thin bits to be when the letter is printed. However, digital fonts are made as if the physical letters were all scaled to the same virtual size. So the ideal thickness of the hairlines and skinny horizontal bits for a 6 point Bodoni font are double what they are for a 12 point Bodoni, and those in turn are several times what you'd want for a 72 point Bodoni. (Not six times, since this isn't linear the way you might expect. And for other sorts of fonts the factor between 12 and 72 might be as little as 2x.)

If you download the readme PDF for an Adobe family that has optical size variants, you can see optical size stuff presented a little more visually.

<http://www.adobe.com/type/browser/pdfs/readmes/MinionProReadme.pdf>

(For some reason the Kepler Readme isn't up on the web site. This is an error which should be corrected soon.)

Regards,

T

[Geert_D...@adobeforums.com]

Several of Adobe's OpenType fonts include four optical size variations, meaning that not all Adobe OpenType fonts have the advantage of optical size variations. Is there a list or any other way to see which Adobe OpenType Fonts have different optical size variations? Is this an Adobe only OpenType feature or are there other foundries creating OpenType fonts with comparable optical size variations? If so, which? And why not make all OpenType fonts equipped with optical size variatons? And how do MM fonts compare to the OpenType fonts with optical size variations?

[Dominic...@adobeforums.com]

I'm sure Thomas will correct me if I'm wrong, but I get the impression that, at least to begin with, the OT fonts with optical masters are simply those fonts that were previously MM fonts with an optical axis (eg, Minion, Jenson). As far as I'm concerned, I still prefer the flexibility of MM fonts, but OT opticals beat just standard single-master OT or Type 1 fonts.

Others who do this include Hoefler type foundry, and again at least some of these fonts were originally destined to be MM fonts. Their Didot has seven masters, but Requiem and Hoefler are more modest.

As well, some fonts have long come with display (or titling) versions (eg, Linotype Didot) or caption versions (Times Ten).

[Thomas_...@adobeforums.com]

Dominic's right.

The Adobe font packages that include a full range of optical size variants can be identified by the word "Opticals" in the package name. You can also go straight to the opticals page:
<http://www.adobe.com/type/browser/C/C_opticals.jhtml>

Cheers,

T