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TUGboat, Volume 37 (2016), No. 2 229
Book review: Palatino: The natural history of atypeface by
Robert Bringhurst
Boris Veytsman
Robert Bringhurst, Palatino: The natural history of atypeface.
David R. Godine, Publisher; Boston, 2016,296pp, ill. US$65.00. ISBN
978-1-56792-572-2.
The participants of TUG2016 in Toronto had therare treat of
attending lectures by two prominentcontemporary typographers,
Robert Bringhurst andChuck Bigelow. The Elements of Typographic
Style byBringhurst is considered one of the most
influentialtreatises on book design; Hermann Zapf wished “tosee
this book become the Typographers’ Bible”.
Interestingly enough, both Bringhurst and Big-elow discussed
major typeface designs. The lattertold the story of Lucida by
Bigelow and Holmes,while the former discussed the Palatino family
byHermann Zapf. Bringhurst’s lecture could be con-sidered a
presentation of his book Palatino, pub-lished in a limited (order
now) trade edition thisfall by David R. Godine.
The name Hermann Zapf strikes many chordsin the TEX community.
He collaborated with DEK,and was until his death an honorary member
of theTUG board, the Wizard of Fonts. Thus while a bookby a great
typographer about a great font designeris a gift to any
bibliophile, this book has a specialmeaning for our community.
The book discusses the long evolution of thePalatino family by
Zapf. It lists all known variantsfrom No. 1, Palatino text Roman
trial cutting(1949) to No. 112, Aldus Nova bold italic, re-leased
in True Type and Open Type in 2005 (theclassification and
enumeration are by Bringhurst).Hermann Zapf was notable for his
eager embraceand understanding of new technologies, and Pala-tino
fonts were made for many different typesettingsystems: letterpress,
Linotype, phototypesettingand many digital formats. TEX users are
quite fa-miliar with this font family. The printed version ofthis
review is typeset in Adobe Palatino with LATEXpackage mathpazo
(using sc and osf options for realSmall Caps and old style figures
in text). This fontremains one of the most elegant and noble fonts
inmodern digital typography.
The technological changes require changes inthe fonts
themselves: the color and feel of copyproduced by different means
are quite different.The subtle changes in each redesign of
Palatinoshow the care and skill of the great master Zapf.The font
family includes Cyrillic and Greek lettersas well as accented Latin
ones, titling fonts, andmany other typographic niceties.
The world of font design, even when we talkabout one (admittedly
large) family, is complex. Ajourney into this world requires a wise
guide, gen-erous to share his knowledge and experience withthe
reader. Robert Bringhurst is, without a doubt,such a guide. His
book fortunately avoids the trapof becoming a catalog of font
designs, interestingonly to a few connoisseurs. Instead, the lucid
ex-planations of the reasons behind the evolution ofthe design, the
challenges and Zapf’s ingenuity inmeeting them, make reading the
book a wonderfulexperience. For example, he devotes several pagesto
study of just one character, the humble asterisk(∗), and uncovers
the beauty behind this modesttypographic device.
Besides being a typographer, Robert Bringhurstis a renowned
poet, and this shows in the book. Forexample, it is clearly seen in
the description of thedifference between the original Palatino and
thelater variation Aldus:
Aldus is not just narrower than Palatino, italso has a slightly
lighter stroke and smaller
Book review: Palatino: The natural history of a typeface by
Robert Bringhurst
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230 TUGboat, Volume 37 (2016), No. 2
x-height with taller ascenders. The transitionfrom thick to thin
(or from pull stroke toedge stroke), which in Palatino often havea
slightly angular articulation, are more dis-tinctly and
consistently angular in Aldus.This gives a page of Aldus greater
crisp-ness — some would say coldness — than apage of Palatino. If
Palatino is like a big,round, fully flavored red wine, then Aldusis
like a flinty, dry white — equally deepbut more narrow in flavor,
and best servedchilled, to keep the flavors closely focused.The
proportions of the letters, with theirmodest eye and tall
ascenders, emphasizetheir Italian humanist heritage, yet the hintof
angularity in the round forms also alludes,ever so subtly, to the
blackletter tradition.This allusion is reinforced by the shapes
ofAldus apostrophe and quotation marks: theyare long, sloped,
tapered but uncurved —something rarely found in roman and italicbut
altogether typical of fraktur.
The same poetic eye shows in the best description ofthe
difference between serifed and sans serif fonts Iever read:
Serifs — those little entry and exit strokesthrough which the
writing hand and thereading eye like to find their way into andout
of a letterform — are also a means bywhich letters tie themselves
into a line: aform of graphic social bonding. They are asold as the
letters themselves; but sanserifletters — the socially disengaged —
are noyounger.
Several good metaphors are used throughoutthe book, illuminating
its main themes. Bringhurstcompares the fonts to classic musical
instrumentslike cellos and pianos. This metaphor becomes
espe-cially apt when he notes that it is difficult to judgesome
variants of Palatino because they were notactually used — as we
cannot judge an instrumentwhich was never played by a skilled
musician.
Another important comparison is between ty-pography and
architecture. Bringhurst spends sometime discussing entasis: a
slight convexity or con-cavity of lines, in architecture and font
design. Hisjuxtaposition of the profile of classic columns andthe
elegant curves of the uppercase Roman “I” inPalatino is quite
enlightening.
Bringhurst further compares classification offonts to botany,
where a naturalist must decidewhich plants are close relatives,
which plants be-long to different species and which are
subspecies
Figure 1: Zapf’s drawings for Linofilm PalatinoBold Italic f
of the same kind. This is actually a fundamentalmetaphor for the
book: not for nothing does thelatter have the ambitious subtitle
The natural historyof a typeface. Bringhurst clearly sees his work
as akinto the work of Linnaeus and Cuvier and makes usrecall the
times when the lines between a scientist,an artist and a poet were
somewhat blurred.
As a poet, Bringhurst does not just reveal pro-found truths in
nature and art. His eye sometimesturns to society, and again his
observations aredeep and revealing. For example, he discusses
thechanges made by Zapf to the fonts when the Stem-pel foundry
prepared variants for sale in NorthAmerica in the 1950s. To make
the fonts closer to“the limits of American typographical taste”,
Zapfrevised nine letters and recut two ligatures, mak-ing the
result “tamed to suit the goût américain.”Bringhurst discussed
the changes, and then surpris-ingly notes the difference between
the copy used todemonstrate the fonts:
The European specimens are full of quota-tions from Goethe and
Shakespeare, sam-ple title pages for books by Bertrand Russelland
George Bernard Shaw, sample postersfor art exhibitions, menus for
five- and six-course meals, business cards for barristersand
physicians, and snippets of typographichistory. The American
materials demon-strate instead how to use some of the world’smost
elegant printing types to say such thingsas “Best 100-watt bulb
ever” and “Buy wash-and-wear! Not wash-and-beware!”
The book is very well illustrated. Font sam-ples, drawings,
photographs help the author to con-vey his thoughts clearly and
convincingly (see, for
Boris Veytsman
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TUGboat, Volume 37 (2016), No. 2 231
Figure 2: Kerning and ligatures in metal
Figure 3: A spread from the book
example, Figure 1, showing the pages describingthe making of
Linofilm Palatino Bold Italic f ).Many illustrations will warm the
heart of a ty-pophile; for example, the one in Figure 2 shows
howkerning and ligatures were done in metal: sorts areshaved on the
sides to effect kerning and there areseparate sorts for ligature
glyphs.
The book was designed by Robert Bringhursthimself, and the
design is daring and beautiful. Ituses margins for a wonderful
variety of illustrations;full page and part-page ones subtly
interplay, asshown in Figure 3. The main text is typeset in
AldusBuchschrift and Palatino Sans. The book includesletterpress
pages printed by the well regarded bookdesigner and artist Jerry
Kelly (Figure 4).
The publisher of the book, David R. Godine,is also well known
among bibliophiles. We havereviewed several books from his
catalogue in thesepages, and an article about his work appeared
Figure 4: An example of letterpress pages
in a recent issue (David Walden, Note on the publisherof the
Bodoni book: David R. Godine, TUGboat 37:1,pp. 97–98, 2016,
http://tug.org/TUGboat/tb37-1/tb115walden.pdf). The book is
beautifully printedand bound.
Of course, even the best book ever printedcould be made better.
I missed two features inthis book, one minor, one more important.
First,the list of fonts and font variants in the end of thisbook
would be more useful if accompanied by thepage numbers where the
font is discussed or shown.Second, if a font is a musical
instrument, then a dis-cussion of it is not complete without a
sketch ofmusicians who played it and the pieces where itshone
brightest. While it would be impossible tolist all books and
typesetters working with Pala-tino (which is more evidence of the
greatness ofZapf’s creation), it could be interesting and usefulto
mention at least some notable publications thatinvolved
Palatino.
Still, these gripes are about the things that arenot in the
book. The things that are there, in myopinion, are more than
sufficient to justify its pricefor any typophile, bibliophile or
anyone interestedin the history and art of making elegant fonts
&beautiful books.
� Boris VeytsmanSystems Biology School and
Computational MaterialsScience Center, MS 6A2,
George Mason University,Fairfax, VA 22030borisv (at) lk dot
net
http://borisv.lk.net
Book review: Palatino: The natural history of a typeface by
Robert Bringhurst
http://tug.org/TUGboat/tb37-1/tb115walden.pdfhttp://tug.org/TUGboat/tb37-1/tb115walden.pdf