TUGboat, Volume ), No. Book review: Palatino: The …...The Elements of Typographic Style by Bringhurst is considered one of the most influential treatises on book design; Hermann

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

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 Palatino

Bold 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 gout americain.”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

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 22030

borisv (at) lk dot net

http://borisv.lk.net

Book review: Palatino: The natural history of a typeface by Robert Bringhurst