Garamont, Granjon, and the redesign of italics
Options

James Puckett
Posts: 2,019
Was there more to Garamont and Granjon’s redesign of italic type than making them harmonize with their roman types? I’m trying to understand if their shift away from the more calligraphic types of Griffo, Arrighi, and Colines was related to some changes in French hands or if they were just being practical.
0
Comments
-
A very good question, James. I can't claim to have any particular expertise in this, but I think it's quite clear that, while early Italian italics were imitative of contemporary writing masters, the French type cutters of the later 16th century were creating something intrinsically typographic, no longer based on handwriting, though very likely based on the high style of contemporary cartographers of the Low Countries, notably Jacob van Deventer and Gerard Mercator.
Hendrik Vervliet's "Palaeotypography of the French Renaissance" covers this ground admirably.1
Categories
- All Categories
- 46 Introductions
- 3.8K Typeface Design
- 478 Type Design Critiques
- 556 Type Design Software
- 1.1K Type Design Technique & Theory
- 644 Type Business
- 833 Font Technology
- 29 Punchcutting
- 510 Typography
- 120 Type Education
- 315 Type History
- 75 Type Resources
- 109 Lettering and Calligraphy
- 30 Lettering Critiques
- 79 Lettering Technique & Theory
- 534 Announcements
- 86 Events
- 110 Job Postings
- 167 Type Releases
- 170 Miscellaneous News
- 274 About TypeDrawers
- 53 TypeDrawers Announcements
- 119 Suggestions and Bug Reports