I'm working out some preliminary specs before drawing:

Cap height: 700
X-height: 412
Descenders: 275
Ascent height: 820

I'm thinking the capital thick strokes will be 90.

I'm trying to take an average measurement on many different impressions of each letter to get these specs.

Matthew,

I think that it could be a very good idea.
For better measurement and details, you may try read the book from
Peter Burnhill, Type Spaces, in-house norms in the typography of Aldus Manutius, Hyphen Press

I thank you for your comments, Garry.

I agree that it is not possible to perfectly replicate Aldine forms using printed samples. And definitely not by averaging with software, because you're averaging a source form that is not accurate.

My version would be more inspiration than revival in the end. I plan on using the samples I have as a sort of framework to base my own original forms on.

This sounds like a great project!

In your last sample above, I think that you should revisit the angle of the strokes of the letters. They seem to be more modern (Bodoni-esque… I know, that is over doing it, but follow along…) than old-style.

For example, the bowl of the P should begin to curve downward before it does in your sample. And the top of the O (12 o'clock) should be much thicker, as should 1 o'clock, while your 10 o'clock should be thinner. In other words, you need to rotate the angle of the stress a bit to the left around the "circle" as a whole (of course an O is not a circle, but I don't know what else to call it).

Also, your serifs appear to be flat-bottomed. I think they should curve, somehow.

I love your L. But could the top serifs, or at least the top right serif, be chunkier?

The pen, the pen! You must remember the pen! (Insert best-possible Yoda voice impression here…)

Here's a PDF of some updates:

http://www.madtype.net/pdf/poliphili_pdf_1.pdf (77kb)

Changes made include adding variation in the serifs as well as making the serifs slightly curved. I also fixed the contrast in the O to be more oldstyle.

Gerald,

I'm not sure I'm fully understanding your question...

I have been studying the images I found of the book closely.
Once I find a few good examples of a letter, I compare them and work out the proportions. There is definitely some guessing and some of my own flavor going into the design. It helps me a lot to have a model to begin with.

To answer your questions: Yes, and yes.

> All of the Xs are backwards.

How very interesting. Could Griffo have so consciously been going against so-called "ductal logic"? That would be awesome, and a testament to his power as a designer.

> Could this have been a layout error or what?

Extremely unlikely to be a compositing error.
And almost as unlikely to be a casting error.

Definitely, absolutely, totally keep it. It would be such a statement. Certain people will sputter in outrage that "it's backwards", at which point the historical precedent (which happens to be the sort of thing they [also] worship) would be a dramatic and much-needed slap in the face.

hhp

An analogy to always keep in your toolbox. It isn't the separate glyphs that create the beauty of the typeface in use, it is the glyphs in conjunction with one another.

For sure, Tiffany.
Type is a machine and if any parts are broken, the whole machine is useless.

Testing is certainly in order, but there's no reason to be skeptical, simply because the conventional contrast distribution is a result of circumstance, not some Righteous Order. In type design Familiarity is routinely over-played by both conservatives and iconoclasts.

The interesting question is why would Griffo do it? The only clue, and arguably a tenuous one, I can think of is that "X" is almost never the first letter of a word, plus the tops of glyphs carry more visual weight, plus the "X" (and notably not the "x", which does maintain conventional contrast distribution) has a lateral spacing "issue". Maybe.

hhp

What is this, a two-man show?! ;-)

hhp

The Z and z commonly have reversed stress, and that works, so, to repeat, I'm not dogmatically saying the reversed X won't work, just that it is wise to test.

You might also check other examples of Griffo's and Aldus's work to check whether the reversed X in your sample is a result of a mistake in casting the type.

Haha, Hrant.

I completely understand what you guys are saying, though.

This will most likely be my most tested face yet. Since the goal here is for a readable book text, I'll be attempting to get the color and forms to all be harmonious. If anything sticks out I will change it, even if it goes against what the source materials are showing.

The flipped "X" seems just fine (although -interestingly- it looks too wide).

hhp

Griffo was hanged for the murder of his son-in-law.
A brawl he would have won, thanks to his burin. ;-)

And welcome back!

hhp

Different authors will confine themselves to different degrees of certainty.
Not many have written about how Griffo died (for reasons of decorum as
well as temporal remoteness) so I agree one shouldn't bet the house on it.
But of those sources who talk about his death I don't recall any that claim
anything besides hanging (for some in-law).

> This was his breakthrough, ever since imitated.

I think you're giving him too much credit.

> the letters retain the ‘underlying force’ of the hand written models

I believe often we see what we want to see. People see ductus in my own
work too. Middendorp even sees it in Legato, irrespective of Bloemsma's
consistent, driven and explicit anti-chirographic stance.

> to me the reversed contrast X looks like a mistake.

Which of course is to be fully expected.

But what would be interesting is how [a person like] you
would come to terms with the fact (or at least probability,
until we hear a better explanation) that Griffo did that...

hhp

> Jenson was an important precurssor

Jenson was Griffo's "father".

> a mistake in casting, so the type was upside down.

For that to be plausible the descender space needs to be equal to the ascender space, otherwise the "X" wouldn't sit on the baseline. Is this the case? Plus the matrix would have to fit in the mould upside down - although I don't know enough to claim that wasn't possible.

And what are the chances that Aldus/Griffo wouldn't have noticed/minded?

> ‘Seneca’ ... the Xs don’t seem to have reversed contrast.

Clearly a mistake in casting. ;-)

BTW, I just meant conservative.

hhp

OK then, you find less lacking in tradition than average. Same difference.

hhp

To me, you're having a knee-jerk reaction to being called something you
essentially are but don't want to call yourself. Terminological differences
are fine; hiding behind them is not.

hhp

Minor point: more often brass than copper, as far as I know.

Of course mistakes happen, but then the ink hits the paper and it shows up, right? So is your position that Aldus and Griffo didn't notice the mistake, or didn't care enough to fix it?

> it was often done by someone other than the punch maker.

Typically the typefounding tasks were split up among different people in the case of large operations. I suspect in the case of the Aldine press Griffo did as much as possible; he most probably was the one striking the punches onto the matrix material, and then why not go ahead and prep the matrix for casting? I can however see the actual casting done by somebody else, for reasons of risk (of burning) and skill-set difference.

Also, they must have had a way of marking orientation; think of the risk of ending up with an upside-down "o" for example. Admittedly, even with such a marking the matrix could possibly have been placed upside down in the mould; but have you done the ascender/descender-space test I mentioned?

hhp

Wait a second: when you rotate an "X" 180 degrees the contrast distribution doesn't change! The only way to get that "X" (outside of a horizontal flip in Photoshop, which I suspect Griffo didn't use...) is to cut the punch that way.

hhp

Why do you (Matt first) see the Xs "backwards"?
The modulation in all the letters (quite mild), the roughness of them, the small letter size, to my eyes they do not seem to set an entirely systematic approach on how and where "apply weight". I don't think when Griffo worked worried about the result in such a way like most people seem to do now. I think he tried to make the whole work the most functional and aesthetically satisfying, and it was enough good.

Hi Matthew,
This is something crying out to be done; I pray you finish it.

I wanted to do pretty much what you are doing at Reading, but I had to quit through illness; I'm sad not to have anything to show for the months spent researching, thinking and working on a variety of averaging procedures, which took me a long way beyond the stuff Bill has kindly pointed you to. Luckily, it seems I you can do the work for me :-)

The tone of what follows is, just for brevity's sake, terribly hectoring; take it with an implied "but if you want to go another way by all means do".

Gerald is right; but if not a set of fonts you can revive single pages of roman and of italic. Nonetheless your interpretation of what you see needs a thorough knowledge of the mature Griffo's work, in the earliest printings from completed, coherent types. That means using the Scriptores Astronomici Veteres rather than the Hypnerotomachia, for which the type had degraded - degraded further, for the lowercase - and been rather poorly set. It means seeing the De Aetna lowercase, which is a jumble of experimental forms in a very clean state unusually well printed, and comparing it with the revised and narrowed 1499 lowercase; you should also look at the 1497(?) roman, broader, more even, more coherent and less interesting than the 1499, which exists in immaculate form well printed. For your italic, you should see and consider using elements not just, or even mostly, from the well-known 1501 italic in its infinite versions up to 1519, but also the 1503 italic for Soncino and the 1516 made for Griffo's own press, which are generally superior and respectively more beautiful and more functionally intelligent. I've come to see the titchy 1516er as a masterpiece, and it impressed Gerard Unger, who doesn't like the 1501 or 1503. For all these, you need both higher-res scans than you have for the Hypnerotomachia and actual physical books or pages in front of you. I have scans and leaves of the 1501 in its last (?) 1519 state, British Library scans and one leaf of the 1499 S.A.V., BL scans of the 1503 and the 1516, and photographs of the crappy early Jensonian roman - it's interesting to see where Griffo started from - and the 1497 roman. I will send JPEGs if you like, and in extremis could post you my own pages. Just a glance at these will show that your roman isn't very accurate, is more regular than the original, and follows norms established for new work only in the twentieth century. Again, if that's fine by you, that's fine full stop. What you've produced so far is absolutely lovely.

You can get much closer, though others will disagree, with averaging, because it retains information that the eye examining a page cannot possibly synthesize. Here is the output of averaging a page of 1503 italic, using my software (I can send it, but Raph has his own which is much less labour-intensive though perhaps - I can't be at all sure - a shade less accurate). The only processing it has had is increasing contrast to full range and giving it a white background.

Unsharp masking - which is crucial - shows clearly that there are two 'c's here (but not, for instance, two 'n's):

Now the 1499 roman, from my own page, unprocessed:

See the slight whitening on the top of 'o', or the baseline serif of 'i'?
Exaggeratedly unsharped and contrast increased for obviousness:

The different texture of, for instance, 'h' vs 'i' comes from having fewer (too few) images of 'h' being averaged.
If you extract only the interiors, you get

Is that metal? Well, since it's produced from the exaggerated version, and the 'n' doesn't clearly join, it must be a pixel or two skinnier than the metal; but it's surprisingly clean for a type often thought of as very rough.

Hi Griffo fans!

very interesting work and discussion in progress. I am impressed as I usally am by the expert knowledge that one finds in this forum. Although the fun is reduced a lot after the pages redesign for it seems to me awfully slow now. That's kind of fun killer.
I am personally not a big Griffo fan for I always found Jensons characters more beautiful and even in the text. What was seen in Aldus printings as a progress i.e. the narrower character ruined the genious idea of having circles as basic idea for beauty. And not the circle of inner forms or else but as a whole as drawn from a pen. Jensons letters to my eyes are the more important ones to take as an example for learning about beauty. I am sorry its provoking from my side, maybe I am only frustrated of not getting response from fantastic guys as Raph, Hrant or William...

Matthew your pdf was impressing. I particularly liked the way you treated the 'h' here your face is soft and pen like as it should be. Maybe you can invest some time in the 'a' if you want. I attach a beautiful redesign from Malin and a rough sketch in Photoshop

best wishes
Stefan (Centaur fan ;-)