| Date: 1784 Designer:
Firmin Didot Foundry:
Didot founder and printer Location:
Paris, France Current equivalent:
Linotype Didot
See also:
HTF Didot, The Henriade
Technologies:
Metal (foundry)
Metal (machine)
Photosetting
Postscript
Opentype |
| Famous for:
The first Modern face in France.
Applications: Book Publishing & General Purpose Text Setting
Ubiquity:
Not widely used Category:
Modern (Didone) Roman Stress: Vertical
Serifs: Hairline | | Design history:
An elegant, vertically stressed modern face, still denoting high-class values over two centuries of history. Conceived during the French revolution, Didot's roman was a direct continuation of the rationalization of letterforms introduced by the transitional faces of Fournier, and prior to that, the Romain du Roi, cut by Phillipe Grandjean nearly a century earlier. Firmin Didot was the heir of a large and well-known French printing dynasty, who commenced work in the family firm as a teenage prodigy, cutting the superb italic for which he is best known, at the age of 19. Linotype Didot is a digital Postscript font created under the supervision of Adrian Frutiger for the Linotype Design Studio. | |  |
