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  La tipografia e l’estetica del libro

  € 16,00

  Not everyone is aware of the fact that Mallarmé, the most aristocratic of the Symbolist poets, was also a refined connoisseur of typography, very attentive to all material aspects concerning printing and books. The most emblematic text of this peculiar interest is the poem Coup de dés, but in the formal elaboration of his entire poetic oeuvre, the visual relationship between the printed word and the blank page, the prominence of type and ink on the blank sheet, as well as the incidence of every concrete detail on the aesthetics of the text, is essential.

  This book collects for the first time in an Italian edition the reflections, or rather the ‘digressions’ of Mallarmé’s ‘Book form’ (to be written with a capital letter, as the materialisation of the ‘great Work’: of a ‘total’ work), published by the poet under the title The Book, a Spiritual Instrument. Prose of great strength and suggestion, accompanied by three essays dedicated to how this specific interest of Mallarmé’s is expressed in his work and what repercussions it had in the subsequent avant-gardes.

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  Published by Ronzani Editore
  Edited by Giuseppe Càntele
  Translations by Marco Cavalli

  176 pages
  Paperback
  Isbn 978-88-87007-97-8

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  Come nasce un libro

  € 22,00

  Ninety years after the first and only edition, Ronzani reproposes this small classic of typography in facsimile, which also allows us to visually appreciate the didactic vocation of the book.

  In Come nasce un libro (How a book is born) (1931) Raffaello Bertieri recounts in a flat manner, with didactic precision and a wealth of examples, all the phases of book production, from the typesetting of the texts to the actual printing and binding, showing in detail how interdependent the various phases are, and how accuracy and precision are essential to the realisation of the work. After decades of profound changes, concerning not only technology, publishing and graphics, but also the whole cultural and social phenomena behind book production, these pages – an expression of Bertieri’s ‘functionalist’ approach to graphic design – maintain their interest intact, both as a first-rate document on the state of the book art in the 1920s and 1930s, and for the topicality of the lessons and considerations on the qualities a book must have in order to satisfy, first and foremost, the reader’s needs.

  Ninety years after the first and only edition, Ronzani reproposes this small classic of typography in facsimile, which also allows us to visually appreciate the book’s didactic vocation.

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  Published by Ronzani Editore
  256 pages
  Paperback
  Isbn 978-88-94911-60-2

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  Dalla calligrafia alla fotocomposizione

  € 68,00

  The Printing Office catalogue is enriched by an extraordinary new title, which has now become a cult for typography enthusiasts.

  If fonts such as Optima, Palatino, Melior exist in the graphics industry today, we owe it to their creator, Hermann Zapf. This first book by Zapf, published in Italy by Edizioni Valdonega in 1991 – with a preface by Bruno Munari – aims to introduce a character known worldwide for his fonts and his extraordinary skills in the field of calligraphy and publishing graphics.

  Over 300 illustrations are distributed in the volume, which is divided into two parts. The first consists of 144 pages of plates, printed in various colour scales, which significantly represent Zapf’s work. In the second, numerous biographical texts are used to trace the various stages of his studies on calligraphy and type design, and to describe his most recent research in the field of digitalisation.

  The volume is aimed at enthusiasts of typography, lettering and calligraphy.

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  Published by Edizioni Valdonega
  Texts by diy Hermann Zapf
  Preface by Bruno Munari

  20.5 × 30 cm
  280 pages
  Over 300 illustrations
  Canvas board with dust jacket and slipcase
  Italian
  Isbn 88-8503-20-2

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  A new method of analysing printed type: the case of 15th-century Venetian romans

  Riccardo Olocco

  € 65,00

  This research introduces and discusses a new method of analysing printed typefaces and applies it to 15th-century Venetian romans. It aims to revise and improve the traditional methods of type analysis used in bibliographic research. It is based on photographic enlargements of printed types, image editing and detailed analysis of letterforms. Comparisons of printers’ typeforms are made by superimposing images – a practice that clearly highlights differences and similarities between letters.

  Drawing on printed material preserved in Italian and British libraries, this new method is applied to four important samples of early Venetian type design, including Nicolas Jenson’s Roman, which can safely be considered the prototype of all Roman types to date. The historical scope of the research covers the last three decades of the 15th century and focuses on the presses operating in Venice and the Venetian territories. Also taken into consideration are presses in the rest of Italy and throughout Europe that employed the Venetian types discussed here, both before and after 1500.

  Olocco’s work documents the trade in typographic material (cast and matrix typefaces) and the widespread use of certain types – areas that historians have generally ignored for this early period. It also documents the punchcutters’ ability to imitate existing types so well made that it can be very difficult to distinguish them from their original models – a practice that has not been studied previously.

  This research is supported by an extensive apparatus of images of letterforms shown at different magnification sizes. It is intended to provide new insights into the early development of Roman types and to aid bibliographical research by providing more in-depth information on the typefaces in use.

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  Text and book design by Riccardo Olocco

  29.7 × 22 cm
  454 pages
  English

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