o one is obliged to share this elitist conception of typography. Gianbattista Bodoni (1740-1813), the most famous printer of his time, « king of printers and printer of kings », admired by the European princes for the solemnity of his books and by his alter ego for the elegance of his typefaces, is a keyman in the historical renewal of the « beautiful typography ».

He was concerned not only with designing and making letters, but also with line layout, page harmony in terms of the choice and the size of face, the leading, the interplay of line lenght, spacing and column width. Bodoni brought printing back to Euclidean basics, where the interplay of black and white and the generous use of white space plays a major role. He recalled us if it is true that the book has a utilitarian function, it is also a masterpiece in itself.

This point said, it must be admitted that most of the readers and printed documents producers are ignorant of the typographic basics. The word typography refers to the art or skill of designing communication by means of the printed word. Because technology is changing rapidly with development of computer system, everyone working on a Mac or a PC has to practice the art of typography. With more or less talent…

The goal of this site is to present the principles of typography in a pedagogical way. It completes the typographic specimen: abc typography.