Francesco Griffo (also Francesco da Bologna) born 1450, died 1518 in Bologna, Italy type founder, punch cutter, type designer. Trained as a punch cutter and type founder in Bologna.
1495: works with Aldus Manutius, for whom he cuts Greek alphabets and in 1501 an italic typeface for a Virgil edition. 1496: cuts the alphabet for Pietro Bembos "De Aetna", . 1502: parts company with Aldus Manutius. 1503: cuts an italic typeface for the printer Gershom Soncino in Fano. 1516: opens his own [...]
The origins of Bembo font goes back to one of the most famous printers of the Renaissance, Aldus Manutius. In 1496 he used a new weight of a roman face, formed by Francesco Griffo da Bologna, to print the short piece 'De Aetna', by Pietro Bembo. This very typeface would eventually be of such importance that the development of print typefaces is unthinkable without it.
The first developmental phase was defined by the influence of the classic Roman forms, indentifiable by the slight slant of the [...]
The origins of Bembo font goes back to one of the most famous printers of the Renaissance, Aldus Manutius. In 1496 he used a new weight of a roman face, formed by Francesco Griffo da Bologna, to print the short piece 'De Aetna', by Pietro Bembo. This very typeface would eventually be of such importance that the development of print typefaces is unthinkable without it.
The first developmental phase was defined by the influence of the classic Roman forms, indentifiable by the slight slant of the [...]
The origins of Bembo go back to one of the most famous printers of the Italian Renaissance, Aldus Manutius. In 1496, he used a new roman typeface to print the book de Aetna, a travelogue by the popular writer Pietro Bembo. This type was designed by Francesco Griffo, a prolific punchcutter who was one of the first to depart from the heavier pen-drawn look of humanist calligraphy to develop the more stylized look we associate with roman types today. In 1929, Stanley Morison and the design staff at the Monotype Corporation used Griffo's roman as the model for a revival type design named Bembo. They made a number of changes to the fifteenth-century letters to make the font more adaptable to machine composition. The italic is based on letters cut by the Renaissance scribe Giovanni Tagliente. Because of their quiet presence and graceful stability, the lighter weights of Bembo
