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Didot is a group of
typeface A typeface (or font family) is the design of lettering that can include variations in size, weight (e.g. bold), slope (e.g. italic), width (e.g. condensed), and so on. Each of these variations of the typeface is a font. There are thousands o ...
s. The word/name Didot came from the famous French printing and type producing
Didot family Didot is the name of a family of French printers, punch-cutters and publishers. Through its achievements and advancements in printing, publishing and typography, the family has lent its name to typographic measurements developed by François-Amb ...
. The classification is known as modern, or Didone. The most famous Didot typefaces were developed in the period 1784–1811.
Firmin Didot Firmin Didot (; 14 April 176424 April 1836) was a French printer, engraver, and type founder. Early life Firmin Didot was born in Paris into a family of printers founded by François Didot, the father of 11 children. Firmin was one of his gr ...
(1764–1836) cut the letters, and cast them as type in Paris. His brother,
Pierre Didot Didot is the name of a family of French printers, punch-cutters and publishers. Through its achievements and advancements in printing, publishing and typography, the family has lent its name to typographic measurements developed by François-Amb ...
(1760–1853) used the types in printing. His edition of '' La Henriade'' by
Voltaire François-Marie Arouet (; 21 November 169430 May 1778) was a French Enlightenment writer, historian, and philosopher. Known by his '' nom de plume'' M. de Voltaire (; also ; ), he was famous for his wit, and his criticism of Christianity—e ...
in 1818 is considered his masterwork. The typeface takes inspiration from John Baskerville's experimentation with increasing stroke contrast and a more condensed armature. The Didot family's development of a high contrast typeface with an increased stress is contemporary to similar faces developed by
Giambattista Bodoni Giambattista Bodoni (, ; 16 February 1740 – 30 November 1813) was an Italian typographer, type-designer, compositor, printer, and publisher in Parma. He first took the type-designs of Pierre Simon Fournier as his exemplars, but afterwards be ...
in Italy. Didot is described as neoclassical, and evocative of the
Age of Enlightenment The Age of Enlightenment or the Enlightenment; german: Aufklärung, "Enlightenment"; it, L'Illuminismo, "Enlightenment"; pl, Oświecenie, "Enlightenment"; pt, Iluminismo, "Enlightenment"; es, La Ilustración, "Enlightenment" was an intel ...
. The Didot family were among the first to set up a printing press in the newly independent Greece, and typefaces in the style of Didot have remained popular in Greek since.


Revivals and digitisations

Several revivals of the Didot faces have been made, first for
hot metal typesetting In printing and typography, hot metal typesetting (also called mechanical typesetting, hot lead typesetting, hot metal, and hot type) is a technology for typesetting text in letterpress printing. This method injects molten type metal into a ...
and then for phototype and digital versions. Digital use of Didot poses challenges. While it can look very elegant due to the regular, rational design and fine strokes, a known effect on readers is 'dazzle', where the thick verticals draw the reader's attention and cause them to struggle to concentrate on the other, much thinner strokes that define which letter is which. For this reason, using a font adapted to the intended text size - optical sizing - has been described as particularly essential with Didone designs. Fonts to be used at text sizes will be sturdier designs with thicker 'thin' strokes and serifs (less stroke contrast) and more space between letters than on display designs, to increase legibility. (Optical sizes were a natural requirement of printing technology in the time of metal type, since each size of metal type would be custom-cut, but declined as digital fonts made printing the same font at any size possible. A revival has taken place in recent years but they are normally only offered in commercial fonts.) Among the most successful contemporary adaptations are the ones drawn by
Adrian Frutiger Adrian Johann Frutiger ( ; 24 May 1928 – 10 September 2015) was a Swiss typeface designer who influenced the direction of type design in the second half of the 20th century. His career spanned the hot metal, phototypesetting and digital ...
for the Linotype foundry, and by
Jonathan Hoefler Jonathan Hoefler (; born August 22, 1970) is an American typeface designer. Hoefler founded the Hoefler Type Foundry in 1989, a type foundry in New York. Early life Jonathan Hoefler was born on August 22, 1970, in New York City to Doreen Be ...
for H&FJ. Hoefler's design anticipates the degradation of hairline in smaller point sizes by employing heavier weighted strokes in the smaller point sizes. Frutiger's Didot revival, which is bundled with
macOS macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and la ...
, was specifically intended for display use and not for body text, and adds in addition an even more delicate headline font. A libre open source implementation of Didot including the
Cyrillic The Cyrillic script ( ), Slavonic script or the Slavic script, is a writing system used for various languages across Eurasia. It is the designated national script in various Slavic, Turkic, Mongolic, Uralic, Caucasian and Iranic-speaking co ...
and
Greek alphabet The Greek alphabet has been used to write the Greek language since the late 9th or early 8th century BCE. It is derived from the earlier Phoenician alphabet, and was the earliest known alphabetic script to have distinct letters for vowels as ...
was released under the name
Theano Didot Theano Didot is a free and open-source typeface by Alexey Kryukov, released under the Open Font License (OFL) in 2007. It is a revival of the Didot typeface of Firmin Didot, in the Didone or modern serif genre of the early nineteenth century. ...
by the Russian historian Alexey Kryukov.


Gallery

File:Code civil des Français (Firmin-Didot).jpg, Didot's type in the Code civil des Français, printed by the company of
Firmin Didot Firmin Didot (; 14 April 176424 April 1836) was a French printer, engraver, and type founder. Early life Firmin Didot was born in Paris into a family of printers founded by François Didot, the father of 11 children. Firmin was one of his gr ...
in 1804. File:Didot typeface from Histoire dun Trop Bon Chien by Le Mis De Cherville 1867.jpg, Didot typeface from ''Histoire d'un trop bon chien'' by
Gaspard de Cherville Gaspard, marquis de Cherville (1819French Wikipedia. Chartres Chartres () is the prefecture of the Eure-et-Loir department in the Centre-Val de Loire region in France. It is located about southwest of Paris. At the 2019 census, there were 1 ...
, 1867. In the last "N" the fine line of the vertical has completely disappeared due to the fine print. File:Firmin-didot typeface.jpg, An example of Firmin-Didot-style body text from the same book.


Usage

The
Style Network Esquire Network was an American pay television network that was a 50/50 joint venture between NBCUniversal and the Hearst Corporation. The network carried programs aimed at a metrosexual audience centering on travel, cooking, sports and fas ...
used a bold weight of Didot in its on-air identity (in addition to the News Gothic font).
Alexey Brodovitch Alexey Vyacheslavovich Brodovitch (also Brodovich; be, Аляксей Брадовіч, russian: Алексе́й Вячесла́вович Бродо́вич; 1898 – April 15, 1971) was a Russian-born American photographer, designer ...
implemented the usage of Didot in
Cahiers d'Art ''Cahiers d'Art'' is a French artistic and literary journal founded in 1926 by Christian Zervos. ''Cahiers d'Art'' is also an eponymous publishing house which has published many monographs on artists living in France in the first half of the twent ...
and Harper's Bazaar.
Vogue Vogue may refer to: Business * ''Vogue'' (magazine), a US fashion magazine ** British ''Vogue'', a British fashion magazine ** ''Vogue Arabia'', an Arab fashion magazine ** ''Vogue Australia'', an Australian fashion magazine ** ''Vogue China'', ...
has been using Didot as the typeface for their cover title since 1955. The "CBS Didot" version of Didot was commissioned and used by broadcast network CBS for many years alongside its famous "eye" logo.CBS Didot at Fonts In Use
/ref> While the network's use of Didot with its logo is not as prevalent as it once was, it is still a common sight, used mainly for the imaging of
CBS News CBS News is the news division of the American television and radio service CBS. CBS News television programs include the '' CBS Evening News'', '' CBS Mornings'', news magazine programs '' CBS News Sunday Morning'', '' 60 Minutes'', and '' 4 ...
, the logo for
CBS Corporation The second incarnation of CBS Corporation (the first being a short-lived rename of the Westinghouse Electric Corporation) was an American multinational media conglomerate with interests primarily in commercial broadcasting, publishing, an ...
, and the logotype for ''
The Late Show with Stephen Colbert ''The Late Show with Stephen Colbert'' is an American late-night news and liberal political satire talk show hosted by Stephen Colbert, which premiered on September 8, 2015. Produced by Spartina Productions and CBS Studios, it is the second ...
''. It is also used as the logotype for the credits of the CBS sitcom ''
Mom ] A mother is the female parent of a child. A woman may be considered a mother by virtue of having given birth, by raising a child who may or may not be her biological offspring, or by supplying her ovum for fertilisation in the case of gestati ...
''. Another note-worthy usage of Didot is in the new Zara (retailer), Zara logo that caused quite a bit of uproar for its "uncomfortably close" kerning. Didot is a commonly used typeface by logo designer Baron & Baron.


Notes


References

* Blackwell, Lewis. ''20th Century Type.'' Yale University Press: 2004. . * Fiedl, Frederich, Nicholas Ott and Bernard Stein. ''Typography: An Encyclopedic Survey of Type Design and Techniques Through History.'' Black Dog & Leventhal: 1998. . * Lawson, Alexander S. ''
Anatomy of a Typeface ''Anatomy of a Typeface'' is a book on typefaces written by Alexander Lawson.''Anatomy of a Typeface'', Alexander Lawson, David R. Godine, 1990. Background The book is notable for devoting entire chapters to the development and uses of individual ...
.'' Godine: 1990. . * Macmillan, Neil. ''An A–Z of Type Designers.'' Yale University Press: 2006. . * Meggs, Philip and Rob Carter. ''Typographic Specimens: The Great Typefaces.'' Van Nostrand Reinhold: 1993. . * Meggs, Philip B. and Roy McKelvey. ''Revival of the Fittest.'' RC Publications, Inc.: 2000. . * Updike, Daniel Berkley. ''Printing Types Their History, Forms and Use'' Dover Publications, Inc.: 1937, 1980. .


External links

* Stephen Coles.
The Didot You Didn't Know
. ''Typographica'' blog. 26 March 2004 * Jean François Porchez.
L’Ambroise en détails
". ''Typographic 59''. 2001. Online version at ''Porchez Typofonderie'' website. Discusses the history of Didot, and the process of creating the modern revival "Ambroise".
Theano Didot, a free implementation by Alexey Kryukov, released under the SIL Open Font License (OFL)
{{OS X typefaces Modern serif typefaces Typefaces with optical sizes Latin-script typefaces Cyrillic typefaces Greek typefaces