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History of the Linotype Company

Contributed by Stephen Coles on Jan 18th, 2016. Artwork published in .
    History of the Linotype Company 1
    Source: smile.amazon.com © 2014 Rochester Institute of Technology and Frank J. Romano. License: All Rights Reserved.

    Frank Romano’s exhaustive history is an impressive chunk of research and I highly recommend picking it up. The design of the book is ok, but the choice of New Caledonia at 9–10pt is a disappointment. Linotype’s digital version of this great Dwiggins face is far too light and contrasty for this size, and it’s especially strain-enducing when it falls to 7–8pt for footnotes. I would have set everything larger with less leading, or chosen something sturdier for the smallish body text required for this information-dense volume. Metro Nova works well as a supporting family and is quite readable even when tiny, but there are also cases of unnecessarily loose leading in captions and sidebars.

    History of the Linotype Company 2
    Source: ritpress.rit.edu © 2014 Rochester Institute of Technology and Frank J. Romano. License: All Rights Reserved.
    History of the Linotype Company 3
    Source: ritpress.rit.edu © 2014 Rochester Institute of Technology and Frank J. Romano. License: All Rights Reserved.
    History of the Linotype Company 4
    Photo: Stephen Coles. © 2014 Rochester Institute of Technology and Frank J. Romano. License: All Rights Reserved.
    The notes type is especially undersized for New Caledonia.
    Photo: Stephen Coles. © 2014 Rochester Institute of Technology and Frank J. Romano. License: All Rights Reserved.

    The notes type is especially undersized for New Caledonia.

    The Metro Nova sidebar text is aligned to the same baseline grid as the main text. I’m not sure this is necessary, and the result is slightly excessive leading for multiple paragraphs of type at this size.
    Photo: Stephen Coles. © 2014 Rochester Institute of Technology and Frank J. Romano. License: All Rights Reserved.

    The Metro Nova sidebar text is aligned to the same baseline grid as the main text. I’m not sure this is necessary, and the result is slightly excessive leading for multiple paragraphs of type at this size.

    Captions are also aligned to the same baseline grid as the main text. It works ok here, though the font color is quite light.
    Photo: Stephen Coles. © 2014 Rochester Institute of Technology and Frank J. Romano. License: All Rights Reserved.

    Captions are also aligned to the same baseline grid as the main text. It works ok here, though the font color is quite light.

    The light and loose captions are less successful when there is a lot of copy, and this image wrap is not ideal.
    Photo: Stephen Coles. © 2014 Rochester Institute of Technology and Frank J. Romano. License: All Rights Reserved.

    The light and loose captions are less successful when there is a lot of copy, and this image wrap is not ideal.

    History of the Linotype Company 9
    Photo: Stephen Coles. © 2014 Rochester Institute of Technology and Frank J. Romano. License: All Rights Reserved.
    History of the Linotype Company 10
    Photo: Stephen Coles. © 2014 Rochester Institute of Technology and Frank J. Romano. License: All Rights Reserved.

    Typefaces

    • Metro Nova
    • Caledonia

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