Monotype Bodoni Alternatives

Giambattista Bodoni (1740-1813) was called the King of Printers; he was a prolific type designer, a masterful engraver of punches and the most widely admired printer of his time. His books and typefaces were created during the 45 years he was the director of the fine press and publishing house of the Duke of Parma in Italy. He produced the best of what are known as "modern" style types, basing... Read More

The first slab serif fonts appeared at the beginning of industrialization in Great Britain in 1820. Clarendon and Ionic became the names... Read More

Though it bears little resemblance to the types designed by the King of Printers (Bodoni) , Poster Bodoni pushes the stroke contrast... Read More

Gerry Powell, typographer, industrial designer, and director of typographic design for American Type Founders, designed Onyx font for ATF in 1937. A very popular advertising type in the 1940s, Onyx resembles an extremely condensed, bold member of the Bodoni family. Onyx is a good display font, with proportions that make it readable even when space is at a premium.

Jan Tschichold designed Sabon™ in 1964, and it was produced jointly by three foundries: D. Stempel AG, Linotype and Monotype. This was in... Read More

A commission from a publishing house for a novel by Hans Christian Andersen led to the creation of FF Holmen. The small family includes the core set of styles: Regular, Italic, Bold, and Bold Italic. FF Holmen Regular includes a large set of ligatures. There is also a titling style: FF Holmen Headline. Since the novel is set in the late 1820s, the brief was to create a neoclassical face, but... Read More

The Century Old Style family was modeled on Century Expanded, which had been cut in 1900. Similar weights and proportions were... Read More

Giambattista Bodoni (1740-1813) was called the King of Printers; he was a prolific type designer, a masterful engraver of punches and the most widely admired printer of his time. His books and typefaces were created during the 45 years he was the director of the fine press and publishing house of the Duke of Parma in Italy. He produced the best of what are known as "modern" style types, basing... Read More

Bertie was designed by Alan Meeks in 1986, an ornamented typeface with a light and elegant look. Such typefaces were at their peak in the middle of the 19th century, when they were created for the advertisements of booming industries. The sophisticated Bertie is based on forms of the transitional period and is best used in headlines with point sizes of 18 or larger to highlight its unique... Read More

Giambattista Bodoni (1740-1813) was called the King of Printers; he was a prolific type designer, a masterful engraver of punches and the most widely admired printer of his time. His books and typefaces were created during the 45 years he was the director of the fine press and publishing house of the Duke of Parma in Italy. He produced the best of what are known as "modern" style types, basing... Read More

The initial concept behind FF Acanthus was to produce a “modern” neoclassical Roman that would have a less stark appearance than most... Read More

Though Albert Boton designed these in 1974 for the Hollenstein collection, what later became FF Cellini only existed as phototype until... Read More

It took the Italian designer Antonio Pace more than five years to create Linotype Gianotten™, a successful new interpretation of the classic Bodoni types. To re-draw the 200-year-old characters for the world of modern digital technology, Pace studied Giambattista Bodoni's original punches at the Bodoni Museum in Parma. He felt that previous Bodoni interpretations were not well suited for body... Read More

Chaparral is the work of type designer Carol Twombly and combines the legibility of slab serif designs popularized in the 19th century with the grace of 16th century roman book lettering. The result is a versatile, hybrid slab-serif design. Unlike "geometric" slab serif designs, Chaparral has varying letter proportions that give it an accessible and friendly appearance in all weights from light... Read More

Among the countless typefaces available today, the Modern Face style is relatively underrepresented. During the 19th century and then later with the competition from the mechanized hot metal types and film setting, a number of attractive headline types appeared in this style. For text, however, the available types were limited to those based on tried and true classics like Walbaum, Didot and... Read More