Reasonings and digressions on the form of writing on the occasion of the bicentenary of the printing of the Manuale Tipografico by Giambattista Bodoni. Manuals, typographic samples and posters in an exhibition promoted from 16 March to 18 May in the Palatina Library by the Complesso Monumentale della Pilotta in collaboration with the The Bodoni Museum.
Gallery
As is known, the Manuale del celebre tipografo was published posthumously by Bodoni’s widow with the intention of completing what had been a long-thought project, and finally started by her husband. It contains a collection of 665 different alphabets and a series of about 1300 friezes, as well as a preface in which Bodoni sets out some methodological criteria related to his way of working.
There is a previous collection of typefaces, printed by Bodoni in 1788, without a preface or other type of explanatory text, already at the time entitled Manuale tipografico . Evidently, the typographer from Parma had borrowed the term from Fournier’s small technical manual, the Manuel typographique of 1764, but in reality the two volumes expressed, even with the same title, two objects with different functions. Fournier’s, in fact, was a true manual in the sense of a popular tool for describing the essential elements of a complex practice, from the engraving of punches to the impression of matrices and the casting of movable type. Bodoni’s was instead a sample of typefaces and ornaments created by him.
The Manuale Tipografico of 1818 is different again, it is in fact a hybrid that, despite its name, does not belong to the field of manuals, nor to the field of type samplers. We are instead faced with a proud and monumental summary of his own activity that Bodoni wants to fix in time, black on white.
Taking these assumptions as a starting point, we will exhibit alongside Bodoni’s volumes, his punches and matrices, his manuscript studies and archive documents, also some manuals and sample books of typefaces created by other authors (before and after 1818), with the aim of showing and describing these two distinct and little-known types of books to a less specialized audience. What they have in common, however, is the object of the narration, that is, alphabetic writing in its typographic form, a writing that, in its diffusion, has had such weight in Western culture over the last five centuries.
In parallel, a section dedicated to today is exhibited. A select group of international graphic designers contributed by creating a Typographic Manifesto . The aim of this section of the exhibition is to carry out a visual survey of concepts around the potential of writing expressed by designers, who are recognized as having a strong and conscious typographic aptitude. If the manifesto can also be defined as a programmatic document that sets out rules and inspiring principles, we will find ourselves, in this case, in the particular situation in which the object treated and its form coincide, as do the author and the designer.
Exemplary signs , therefore, visual testimonies that allow us to trace the unfolding of our history through the evolution of the form of characters, and to take advantage of the opportunity to start new critical discourses around the theme of writing as a tool of knowledge.