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Title
Our Bodoni

Designer
Massimo Vignelli

Firm
Vignelli Associates

Year
1989

Client
World Typeface Center

Medium
Typeface

Notes
Our Bodoni was commissioned by Bert Di Pamphilis, former president of World Typeface Center (WTC), New York – sometimes wrongly credited as World Typeface Corporation. The typeface was designed by Tom Carnase, founder of WTC, under the direction of Massimo Vignelli. The typeface became a sort of trademark of Vignelli and it’s still widely used in corporate and editorial graphic design. (For example, it’s the typeface of the Vele series by Einaudi.)

 “When Bert Di Pamphilis (…) asked us to design a new typeface, we told him we do not believe in ‘new’ typefaces, but that there was room for improvement on existing, classic typeface designs. We consider the ratio between upper- and lower-case Helvetica letters to be the best there is. We wanted to redesign Bodoni using a similar ratio between the cases, with short ascenders and descenders, and articulate the type in four weights: light, regular, medium, bold.” (Massimo Vignelli).

Title
Our Bodoni

Designer
Massimo Vignelli

Firm
Vignelli Associates

Year
1989

Client
World Typeface Center

Medium
Typeface

Notes
Our Bodoni was commissioned by Bert Di Pamphilis, former president of World Typeface Center (WTC), New York – sometimes wrongly credited as World Typeface Corporation. The typeface was designed by Tom Carnase, founder of WTC, under the direction of Massimo Vignelli. The typeface became a sort of trademark of Vignelli and it’s still widely used in corporate and editorial graphic design. (For example, it’s the typeface of the Vele series by Einaudi.)

 “When Bert Di Pamphilis (…) asked us to design a new typeface, we told him we do not believe in ‘new’ typefaces, but that there was room for improvement on existing, classic typeface designs. We consider the ratio between upper- and lower-case Helvetica letters to be the best there is. We wanted to redesign Bodoni using a similar ratio between the cases, with short ascenders and descenders, and articulate the type in four weights: light, regular, medium, bold.” (Massimo Vignelli).