Giambattista Bodoni was the most prolific Italian type cutter of the 18th
century. While he worked in the Vatican Press he was involved in the
type cutting of a.'exotica.' languages for which catholic literature was printed.
When he established his own press in Parma he did publish many books of the
classics with his own Greek typefaces in the last quarter of the 18th century.
He was among the first European type cutters to move away from the byzantine
cursive tradition with the numerous ligatures which was the norm until then.
His Greek types influenced many subsequent designers, yet they fell in disuse
by the middle of the 19th century.

GFS presented Bodonia.'s original Greek typeface in the commemorative edition of
Pindara.'s Olympian Odes (2004), in digital version by George D. Matthiopoulos,
and is now available as free ware for the general public. In the OpenType
features, under ligatures, one may alternately use diphthongs with the accents
placed in between the characters, as Giambattista Bodoni did when setting
Greek texts.

• Igor Vlasenko

• fonts-otf-gfs-bodoni-classic
• fonts-otf-gfs-bodoni-classic-doc