The first Dante fonts were the product of a collaboration between two exceptional artists: Giovanni Mardersteig, a printer, book and typeface designer of remarkable skill and taste, and Charles Malin, one of the great punch-cutters of the 20th century.
Mardersteig was born in 1892. While still a young man he developed a keen interest in the typefaces and printing of Giambattista Bodoni. The punches and matrices for Bodoni’s original types had been preserved, and Mardersteig obtained permission to use them. Charles Malin cut replacements for some of these original punches; later he cut punches for nearly all the new typefaces Mardersteig designed.
Dante was Mardersteig’s last and most successful design. By this time he had gained a deep knowledge of what makes a typeface design lively, legible and handsome. Years of collaboration with Malin had also taught him the nuances of letter construction, and the two worked closely to develop a design that was easy to read. Special care was taken in the design of the serifs and top curves of the lowercase to create a subtle horizontal stress, which helps the eye move smoothly across the page.
In 1955, after six years of work, the fonts were used to publish Boccaccio’s Trattatello in Laude di Dante. The design took its name from this project.
The Machine Age
With Mardersteig’s approval, Monotype developed machine-set versions of Dante. Using the original punches as a model, Monotype’s design office was able to produce an exceptionally accurate interpretation of the typeface. This is even more remarkable considering that the original was created without any of the character width and spacing restrictions imposed by machine-set technology.
Monotype also wanted to enlarge the family from just the roman and italic of the original, but this proved a more difficult sell to the design’s creator. Mardersteig had no use for the additional weights at his press, nor did he have any interest in drawing the additional weights Monotype wanted. Mardersteig was not easily swayed, but Monotype’s gentle persistence and the help of then twenty-year-old Matthew Carter eventually changed his mind.
New Technologies
Dante was an immediate success, and when Monotype began making phototypesetting equipment the family was quickly released for these machines. Since that time, digital fonts have freed type design from virtually all of the restrictions imposed by hot metal and phototype technologies. In the early 1990s, Monotype had the Dante designs reworked to more closely represent Mardersteig’s originals.