MODERN FACE ROMAN (DIDONE) FONT: ITS VISUAL IDENTITY IN THE EVOLUTION OF TYPOGRAPHY

Abstract

The objective of this article is to explore the visual identity of Modern Face Roman (Didones) font in relation to the historical and theoretical evolution of typography, assessing why it has been the subject of such disparate evaluations in different typographical theories and reconsidering certain elements of those theories. With this aim, this article analyses the history of this typeface, opinions about it and the context in which it arose, as well as its formal and technical characteristics.

The conclusion drawn is that the forms of this font, arising in the late eighteenth century out of a quest informed by rationalism and the Enlightenment, together with incipient industrial systemisation, were central to the functional, theoretical, and historical evolution of Western typography, with its duality of headlines and body text. Hence itsambivalent character (traditional, modern, classical, romantic) and the criticisms later made of it by the reform movement, which in the twentieth century extended its position on book design to the very heart of typographic theory.