I’m sure schol­ars of the Eng­lish lan­guage have writ­ten lengthy essays on the ori­gin & evo­lu­tion of the phrase “the long & short of it” but here, sim­ply, is the long & short of it:

This expres­sion, orig­i­nal­ly stat­ed as “the short & long of it,” dates from about 1500; lat­er “the long & short of it” was estab­lished by the end of the 1600s. It is also stat­ed “the long & the short of it.”

The long & short & condensed & italic

Amper­Art #103, Long & Short, fea­tures typog­ra­phy set in just one type fam­i­ly, Bodoni, but with many styles. It is a beau­ti­ful & ver­sa­tile type­style, hav­ing many vari­a­tions designed by sev­er­al foundries over the years. This piece has pur­pose­ly been set with fonts from four dif­fer­ent foundries.* (See type ter­mi­nol­o­gy below.) 

Demon­strat­ing just how ver­sa­tile Bodoni is — how one type fam­i­ly can ren­der so many per­son­al­i­ties — Long & Short was set as fol­lows, indi­cat­ing style (fol­lowed by design­er or foundry):

the, of it set in Bodoni Con­densed Ital­ic (Berthold)

LONG set in Bodoni Poster Com­pressed (Adobe)

SHORT set in Bodoni Black (Bauer)

& set in Bodoni Old­face Ital­ic (Berthold)

When type is set to resem­ble the mean­ing of the words, it is called a typogram. Parts of this Amper­Art piece fit that descrip­tion: the words “long” & “short.” Oth­er exam­ples are “addddi­tion” and “scrma­beld.”

Bodoni, typographer

Bodoni is the name giv­en to the serif type­faces first designed by Giambat­tista Bodoni (1740 – 1813) in the late eigh­teenth cen­tu­ry & fre­quent­ly revived since. Bodoni’s type­faces are clas­si­fied as Didone or mod­ern. Bodoni had a long career & his designs changed & var­ied, end­ing with a type­face of a slight­ly con­densed under­ly­ing struc­ture with flat, unbrack­et­ed ser­ifs, extreme con­trast between thick & thin strokes, & an over­all geo­met­ric construction.

When first released, Bodoni & oth­er didone fonts were called clas­si­cal designs because of their ratio­nal struc­ture. Bodoni’s lat­er designs are right­ful­ly called “mod­ern” but the ear­li­er designs are now called “tran­si­tion­al.”

Source: Wikipedia

Bodoni by Desimone for Piano Pronto

A few years ago I was com­mis­sioned by Jen­nifer Eklund, a charm­ing client, to design her Piano Pron­to logo & piano instruc­tion books. Tal­ent­ed in her own right as a pianist & pub­lish­er, Jen­nifer also has a keen sense of design & visu­al style. She fell in love with the type­face Bodoni when I pre­sent­ed it as a com­ple­ment to her logo­type and as the main title font for her books. The front and back cov­ers of her Primer are shown here. Two fonts are used for the cov­er, one being Bodoni Black. The back text is pri­mar­i­ly Bodoni, show­cas­ing bold, reg­u­lar and italic.

*Type terminology

“Foundry” of course is usu­al­ly asso­ci­at­ed with met­al works, & that’s exact­ly how type was pro­duced for the first cou­ple hun­dred years after move­able type was invent­ed by Guten­berg. The term “foundry” is still used to des­ig­nate a font publisher.

The term “font” used to mean some­thing very spe­cif­ic, not just a type­face. It was the pack­age of met­al type that was one type fam­i­ly (Bodoni, Gara­mond, Hel­veti­ca, etc.), one weight (reg­u­lar, light, book, bold, black), one style (roman — mean­ing upright, ital­ic, small caps, etc.), & one size (6, 8, 10, 60, 72 point). That was a sin­gle font; i.e. Hel­veti­ca | bold | ital­ic | extend­ed | 36pt.

“Lead­ing” is the space between lines of text. In the days of hand-​set type & met­al linecast­ing machines, strips of met­al rang­ing from ¹⁄₄ point to 36 points (approx. ¹⁄₂ inch) or more were insert­ed between lines of type. (Any­thing thick­er was usu­al­ly spaced with wood blocks.) The met­al strips were actu­al­ly lead, & result­ed in lead poi­son­ing for many type­set­ters & printers.

“Cut & paste,” one of the most famil­iar terms asso­ci­at­ed with com­put­ers, used to mean lit­er­al­ly cut the sheet of text, image or cli­part with an X‑acto blade & paste it in the lay­out with rub­ber cement or hot wax, to be pho­tographed by the cam­era for off­set platemak­ing. (& hold your breath to see if any­thing shift­ed around or fell off com­plete­ly as the print­ing emerges from the press.)

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