Marsh - Palatino Lettera Formata

"Going thru Palatino's (the guy the font is named after) manuscript the other day, I came across his Rotunda style (which he called Lettera Formata). Rotunda, meaning round, is the more common name of this Southern Gothic Blackletter. The more severe angular styles of blackletter like Fraktur and Old English never became popular in Italy & Spain. They developed their own rounder, less compressed version of gothic letter. I thought it would be fun to work up a sketch showing this style. In this version I've used the old style characters of the time, such as the backless-r, the long-s, and the old style h that can be easily confused with the letter b. Forms of this h are still fairly common in various italic fonts.

"I thought I'd create a second version in this style for comparison with yesterday's art. This "r," more recognizable to the modern eye, was used as well as the other version. This s was used back then too, but it would only have been used at the end of a word rather than in the body as shown here, while the long-s would have been used everywhere but as the final letter. This h is not historically accurate to the style, but I've modified the body stroke to finish the same as the m & n to create easier legibility. With these minor alterations you can see southern gothic blackletter is much easier to read than the northern styles like Fraktur & Old English."

~2010, Don Marsh~
©2010 Don Marsh