Winter 2025
The faces of Nebiolo [EXTRACT]
Fonderia Caratteri Nebiolo, 1878–1978 Nuovi studi critici
By the Nebiolo History Project Design by Alessandro Colizzi, James Clough and Riccardo Olocco Published by Lazy Dog Press, €45 Reviewed by Paul Shaw
The Nebiolo type foundry of Turin, Italy is primarily familiar to graphic designers as the source of such types as Egiziano, Torino, Eurostile and Stop. Publication designer Roger Black popularised Egiziano in Rolling Stone magazine and elsewhere. It later served as the model for David Berlow’s Giza (Font Bureau 1994). Eurostile and Stop are the work of Aldo Novarese, the type designer most closely linked to Nebiolo. Eurostile is widely associated with the Zeitgeist of the jet age of the late 1950s and early 1960s, while Stop, a unicase design, has been disparagingly [and unfairly, ed.] referred to as ‘instant logo’.
However, there is much more to Nebiolo’s history than a handful of types or the work of a single designer. That is made evident in Fonderia Caratteri Nebiolo, 1878–1978: Nuovi studi critici, the first fruits of the work of a group of Italian graphic designers calling themselves the Nebiolo Project. The book is a collection of 23 essays derived from presentations at a conference held in Turin in September 2021. It represents a new kind of type history, one that goes beyond a narrow focus on typefaces and type designers to consider the industrial, financial and social context of the type foundry. In doing this it goes several steps beyond History of the Monotype Corporation by Judy Slinn, Sebastian Carter and Richard Southall (2014) and John Baskerville: Art and Industry of the Enlightenment edited by Caroline Archer-Parré and Malcolm Dick (2017).
The 23 articles fall into several groups …
Paul Shaw, letter designer, design historian, New York
Read the full version in Eye no. 107 vol. 27, 2025

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