The Dante typeface

The Dante typeface was produced from the mid-1950s onwards and was the result of the collaboration between two giants of typography: Giovanni Mardersteig – typographer, printer and type designer, founder in Verona of the Officina Bodoni and the Stamperia Valdonega – and Charles Malin, one of the leading punch engravers of the 20th century.
The two worked side by side for about six years, arriving at an easy-to-read typeface, paying particular attention to the serifs and upper curves of the lowercase letters. Dante was first used in 1955 to print a work by Giovanni Boccaccio, the Trattatello in Laude di Dante – hence the font’s name. In the same years, Monotype asked Mardersteig for permission to develop a version of Dante suitable for the casting machine.
Using the original punches as a model, Monotype’s designers were able to produce a very accurate interpretation of the typeface, especially considering the fact that the original was created without the restrictions on glyph spacing and width imposed by the machine’s mechanical technology. The Dante typeface was an immediate success in both the handsetting and Monotype versions, and even today, after entering the digital world in the early 1990s, it is still among the most readable and elegant text faces.