I finally got around to reading Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore. It’s a sweet book about, among other things, loving books and typography. One main plot thread is about a font called “Gerritszoon,” designed by Griffo Gerritzoon, and I was puzzled by what typeface it is supposed to be. I thought perhaps the book was printed in Gerritszoon, but the colophon and front matter don’t list a font. We’re told Gerritszoon was included on the Mac, but that name isn’t one of those fonts. It sort of looks like Palatino, which was designed by Hermann Zapf, and the wikipedia page says “Palatino… which takes inspiration from printing types cut by Francesco Griffo c. 1495 in the print shop of Aldus Manutius.” So the clue there is “Griffo,” and it turns out Francesco Griffo designed Bembo and these other fonts. I only have Bembo and Palatino on my computer, and they don’t quite match the face in the book. But Google to the rescue—this guy figured out it’s Poliphilus.
So now you know how I diverted myself the other night! I’ll end with a quote from the book, a comment by the narrator about the coders at Google (the book digitization project at Google is another plot thread) and which also speaks to his evolving view of technology and books:
Books: boring. Code: awesome.
These are the people who are running the internet.
