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Pacioli Released

Available for purchase at Myfonts and youworkforthem on Jan 25th, 2007.

My latest release is part revival, part interpretation. It's a geometric display font based upon Luca Pacioli's 1509 alphabet of "divine proportion."

Luca Pacioli (1445-1514 or 1517) was an Italian mathematician and Franciscan friar who lived during the Renaissance. While he was the chairman of mathematics in Milan, he collaborated with and taught mathematics to Leonardo da Vinci.

He published his second important book "De divina proportione," in 1509. This book discussed topics including mathematical proportion, geometry, and architecture. Along with beautiful three-dimensional renderings by da Vinci, Pacioli included diagrams detailing the geometric construction of the Roman alphabet.

Pacioli was not the first or the last man in his era to describe the building of letters mathematically. Felice Feliciano did this before Pacioli, and Albrecht Dürer further developed these forms years after. According to Pacioli, the thick strokes should be 1/9th of the height, and the thin strokes should have 1/2 the weight of the thick strokes.

I felt that this beautiful alphabet needed to be restored to its full geometric glory and set out to construct an accurate replica using Pacioli's instructions. Included in the font you'll find the letters that have the grid overlay and also the letters without the grid. The letters J, W, U, and Z were not included in the book, so I have created my own versions of these characters that fit into Pacioli's grid. Pacioli shows two different Os in the book, so I have included the second O as well as a second J, Q, and Z as OpenType stylistic alternates. Also included in the font are border patterns and a fleuron taken from the cover of the book.

Posted by matt at January 23, 2007 05:06 PM