Of the Just Shaping of Letters

January 15, 2007 | General | By: Mark VandeWettering

Durer's Alphabet

When I dropped into Tom’s office earlier today, he mentioned that he had found a copy of Albrecht Durer’s Of the Just Shaping of Letters available as a printable PDF. This version was scanned from the 1969 Dover reprint of the 1917 edition which is in the public domain. Cool! A bit of googling turned up the original scanner, one Sean Gleeson, as well as the PDF itself. Cool. This has the constructions for each of the 23 capitals of the Roman alphabet. Very, very neat.

[tags]Public Domain,Typography,Albrecht Durer[/tags]

Comments

Pingback from metamerist
Time 1/16/2007 at 10:46 am

letters of the Roman alphabet, using only geometric terms such as ‘square,’ ‘circle,’ and ‘line.’ These instructions were published in 1535 as Of the Just Shaping of Letters…” Gleason’s post includes a scan of a PDF version of Dürer’s work. (ht: Brainwagon)

Comment from tdl
Time 1/16/2007 at 5:40 am

Dude, that made my day. So very cool. I just wish my copy smelled like dusty library rather than fresh laser printer toner.

Comment from Mark
Time 1/16/2007 at 10:51 am

You could always grind up some old library books and sprinkle them on top!