Designed over three years after the second World War, and published in 1949 by the Nebiolo foundry, Normandia was Alessandro Butti’s take on the fat face. As it usually was with Butti’s designs, this face effectively injected a catchy yet expertly calculated calligraphic spin into its source of inspiration — which was the essentially geometric/deco, thicker model of Bodoni’s very popular aesthetic.
The metal Normandia saw some widespread use for a handful of years after its publication, not least because of the multitude of sizes in which it was available. It stepped out of the limelight by the mid-1950s, due to a combination of the popularity of cold type and Nebiolo’s refusal to retool its faces for new technologies. It was copied by a few small film typesetting outfits on both sides of the Atlantic, but never really found its way back to the mainstream. By the time computer type became the norm, Normandia was pretty much relegated to a type historian’s collection of anecdotes.
This digital update of the classic series revives and refines the three original metal designs (Tonda/Regular, Corsiva/Italic, and Contornata/Outline) and expands the character set to more than 600 glyphs per font, including small caps, six types of figures, fractions and nut fractions, a full set of f-ligatures, some stylistic alternates, and other fine typography niceties.
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