Behind Simoncini’s Glasses
Francesco Simoncini was a type designer and an innovator. An exhibition and a catalogue mark his re-discovery
The Simoncini Method — in search of an aesthetic whole is the title of an exhibition (and a catalogue) — created and produced by Griffo, the Great Gala of Letters, curated by Elisa Rebellato and myself, designed by Dina&Solomon — held in Bologna at the Museo del Patrimonio Industriale (September 22 — November 12, 2017.) In this article I will provide some preliminary information about Francesco Simoncini, our research and its first results.
Skilled and multitasking
Simoncini was an entrepreneur, a designer, an engineer and an educator, amongst other things — although he probably would not have chosen any of these descriptions of himself. He lived for 63 years (1912–1975.) Besides his training as a technical draughtsman, he studied engineering, metalworking and jewelry engraving and eventually joined the workshop of his father Vincenzo which specialised in repairing Linotype machines.
After the war he, his father and several of his four sisters and three brothers came up with the idea of not just repairing Linotype machines but of manufacturing supplies for them too. More specifically they decided to produce matrices for Linotype machines. But the whole point of matrices concerns the shape of letters, so the Simoncinis were quickly faced with the question of which shapes these letters should take.
Doing business with Garamond, Ludwig & Mayer and Einaudi
After Vincenzo’s death, in 1954, Francesco Simoncini became head of the company and in a few years struck his first hit: he started collaborating with the German type foundry Ludwig & Mayer and they came up with their own take on the types at the time thought to have been associated with Claude Garamont.¹ I would venture to say their type was not necessarily the most authentic amongst the ‘Garamond’ reinterpretations.² However, while being quite loose as far as Garamonds went, it was very legible and had unusually compact descenders for this genre, which made it suitable for setting columns of type with little line spacing. It was, in other words, a functional and economic typeface.
But, even more importantly, they quickly found their dream client with Oreste Molina, production director at the Einaudi publishing house. Molina was a very meticulous book producer, setting and enforcing rigorous standards for the company employees and suppliers to follow. At the end of the 1950s Einaudi wanted to refresh the look of its books and Molina was given a mandate to make it happen. In short, Molina and Einaudi’s results were so influential that they changed the face of books in Italy, and to this day the Garamond designed by Simoncini and Ludwig & Mayer is arguably the most popular book face in Italy.
Delia and the others
Simoncini also designed and produced other typefaces, some of which were quite experimental like Delia, a face initially designed for classified ads and eventually adopted by the Italian yellow pages and telephone directory company, SEAT. Selene, a newspaper typeface, is also an interesting design for its stencil-like features and its surprisingly broad development in discrete drawings for optical sizes. Other notable typefaces from the Officine Simoncini (and sometimes Ludwig & Mayer, too, although their relationship is still something we are researching) were Permanent and Simplicitas, two grotesques with flared stems, Aster and Life, two Times-like serif designs for newspapers, and their own takes on classics such as Ionic or Bodoni.
The Simoncini company is also interesting from the industrial point of view: Francesco Simoncini used to work at Ducati during the war, and he recruited a lot of his employees from his former colleagues there. Because of his mixed artistic and technical background, under Simoncini’s leadership a company was built up that could both design typefaces and also design and build all the machines needed to produce those faces. It is my opinion that designs like Delia would not have happened elsewhere, simply because they required skills and a certain kind of confidence and courage that leaders of other companies may have lacked.
A patented system since 1963
In 1963 in Italy (and in the intervening years abroad) Simoncini patented a system of reverse deformation to letterforms before production. As it is the epitome of Simoncini’s hybrid, integrated approach, we refer to this patent as the Metodo Simoncini and named our exhibition after it.
The patent describes a reverse deformation to counteract the distortions that occur during the reproduction of letterforms in the photocomposition process. However, Simoncini mostly produced Linotype matrices and only in a later phase worked on issuing type designs for photocomposition. In other writings Simoncini described variants of the method as being implemented to compensate for ink-spread in print and even for optical distortions affecting readers’ eyes. Considering that it was filed in 1963 it is a remarkable patent.
Searching for Simoncini
Researching the Officine Simoncini is a challenge because the company did not leave behind its archives. Thankfully, though, a few documents have survived. The exhibition shows a glimpse of the materials we have found so far and starts to put them all together in a cohesive narrative.
It has been about 10 years since Francesco Ceccarelli and I first came across the cupboards containing the production drawings for all the typefaces released by the Officine Simoncini of Bologna. Ceccarelli and I were working together in Modena and were sharing our passion for typography by doing informal research on letterforms, their history and development. We were told about the survival of these drawings by the former technical director of the Officine, Lorenzo Malaguti, who we met thanks to Vittorio Marchesini, former accountant, board member and eventually liquidator of the Officine Simoncini, who I had contacted through the Rastignano town council.
Ceccarelli and I did the initial research and interviews, then I wrote my own dissertation on three typefaces from the Officine Simoncini and, with it, graduated in the MA Typeface Design at the University of Reading, UK in 2010. Around 2009 and 2010 I eventually moved from Italy to California. Every now and again I came across material concerning Simoncini but the bulk of the research had more or less reached a standstill.
Bologna’s calling
In 2015 I was contacted by Mirit Wissotzky and Manuel Dall’Olio (studio Dina&Solomon), and asked if I wanted to contribute some research on Simoncini. Wissotzky and Dall’Olio were working on their project, Griffo, the Great Gala of Letters, aiming to tell and revive Francesco Griffo’s story and raise the awareness of letterforms, “the invaluable tool that accompanies our daily life.”
They also got in touch with Elisa Rebellato, bibliologist and librarian in Bologna, who had published an article on Simoncini out of her interest in the Einaudi publishing house. The idea of working on an exhibition took place and our team was established.
One last member joined us when the exhibition setup and design were almost complete; this was Beppe Càntele of the Ronzani Editore publishing house. He enthusiastically published our catalogue, designed by Dina&Solomon, and he helped us edit, translate and print it on selected papers, graciously donated by Fedrigoni.
Investigating the untold story
On the evening of its opening the exhibition at the Museo del Patrimonio Industriale was full of former employees, Simoncini family members, colleagues and relatives who had not seen each other for almost 50 years… Some recognized themselves or people they knew in the pictures we had hung on the walls and also in the Simoncini video from the mid-1960s we had recovered and projected that night. Undoubtedly the Simoncini story is also a story of people. Of women and men who worked together to build something of value. As researchers, time is not on our side, unfortunately: while some people are still with us, some, like Francesco Simoncini himself or Ugo Cassoli, head of the drawing office, died before we had a chance to get in touch with them. Some regrettably passed away during our research.³
Nonetheless, thanks to the exhibition, we now have more witnesses to the Simoncini story to interview and some people have contacted us with materials they have found in their attics. One woman pulled out a drawing from the Simoncini archives, a drawing which carried her initials on its back. With these renewed resources our research continues: we need to keep reading, sorting and analyzing. Onwards!
The exhibition and catalogue The Simoncini Method — in search of an aesthetic whole were curated by Elisa Rebellato and Antonio Cavedoni, and designed by Dina&Solomon within the project Griffo, the Great Gala of Letters. This project will reach a climax in Bologna in 2018 to mark the 500th anniversary of the presumed death of Francesco Griffo, punchcutter of fame who worked for the great publisher Aldus Manutius, and was the first to cut an italic type in the early 16th century. The catalogue was published by Ronzani Editore and printed by Paolo Galvani Stamperia (Verona, Italy) on Fedrigoni paper. This catalogue provides the first systematic essay on Simoncini made from images and documents mostly unpublished.
- Alas, they probably hadn’t come across Beatrice Warde’s 1926 essay on Jean Jannon and Garamont.
- 16th-century documents show both spellings: Garamont and Garamond. See James Mosley’s article on Garamont for background.
- The day before the exhibition opened I found out Lorenzo Malaguti, my second contact in this research, had died in April 2014.
