Chronicles of the Covile’s typography
Technical information for bibliophiles and lovers of classic typography.
September 2009
Together with the magazine, the Covile's typography is born. It immediately decides to use free software and adopts for the texts the Fell Types, cut by Peter De Walpergen (1646-1703) and digitized by Igino Marini.
For the masthead, we use fonts and ornaments designed by William Morris for his Kelmscott Press between 1890 and 1896 and digitized by Dieter Steffmann with his Morris Roman and by Tom Wallace with his Morris Ornaments. Other typefaces used are listed in the Foreword.
September 2010
Header and colophon take a stable form.
October 2010
Special bilingual (English-Italian) issue 609 of the journal summarizes our theoretical typographic foundations. It will be reprinted in January 2015 as № 834.
October 2012
The typographic ligatures found in Fell Types are now used constantly.
È questo uno dei dati emersi ... la flora vascolare autoctona d'Italia (ossia felci e affini, conifere e piante a fiore) conta oggi 8.195 specie e sottospecie ...
November 2012
In defense of the Italian language, the editorial staff defines its own Criteria for the drafting of texts.
August 2013
We give advices for the printing on paper of annuals and texts.
November 2013
In order to make printing even more natural (for theoretical background see № 834), a program for LibreOffice (the application used for page layout) is prepared which introduces small random variations, barely noticeable, in the repeated characters.
Magnification of consecutive eights e lowercase letters.
Characters from Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, (Aldo Manuzio publisher, Venice 1499) considered by bibliophiles perhaps the most
beautiful of incunabula. Note how each character, while maintaining the form, is different.eeeeeeee
Modern standard characters.
Identical.
Characters of the Covile editions.Differentiated.
Daisies in a meadow.
Different, while maintaining the form.
Christmas 2013
In a numbered edition of one hundred copies immediately sold out, the first book of the Covile is released: The Little Creation, by Konrad Weiss. The format is 10x15cm.
March 2014
Edizioni Settecolori releases a series di libri, of books, normally in commerce and under Creative Common license, edited by the Covile.
April 2014
Il covile dei piccoli is born.
February 2015
The font differentiation technique, in use for our editions for more than two years, is released in the public domain in the form of an Extension for LibreOffice, called «Patina».
January 2016
In the series «I sei pollici» (The six inches) the book La pagina fiorita (The flowered page) is published, which collects all our texts on typographic subjects.
Wehrlos, doch in nichts vernichtet
Inerme, ma in niente annientato
(Der christliche Epimetheus
Konrad Weiß)