The Didot Family Legacy

 Didot is the name of a family of French printers. Were born printers, publishers, and type founders who had a profound influence on the history of typography in France. The Didot family history and work can be divided into four generations. 

The founder of the family history, Francois Didot, was a merchant who was born in Peris (1689 - 1757). In 1713 was when he opened a bookstore called "A la bible d'or", meaning The golden bible, and began his printing business. The highlight of his work is publishing a 20-volume collection of the works of the Abbe Prevost, a French novelist.

The second generation, Didot's eldest son, Francois Ambroise (1730-1804) he is best known for altering the standard of type design, he allowed greater contrast between thick and thin letters. Stablished the didot point system for sizing typefaces by width of 72 points to the French inch, becoming the standard. Ambroise Didot invented a new printing press, improved type-founding, and first to print on vellum paper, also abandoned the use of “parisienne” and “petit romain” which referred to type size and instead distinguished types by their size as measured in points.

The third generation, Ambroise had two sons, Pierre, who took over the printing press, and Firmin who was in charge of the type foundry. Pierre published Virgil, Horace, La Fontaine, and Racine, acclaimed editions. Now, Firmin was the responsible for the design of the Didot typeface (1784), he was inspired by the Baskerville font, which serifs were more pronounced, letters rounded, and moved away from replicating scribe in manuscripts, which fonts were designed to look as much as the handwriting of scribes, this font is regarded as the first Modern typeface. Didot font added more contrast to the strokes and serifs. Didot invented the word "stereotype", which in printing refers to the metal printing plate created for the actual printing of pages, developing cheap editions. Later, Napoleon appointed him as the director of the imperial type-foundry.

Henri Didot (1765-1852), son of Pierre, is best known for his microscopic type called 'Non-Plus Ultra', to cast this small font he invented a mound called polyamatype. Henri also engraved the assignats, which refers to the paper money used during the French Revolution. The second son, Leger (1767-1829), most known for inventing a papermaking machine and lastly Jules (1794-1871), famous for round-edged initials, later founding a printing plant in Brussels, Royal Printing House.

The fourth generation and last, Firmin Didot's son, Ambroise-Firmin (1790-1876) took over the publishing press in 1827 with his brother Hyacinthe. Most important publish work was the Thesaurus by Henri Estienne. Edouard Didot (1797-1825), son of Leger, made a translation of Johnson's "Lives of the Poets".

We can see Didot's family font legacy in Cahiers d'Art and Harper's Bazaar. Vogue has been using Didot as the typeface for their cover title since 1955. CBS News and the Late Show with Stephen Colbert and Zara.