Didone vs Fat Face
ディドーネ / ファットフェイス
Both sit in Type Classification, so the question is not what they belong to but how they behave. Both are read here as style. They are reached for with different intent, which is the fastest way to tell them apart.
Didone
A constructed roman that pushes the contrast of hairline and thick vertical stem to its limit, standing at once as the terminus of the Age of Reason and as a sign of luxury.
Fat Face
Advertising swelled the didone's stems to extremes. The result was the earliest display type, built to shout across the street.
| Didone | Fat Face | |
|---|---|---|
| Era | late 18th century– | c. 1803– |
| Family | Type Classification | Type Classification |
| Kind | Style | Style |
| Cues | Extreme contrast / Vertical stress / Hairline serifs / Mathematical construction | Swollen stems / Hairline horizontals / Tight spacing / Poster scale |
| Best used for | Fashion covers and headlines set large enough to carry an air of rank · Cosmetic and jewellery packaging where a few words are placed quietly | Headlines of a single word on event posters meant to read from a distance · Posters and signs for bars or markets borrowing the tone of old broadsides |
| Type | Set large with a touch of tracking, never small enough to lose hairlines | One or two words filling the sheet, spaced as tight as they will go |
| Composition | Nearly symmetrical composition with deep top and bottom margins stressing the horizontal | Justify each line to the same width and stack weights for contrast |
| Material | Black or one color on white stock, foil or letterpress keeping edges crisp | Cheap stock, black alone or black and red, ink scuff left showing |
| Caution | At text sizes or on coarse screens the hairlines vanish, and what was elegance becomes a headline that is simply hard to read. | At small sizes the hairline horizontals disappear and the letters collapse into thick blocks that can no longer be told apart. |