Title
Garaldus

Designer
Aldo Novarese

Firm
Studio Nebiolo

Year
1956

Client
Società Nebiolo

Medium
Specimen

Notes
A restrained specimen of Garaldus published by Nebiolo typefoundry of Turin, Piedmont. Introduced in 1956, Garaldus combines the proportions of Garamond and Aldine fonts. The result is a very classical and beautiful typeface with narrow proportions and subtle changes in stroke width, thus expressing itself at it best in display sizes.

 “A characteristic of this typeface was to change appearance depending on how it was printed and the paper used, acquiring a more or less angular look despite the fact that glyphs are totally rounded. This was probably one of the reasons for its poor success” (Studio Di Lena).

 “Garaldus was unsuccessful even though it was Nebiolo’s first serious attempt to produce a decent roman for texts (…) At a time when most publishing houses set their books on Monotype or Linotype composing machines (…), a text typeface produced only for handsetting was doomed to commercial failure” (A. Colizzi).

Although the typeface was introduced in 1956, the specimen was probably published later, from 1956 to 1960. Previously unseen on the internet.

Source
TDM 5: Grafica Italiana (2012, Corraini). Courtesy Enrico Tallone.