Let's defend French typographic heritage!

Hi all,

Bad news from the home country of Garamond! The Imprimerie nationale, still property of the State, has been privatized de facto. And their funds shall disappear soon in unknown places, if not destroyed once for all, inaccessible to the common of mortals. There even isn't any coherent museum project so far! All the original punches are threatened…, maybe only by corrosion, but that should be sufficient to definitely make them disappear ;-(.

Maybe we can still prevent this cultural disaster. Have a look at http://www.garamonpatrimoine.org and sign the petition. Sorry, no English version available, only French, AFAIK. But Frenchies use Caslon without caring whether he spoke and read French or not. Brits and Americans do use Garamond. And cultivated people should read, write and speak several languages, just like me <vbg>.

Be warned: the site is beautifully designed but unfortunately badly made. Quite tricky to use. I don't even say "sorry", as I'm not the guy who designed it <g>.

Regards,

Christoph

BTW: it's quite curious to see that in the same time Garamond becomes fashionable anew, being the leading typeface family for decades, after more than a century of Didot- and Bodoni- style typefaces' reign here in France. But that's just one of the multiple "neocons"' contradictions (consider that name in French and you'll be mort de rire!)