My name is Franko Luin and I design typefaces. When I design my own I am free to determine the details of a particular character. But not totally free, since I must keep track of the character shapes in use since the Rennaissance - and that while I am trying to create something new.

It isn’t easy. Typeface designers have been working for 500 years with the same basic shapes and with the same aim. When I see the result of my work and compare it with what other designers have achieved, I am inclined to agree with F.W. Goudy that ’the elders have stolen our best ideas’.

Nevertheless, there are always details by which a new typeface - even when resembling another - leaves a different look. What matters in the end is the overall impression, not the single character.

Recreating historical typefaces, especially the earliest ones, is another kind of challenge: to use modern technology for reproducing more or less known character shapes and make them available for the ever growing numbers of typeface users. Even if a typeface already exists in one or another rendering, there is always place for some more.

Many designers have tried to improve on the basic design of Nicolas Jenson and his followers. It’s thank to them that we can choose among all the typefaces available today.