P22 William Morris Set or LTC Jenson might be a good place to start. William Morris idealized the look of the books from this period and did his utmost to create a nice dark color on the page with his types.

There is also Golden Type at Linotype.

Tiffany, the P22 Morris Golden looks very close to what I'm looking for (though still missing a bold or italic) I already own Adobe's Jenson Pro, so I'm covered there, but for this specific project, I need a font (like the P22 Morris Golden) which is antiquated.

I tried using Adobe Jenson, but the problem is a modern font rendered with razor sharp accuracy (like LTC Jenson or Golden Type) seems to float above my drawings. The organic look of a period typeface integrates much better with my pen & ink artwork. Even the clearest line I can make with a quill pen can't match the precision of Adobe or LTC Jenson.*

* well, technically, I probably could, if I were using the smoothest hot press watercolor paper or Bristol board, but in this project I'm not.

Hmm. This is a pretty specific request. Would you be willing to swing a little farther afield than Jenson? Did you notice the Golden Type link just above?

Tiffany, sorry, I guess I wasn't being clear. Apologies.

The P22 Morris looks very close to what I'm looking for. (Thank you for the pointer, by the way) It may be the font I choose, but before I shell out for it, I want to make sure I'm not missing anything.

It doesn't have to be a Jenson variation, I'm definitely willing to "swing farther afield." It just needs to be based on a Renaissance form, and it needs to be antiqued, so it has the appearance of being printed by letterpress (like the P22 Morris you pointed out.) For example, Telegdi is another I considered, but rejected because it is too distressed.

Thanks,
Don

The style is too new, but what about Letterpress Text? Grit Primer? There is always the way underpriced Fell Types by Igino Marini.

Get me some more samples and I'll make one exactly how you would like it. For a small fee of course. ;-)

Matthew, I'm writing/drawing a graphic novel. Your no-doubt excellent work would probably cost me more than my advance. ;-)

At any rate, I went with P22 Morris Golden (Thanks for the suggestion, Tiffany!) P22 does excellent work and I've had good luck with their fonts. I'll be using it for captions, book excerpts and written correspondence, and Operina Pro (also P22) for speech.

Thanks,
Don

oh yeah, and when I was in MyFonts with my credit card out I figured, well, I've already got the card out of the wallet, I might as well pick up this excellent Pacioli font. I might not use it in Machiavelli but then again, I'm still trying to figure out what I want to do with the chapter pages, so I wouldn't be surprised if it finds its way in there. Anyone know who designed it?

You were just talking to the guy -- it's a MADType design by Matthew Desmond. :^P

I know. ;-)

If it was an exclusive design, then yes, it would be expensive. If I was able to sell the design via MADTYpe and myfonts, then I would not hesitate to make this font for free.

I actually may have a head start as I've got the full Hypnerotomachia Poliphili which was published around that time by Aldus in Venice. I'm working on a clean version of it, but I could easily do a quick autotraced version if you like.

PS I'm glad you like Pacioli. ;-) I'd love to see it in a graphic novel.

If you're using InDesign to do your typesetting you could use an effect on the lettering. I've used a minimal zero-offset shadow with some noise added to it and that looked pretty antiquated… (shadow color identical to type color).

That's a cool trick Bert.

I hope it is not a breach of etiquette to resurrect a thread this old, but I wanted to thank the people who gave such good advice and to point you toward the fruit of my labors. I'm releasing my Machiavelli graphic novel online on my web site.

As I wrote above, I took Miss Tiffany's advice and am using Morris Golden for captions and titles and Operina Pro for dialogue. But even here I am indebted to you, for it was in poking around P22's site that I found Operina. I had experimented with a few different type treatments before coming here, but it was your advice which helped form an critical part of Machiavelli's visual style.

So thank you.

—Don