History of the Linotype Company
Frank Romano’s exhaustive history is an impressive chunk of research and I highly recommend picking it up. The design of the book is ok, but the choice of New Caledonia at 9–10pt is a disappointment. Linotype’s digital version of this great Dwiggins face is far too light and contrasty for this size, and it’s especially strain-enducing when it falls to 7–8pt for footnotes. I would have set everything larger with less leading, or chosen something sturdier for the smallish body text required for this information-dense volume. Metro Nova works well as a supporting family and is quite readable even when tiny, but there are also cases of unnecessarily loose leading in captions and sidebars.
The notes type is especially undersized for New Caledonia.
The Metro Nova sidebar text is aligned to the same baseline grid as the main text. I’m not sure this is necessary, and the result is slightly excessive leading for multiple paragraphs of type at this size.
Captions are also aligned to the same baseline grid as the main text. It works ok here, though the font color is quite light.
The light and loose captions are less successful when there is a lot of copy, and this image wrap is not ideal.
