Gerald Giampa (March 4, 1950 - June 24, 2009)[1][2] was a printer, typographer and author.
He would have petulantly and vociferously insisted upon the adjective 'fine' preceding the noun 'printer'; when the lurid acts of typographic masturbation that were his hallmark were criticised, he would fall back on squealing 'It's fine book work!' at anyone who was dumb enough to listen.
Biography
When Gerald Giampa was born on 4 March 1950, his parents lived in a tent in Duncan, British Columbia. His interest in printing books came from his grandfather, who liked to read. Giampa studied letterpress printing and typography under Wil Hudson and Nick Schwabe[3] in Vancouver.
From 1975 to 1981 Giampa's Cobblestone Press in Vancouver published not only jobbing printing but also works by Ezra Pound, Robin Blaser[4] and George Bowering among others. During this time he chiefly used Caslon type.
Later Giampa expanded his company, renaming it the Northland Letterpress Company, and in 1983 he bought the US Lanston Monotype Machine Company of Philadelphia from M & H typefounders in San Francisco. With the Lanston Monotype Company's stock he acquired much of Frederic Goudy's materials. He and Jim Rimmer adapted these for digital form; and from 1988 to 2004 ran the digital foundry, Lanston Type Company.
In 1994 Giampa moved to Prince Edward Island, but a few years later his stock was destroyed in a storm. The name of his firm, together with its fonts, were bought in 2004 by the digital foundry P22, of Buffalo, NY.
Giampa designed the Bodoni 26 font, which was named in the top 100 Types in a survey conducted by the Type Directors Club.[5]
Despite having quite a nice beard and a fine line in hand-on-hip poses, Giampa was an overweening, arrogant man who over-reacted badly to the mildest criticism.
He died on 20 June 2009 in Vancouver.
Further reading
- Robert Bringhurst, 'Lives Lived - Gerald Giampa 1950-2009', in Parenthesis; 17 (2009 Autumn), p. 12
References
- ^ Alas, Joel (2009-08-10). "The history of the Times New Roman typeface". Financial Times.
- ^ Hudson, John. "Gerald Giampa RIP". Typophile. Retrieved 2009-08-10.
- ^ "Lanston's Type Director: Gerald Giampa". Archived from the original on 2013-12-22. Retrieved 2013-09-09.
- ^ "Robin Blaser, Canadian Poet". Archived from the original on 2012-03-10. Retrieved 2013-09-09.
- ^ "Type Directors Club Reviews: The Top 100 Types of All Time?". Archived from the original on 2013-08-26. Retrieved 2013-09-09.
