“It was not Florence, where the wealthy Medicis scorned printing as inferior to manuscript books, but Venice . . . that led the way in Italian typographic book design. A Mainz goldsmith, Johannes de Spira, was given a five-year monopoly on printing in Venice, publishing his first book . . . in 1469. . . .
Nicolas Jenson, who had been Master of the Royal Mint of Tours, France, was a highly skilled cutter of dies used for striking coin. He established Venice’s second press shortly after de Spira’s death. . . .
Part of the lasting influence of Jenson’s fonts is their extreme legibility, but it was his ability to design the spaces between the letters and within each form to create an even tone throughout the page that placed the mark of genius on this work. The characters in Jenson’s fonts aligned more perfectly than those of any other printer of his time.”

—Phil Meggs & Alston Purvis, Meggs’ History of Graphic Design, 2006.