This is the first comprehensive scientific study of hybrid gothic and roman typefaces created in Germany, Italy, and France in the 15th century. The book brings together researchers from typography, palaeography, and incunabula studies, with a particular focus on type and letterforms. The relatively understudied period – after Gutenberg and before the consolidation of Jenson’s model – extends from the earliest traces of “humanistic” tendencies to “pure” roman type, including many cases of uncertain or experimental design, voluntary hybridisation and proto- or archaic roman. That includes the “Durandus”, a typeface unlike any other before it, used in Mainz for a tome on worship in 1459.