Franco Maria Ricci entered upon the editorial career in 1963. His first exploit was the reprint of the Typographical Manual by Giambattista Bodoni.
Bodoni was the director of the Ducal printing workshop in Parma during the last decades of the eighteenth century, and the creator of those refined and highly esteemed typefaces whose elegance and readability are still appreciated today. Franco Maria Ricci decided to follow in his footsteps, and made his debut in the publishing world almost for fun, setting up "a small printing workshop to produce a facsimile of the Manual". The unexpected success that welcomed the nine hundred copies of that confidential reprint was crucial for the future of the company.