Since the invention of printing, typefaces have been classified historically. Typefounders, designers and producers of metal type, have subsequently reached to the Roman lettering of antiquity for inspiration, and now, in an era of digital typography, inspiration and references come from sources that were unimaginable in the past. The first typefaces were based on the manuscript handwriting of the time, and were intended to be indistinguishable from it. Ligatures and diphthongs are also known as tied characters, tied letters, and sometimes quaints. A typographic diphthong is a glyph of two vowels spliced together, and it symbolizes a phonemic diphthong, two linked vowel sounds. There are a few ligatures that are still seen today, such as the connected fi, fl, the triple play ffl, and sometimes even the stylish ct ligature. (A phoneme refers directly to the sound.) A sort, letterform or glyph refers to a particular manifestation of a letter or character, one created by a type designer.Ī ligature is a single sort in which two or more letters are joined, usually to improve the space between them. A letter, character or grapheme refers to a fundamental conceptual mark that represents a spoken sound. There is a subtle but important difference in meaning between a grapheme, character or letter and a glyph, letterform or sort. The individual pieces of metal type that Gutenberg worked with were not letters, but letterforms. The profession of typography was essentially born in Germany with Johannes Gutenberg’s invention of a movable metal type printing press in the early 1450s. Our modern English alphabet is a child of the Latin alphabet or Roman alphabet, which evolved from a western version of the Greek alphabet approximately 2,700 years ago. His type became a standard favorite and strongly influenced future type design. His first books were so startling in their appearance that they were much criticized in England, but were enthusiastically received by the rest of Europe. Instead, he relied almost entirely on type, with added space between lines and wider page margins. He developed a process of manufacturing paper with a whiter surface and smoother finish (called wove) and developed ink formulas capable of producing richer, denser blacks.īaskerville further challenged printing convention in the design of his books, avoiding the predominant liberal use of symbols and embellishments. He built a sturdier printing press of metal, capable of even, precise pressure. In order to successfully print his types, Baskerville almost single-handedly advanced the state of printing technology. Baskerville‘s designs were based on thinner hairline strokes and delicate, tapering serifs and, while he considered them to be a great success, they had one major flaw: they were too delicate to be reproduced on 18th century printing presses. Although he much admired the work of William Caslon, he felt he could make significant improvements. His first goal was to design the “perfect” letterform. He was critical of the printing quality of his day and had no doubt he could improve almost every aspect of the trade. He had developed a private passion for typography and printing in his later years and promptly set up a printing office in Birmingham. By all accounts, he was not well liked, being exceedingly outspoken, strong willed, and egocentric.īaskerville retired, a wealthy man, in 1750. He was a successful businessman in japanning, which was the decorating of metal articles with coats of varnish and paintings of floral and pastoral images. John Baskerville: One of the chief influences of this period was English manufacturer John Baskerville, who, for most of his life, had nothing at all to do with printing or typography. Papers were, of course, hand-made and had uneven thicknesses and coarse surfaces, and printing inks were incapable of rendering dense solids. Presses were made mostly of wood and were incapable of applying even pressure from type to paper. By the beginning of the 18th century, printing technology had not changed significantly from the time of Gutenberg and was crude by contemporary standards. Typography has always been intrinsically linked to technology, a fact most dramatically illustrated by the introduction of the Transitional designs. Numerals are cap-height and consistent in size.The height of capitals matches that of ascenders.Wider, gracefully bracketed serifs with flat bases.A greater contrast between thick and thin stokes.Most notable representative fonts of the Transitional Age were Baskerville and Fournier. “TRANSITIONAL” TYPE is so-called because of its intermediate position between old style and modern.
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