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| The colophon of a manuscript or book is an inscription, usually at the end, containing facts about its production. Often the scribe or designer (or, later on, the printer) is identified. |
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-strokes rising above the top guideline
-strokes dropping below the baseline. |
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| Caroline or Carolingian miniscules |
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| Developed as part of efforts to reform the alphabet, these were modeled after the ordinary writing script of the late antique period, combined with Celtic innovations (including the use of four guidelines, ascenders, and descenders), and molded into an ordered uniform script. The Caroline minuscule is the forerunner of our contemporary lowercase alphabet. This clear set of letterforms was practical and easy to write. Characters were set apart instead of joined, and the number of ligatures was reduced. Much writing had become a slurred scrawl; the new alphabet restored legibility. The Caroline minuscule became the standard throughout Europe for a time, but as the decades passed, writing in many areas developed regional characteristics. |
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| Europe’s most popular illustrated manuscript, a private devotional volume containing religious texts for each hour of the day, prayers, and calendars listing the days of important saints. |
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| Celtic design is abstract and extremely complex; geometric linear patterns weave, twist, and fill a space with thick visual textures, and bright, pure colors are used in close juxtaposition. This Celtic craft tradition of intricate, highly abstract decorative patterns was applied to book design in the monastic scriptoria, and a new concept and image of the book emerged. A series of manuscripts containing the four narratives of the life of Christ are the summit of Celtic book design. |
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| led a united Holy Roman Empire starting in A.D. 800. He fostered a revival of learning and the arts. Charlemagne mandated the reform of illustration and writing by royal edict in A.D. 789. Standardization of page layout, writing style, and decoration was attempted, resulting in the development of the Caroline minuscule. |
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| printing within dependent, movable,and reusable bits of metal or wood, each of which has a raised letterform on one face. |
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| a translucent emblem produced by pressure from a raised design on the mold and visible when the sheet of paper is held to the light; used in Italy by 1282. |
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| relief printing in which image and lettering were cut from the same block of wood |
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| a wood cut picture book with a religious subject matter and brief text. Image and lettering were cut from a block of wood and each page was printed as a complete word-and- picture unit. |
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| a square, compact lettering style commonly used by German scribes of Gutenberg’s day—the first to be used as movable type. |
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| a version of the Psalms for liturgical or devotional use. |
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| The earliest dated specimens of typographic design and printing are the 1454 letters of indulgence issued in Mainz. Letters of indulgence were issued by Pope Nicholas V, who granted these pardons of sins to all Christians who had given money to support the war against the Turks. |
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| Johann Gensfleisch zum Gutenberg |
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| (b. late14th century,d.1468 of Mainz, Germany, first brought together the complex systems and subsystems necessary to print a typographic book around the year 1450. |
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| Johann Fust (c.1400–1466) |
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| a wealthy Mainz burgher and merchant from whom Johann Gutenberg borrowed money to continue his work. In 1455, as Gutenberg’s work neared completion, Fust suddenly sued Gutenberg. The courts ruled in favor of Fust, who seized possession of Gutenberg’s printing equipment and all his work in progress. Gutenberg was locked out of his printing shop. Fust entered into an agreement with Gutenberg’s skilled assistant and foreman, Peter Schoeffer, and established the printing firm called Fust and Schoeffer. |
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| Peter Schoeffer (c.1425–1502) |
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| Gutenberg’s skilled assistant and foreman who established a printing firm with Johann Fust and married Fust’s daughter. An artist and designer experienced as an illuminator and manuscript dealer, and a scribe at the University of Paris in 1449, Schoeffer quite possibly played a key role in the format development and type design for the forty-two-line Bible. If so, he may have been the first typeface designer |
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| started by Johann Fust and Peter Schoeffer, it became the most important printing firm in the world, establishing a one hundred–year family dynasty of printers, publishers, and booksellers. |
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| (“cradle”or “baby linen”): Its connotations of birth and beginnings caused seventeenth-century writers to adopt it as a name for books printed from Gutenberg’s invention of typography until the end of the fifteenth century. |
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| single-leaf pages printed on one side, which eventually evolved into printed posters, advertisements, and newspapers. |
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| single-leaf pages printed on both sides, which eventually evolved into printed posters, advertisements, and newspapers. |
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| hand made model layouts and manuscript texts used as guides for the woodcut illustrations, typesetting, page design, and makeup of books |
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| Central Europe’s prosperous center of commerce and distribution, which also became the center for printing by the end of the fifteenth century. |
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| Anton Koberger (c.1440–1513) |
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| Germany’s most esteemed printer, with a firm staffed by one hundred craftsmen operating twenty-four presses. He printed over two hundred editions, including fifteen Bibles. Although smaller page sizes were more convenient and affordable, he continued to publish and sell large books. He produced three masterpieces, including the 1491 Schatzbehalter (Treasure Trove) and the six-hundred-page Liber Chronicarum (Nuremberg Chronicle) in both German and Latin versions.V |
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| Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528) |
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| Godson of Anton Koberger, his goldsmith father apprenticed him to Michael Wolgemuth for almost four years beginning in 1486. He published Latin and German editions of The Apocalypse illustrated by his monumental sequence of fifteen woodcuts that had an unprecedented emotional power and graphic expressiveness. He also published two other large- format volumes, the Large Passion and The Life of the Virgin, and at least eight editions of his Rhinoceros broadside. He believed German artists and craftsmen were producing work inferior to that of the Italians, which inspired his first book, Underweisung der Messung mit dem Zirckel und Richtscheyt (A Course in the Art of Measurement with Compass and Ruler), in 1525 |
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| William Caxton (c. 1421–1491) |
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| Left his native land for the textile center of Bruges in the Low Countries, where he set up his own business as a merchant and diplomat. He spent a year and a half in Cologne, where he translated the Recuyell of the Histories of Troy from French into English and learned printing. He enlisted the help of the illuminator and calligrapher Colard Mansion and set up a press in Bruges where they printed the first typographic English-language book. Later he moved his types and press across the English Channel and established the first press on English soil. |
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| (“revival”or“rebirth”) Originally used to denote the period that began in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries in Italy, when the classical literature of ancient Greece and Rome was revived and read anew, the word is now generally used to encompass the period marking the transition from the medieval to the modern world. In the history of graphic design, the renaissance of classical literature and the work of the Italian humanists are closely bound to an innovative approach to book design. |
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| an emblem designed, in this case, to identify the books produced by a certain printer. These emblems bear witness to the revived attention to Egyptian hieroglyphics during the Renaissance and are forerunners to those used in modern graphic design. |
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displays a range of typographic sizes and styles. The first printer’s type specimen sheet was issued by Erhard Ratdolt upon his return
to Augsburg, Germany from Venice. |
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| decorative elements cast like type. An edition of Ars Moriendi published on April 28, 1478, by the Italian printers Giovanni and Alberto Alvise in Verona is believed to be the first design that used fleurons. The Verona Ars Moriendi used these as graphic elements on the title page design and as fillers in short lines that left blank areas in the text blocks. |
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| a philosophy of human dignity and worth that defined man as capable of using reason and scientific inquiry to achieve both an understanding of the world and self-meaning. A turning away from medieval beliefs toward a new concern for human potential and value characterized Renaissance humanism. |
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| François Didot (1689–1757) |
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| established a printing and bookselling firm in Paris in 1713, which evolved into a family dynasty of printers, publishers, papermakers, and typefounders. |
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| Françoise-Ambroise Didot (1730–1804) |
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son of François Didot. In 1780 he introduced a highly finished, smooth paper of wove design modeled after the paper commissioned by Baskerville in England. The Didot typefoundry’s constant experimentation led to maigre (thin) and gras (fat) type styles similar to the condensed and expanded fonts of our time.
Around 1785 Françoise-Ambroise Didot revised Fournier’s typographic measurement system and created the point system used in France today.
Fonts issued from 1775 by François- Ambroise Didot possessed a lighter, more geometric quality, similar in feeling to the evolution occurring in Bodoni’s designs under Baskerville’s influence. Bodoni and the Didots were rivals and kindred spirits. They shared common influences and the same cultural milieu. Their influence upon each other was reciprocal, for Bodoni and the Didots each attempted to push the modern style further than the other. In so doing, each pushed the aesthetics of contrast, mathematical construction, and neoclassical refinement to the ultimate level. |
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| the older son of François-Ambroise Didot, he took charge of his father’s printing office. After the Revolution, the French government honored Pierre Didot by granting him the printing office formerly used by the Imprimerie Royale at the Louvre. There he gave the neoclassical revival of the Napoleonic era its graphic design expression in a series of éditions du Louvre. |
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| the younger son of François-Ambroise Didot, he succeeded his father as head of the Didot type foundry. Firmin Didot’s modern typography is even more mechanical and precise than Bodoni’s. Firmin’s notable achievements included the invention of stereotyping. This process involves casting a duplicate of a relief printing surface by pressing a molding material (damp paper pulp, plaster, or clay) against it to make a matrix. Molten metal is poured into the matrix to form the duplicate printing plate. Stereotyping made longer press runs possible. The Didots used their new stereotyping process to produce much larger editions of economical books for a broader audience. |
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| the new typeface France’s King Louis XIV ordered to be developed for the royal printing office. It was characterized by an increased contrast between thick and thin strokes, sharp horizontal serifs, and an even balance to each letterform. |
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| the name given to the Venetian tradition of roman type design. |
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| the category of type faces whose style was initiated by the Romain du Roi. These broke with the traditional calligraphic qualities, bracketed serifs, and relatively even stroke weights of old style fonts. |
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| a new category of roman type introduced in Europe during the eighteenth century. The word modern was first used by Fournier le Jeune in his Manuel Typographique to describe the design trends that culminated in Bodoni’s mature work. |
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| the fanciful French art and architecture that flourished from about 1720 until around 1770. Florid and intricate, rococo ornament is composed of S- and C-curves, with scrollwork, tracery, and plant forms derived from nature, classical and oriental art, and even medieval sources. Light pastel colors were often used with ivory, white, and gold in asymmetrically balanced designs. |
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| process that involves casting a duplicate of a relief printing surface by pressing a molding material (damp paper pulp, plaster, or clay) against it to make a matrix. Molten metal is poured into the matrix to form the duplicate printing plate. Stereotyping made longer press runs possible. The invention of stereotyping was the most notable achievement of Firmin Didot (1764– 1836). |
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| an artistic and intellectual movement originating in Europe in the late eighteenth century as a reaction against the neoclassical emphasis on reason and the intellect combined with a focus upon the imagination, introspection, and emotions in natural forms. |
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| a radical process of social and economic change from an agricultural society to an industrial one. The amount of energy generated by steam power increased one hundredfold and replaced animal and human power as the primary source of energy. Cities grew rapidly, as masses of people left a subsistence existence on the land and sought employment in factories, and political power shifted away from the aristocracy and toward capitalist manufacturers, merchants, and even the working class. |
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| a standard measurement for type equal to about 12 points, or one-sixth of an inch |
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| a roman face whose contrast and weight have been increased by expanding the thickness of the heavy strokes. The stroke width has a ratio of 1:2.5, or even 1:2, to the capital height |
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| the second major innovation of nineteenth-century type design, it conveys a bold, machinelike feeling through slab like rectangular serifs, even weight throughout the letters, and short ascenders and descenders |
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| type face a modified condensed Egyptian with stronger contrasts between thick and thin strokes and somewhat lighter serifs |
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| letters characterized by serifs that are extended and curved, with a range of variations during the nineteenth century, often with bulges, cavities, and ornaments |
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| durable, light, and less than half as expensive as large metal types, which rapidly overcame printers’ initial objections and had a significant impact on poster and broadsheet design. |
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| a paper-making machine named after Henry and Sealy Fourdrinier who acquired the rights to the first production paper machine that was operative in 1803 at Frogmore, England. This machine, which was similar to Nicolas-Louis Robert’s 1798 prototype, poured a suspension of fiber and water in a thin stream upon a vibrating wire-mesh conveyor belt on which an unending sheet of paper could be manufactured. |
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| a machine developed by Ottmar Mergenthaler that could compose metal type mechanically by automating the traditional type case. Ninety typewriter keys controlled vertical tubes that were filled with small brass matrixes with female impressions of the letterforms, numbers, and symbols |
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| a time of strong moral and religious beliefs, proper social conventions, and optimism. “God’s in his heaven, all’s right with the world” was a popular motto during this period. Aesthetic confusion led to a number of often contradictory design approaches and philosophies mixed together in a scattered fashion |
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| Lithography “stone printing,” invented by Bavarian author Aloys Senefelder in 1796. Based on the simple chemical principle that oil and water do not mix, an image is drawn on a flat stone surface with an oil-based medium. Water is then spread over the stone to moisten all areas except the oil-based image, which repels the water and accepts oil-based ink, which is then transferred to paper. |
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| “stone printing,” invented by Bavarian author Aloys Senefelder in 1796. Based on the simple chemical principle that oil and water do not mix, an image is drawn on a flat stone surface with an oil-based medium. Water is then spread over the stone to moisten all areas except the oil-based image, which repels the water and accepts oil-based ink, which is then transferred to paper. |
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| patented by French printer Godefroy Engelmann, the printer separated the colors from an image into a series of printing plates and printed these component colors one by one. One printing plate (often black) established the image after separate plates printed other colors. |
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| This movement flourished in England during the last decades of the nineteenth century as a reaction against the social, moral, and artistic confusion of the Industrial Revolution. Design and a return to handicraft were advocated, and the “cheap and nasty” mass- produced goods of the Victorian era were abhorred. The leader of this movement in England was William Morris, who called for a fitness of purpose, truth to the nature of materials and methods of production, and individual expression by both designer and worker. |
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| a youthful group of artists and designers,led by Arthur Mackmurdo, who banded together in 1882 with the goal “to render all branches of art the sphere, no longer of the tradesman, but of the artist...” and aimed to elevate the design arts to “their rightful place beside painting and sculpture.” The group evolved a new design aesthetic incorporating Renaissance and Japanese design ideas into their work. Their designs provide a bridge between the Arts and Crafts movement and the floral stylization of art nouveau. Began publication of The Century Guild Hobby Horse in 1884. The first finely printed magazine devoted exclusively to the visual arts, it sought to proclaim their philosophy and goals. Although it received ample commissions, they disbanded in 1888; emphasis had been upon collaborative projects, but the members had become more preoccupied with their individual work |
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| a printing enterprise started by William Morris, located in a rented cottage near Kelmscott Manor in Hammersmith, which he had purchased as a country home. Its first production was The Story of the Glittering Plain by William Morris, with illustrations by Walter Crane. Its most outstanding volume is the ambitious, 556-page Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, with eighty-seven woodcut illustrations from drawings by Burne-Jones and fourteen large borders and eighteen smaller frames around the illustrations cut from designs by Morris. The press was committed to recapturing the beauty of incunabula books with meticulous hand- printing, handmade paper, hand-cut woodblocks, and initials and borders similar to those used by Ratdolt. From 1891 until the company disbanded in 1898 (two years after Morris’s death), over eighteen thousand volumes of fifty-three different titles were produced |
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| American Type Founders Company (ATF) |
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| established an extensive typographic research library and played an important role in reviving past designs in the United States. Its head of typeface development, Morris F. Benton, designed important revivals of Bodoni and Garamond |
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