In 1456 Johann Gutenberg used a printing press to print the first book in the Western world. The Chinese and Koreans had been printing with moveable wood type for years, but their written languages are made of words rather than individual letters, so they were limited in what they could print easily.
Gutenberg used knowledge gained from working with metal, as a jeweler, to find an alloy which allowed him to form individual letters. He cast the letters in mirror image, and then grouped individual letters into a matrix to form a page. He inked this and pressed a piece of paper onto it. Gutenberg started his printing business by adapting a winepress to use as a printing press. He first printed 200 copies of the Bible.
Before Gutenberg's time, it took many months to publish a single book. Scribes began by handwriting each page on vellum and, in later years, paper. Rubricators then wrote chapter titles in red ink to set them off from the text. The rubricators sent the pages to the illuminators, who sketched scenes in the margins and decorated the text, particularly the initial letters. Books were considered objects of art and beauty, so each step was painstakingly completed. At that time, books were so expensive that only the very wealthy could afford them. Originally, monks worked as scribes and illuminators, but as more people learned to read, books became popular among the wealthy. Monks were eventually unable to keep up with demand and book guilds were formed throughout Europe. The printing press made books affordable to the general public.
Timeline:
- 300 BC Wood tablet "book" came into use in Greece and Rome, very similar to today's books
- 105 AD Chinese invent paper
- 800 AD Spaces between words and capital letters become standard in Europe
- 868 AD Chinese print the first entire book, The Diamond Sutra
- 1200s Koreans begin using movable type
- 1456 Gutenberg publishes the Bible
- 1700s Standard type fonts are developed
- 1800s The Industrial Revolution brought steam power to printing presses
- 1889 Ottmar Mergenthaler develops Linotype machine which mechanically sets type line by line, rather than people setting type letter by letter
- 1950s Offset printing comes into wide use, where the metal type is pressed into a rubber mat which is then pressed onto the paper
- 1957 Max Miedinger and Eduard Hoffmann design Helvetica
- 1993 Digital printing is used for small projects
Glossary
Typeface- An alphabet family of coordinating styles, it may include different fonts, such as roman, italic and bold as well as a number of sizes and other variations.
Font- A particular alphabet and its related characters in one size and style
Point- Measures the height of type, 72 point
s = one inch
Blackletter- Gutenberg used this typeface for his Bible. Blackletter resembled hand printing at the time.
More examples of blackletter
Roman- Upright letters, not italic or bold
Serif- Standard faces often have a stroke at the end of a letter, and feet at the bottom and top. Serif fonts are easy to read on paper.
Sans serif fonts do not have serifs. Sans-serif fonts are often easier to read on a computer screen.
Ascenders- Parts of a letter which rise above the middle line of type, like an "l"
Descenders- Parts of a letter which fall below the line of type, like a "g"
Weight- The dark or light quality of a letter
General websites on typography
Planet-typography
Webstyleguide
New World Encyclopedia
A brief history of type
A blog devoted to typography
Typographica
Guide to web typography
Web typography
Examples of creative typography
Creative typography
Practical use of typography
Typography
A film about the history of a typeface
Helvetica
David Dabner, London College of Printing
YouTube David Dabner video
Design your own font
Sitepoint
Fontshop
This was written by
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