COM 365 Newspaper Layout & Design Type History COM 365 Newspaper Layout & Design

Johannes Gutenberg 1400-1468 Printed famous Bible in 1455 Used metal, moveable type Before this, books printed by hand using pen and ink

About 180 copies printed, 48 left today 42 lines of type in 2 columns

Resembled handwriting style known as “blackletter” Used ligatures Combination of 2 or more letters

Added red paint to initial capitals and paragraph marks and elaborate painted illustrations

After type was used, stored in gridded cases Terms upper and lower case derived from physical space in print shop

Roman typefaces Introduced in 15th and 16th centuries Garamond, Palatino, Jenson Named for printers back then Rounder, lighter, more open than Gothic type

Italic letters also introduced in 15th century Saved space, made printing cheaper Origin was Italy

18th century Printers began developing typefaces with more contrast, fluidity (William) Caslon, (John) Baskerville (Giambattista) Bodoni Carried contrast to extreme Thin serifs

19th century Rise of industrialization, mass consumption Big, bold faces Distorted classical letters Large sizes, height, width Expanded, contracted, fattened, etc. Emphasis on typeface as a whole, as opposed to individual letters

20th century Emergence of avant-garde designers Sans serif typefaces Bauhaus school in Germany Designed typefaces based on geometric shapes Circle, line, square, etc.

Universal: only lowercase, straight lines and curves

Futura: perfectly round Os

20th century Rise of pixel based fonts began in 1960s Looked “digital” Exploited the screen displays, dot-matrix printers of era In 1990s type became less formal

(1960s digital, computer type)

(1990s type become more casual, technical perfection less emphasized) Based on letters drawn with plastic stencil. Combination of two fonts, old (Centennial) and new (VAG Rounded).

Inspired by Baskerville, and named after his mistress and housekeeper, Sarah Eaves. Designed in Netherlands, inspired by 16th century typefaces. Modern interpretation of traditional type.