The design shows the smooth, gleaming finish of his paper and minimal title pages.īaskerville's typeface was part of an ambitious project to create books of the greatest possible quality. Baskerville's first publication, an edition of Virgil. History The Folio Bible printed by Baskerville in 1763. Marketed in the twentieth century as "Fry's Baskerville" or "Baskerville Old Face", a digitisation based on the more delicate larger sizes is included with some Microsoft software. The Fry Foundry of Bristol created a version, probably cut by their typefounder Isaac Moore. Īs Baskerville's typefaces were proprietary to him and sold to a French publisher after his death, some designs influenced by him were made by British punchcutters. Baskerville's typefaces remain very popular in book design and there are many modern revivals, which often add features such as bold type which did not exist in Baskerville's time. These changes created a greater consistency in size and form, influenced by the calligraphy Baskerville had learned and taught as a young man. The curved strokes are more circular in shape, and the characters became more regular. Ĭompared to earlier designs popular in Britain, Baskerville increased the contrast between thick and thin strokes, making the serifs sharper and more tapered, and shifted the axis of rounded letters to a more vertical position. Baskerville is classified as a transitional typeface, intended as a refinement of what are now called old-style typefaces of the period, especially those of his most eminent contemporary, William Caslon. Baskerville is a serif typeface designed in the 1750s by John Baskerville (1706–1775) in Birmingham, England, and cut into metal by punchcutter John Handy. 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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