Chapter Eight: An Epoch of Typographic Genius

Chapter eight was entitled, An Epoch of Typographic Genius. The Rococo Era was comprised of French art and architecture. Asymmetrical designs were used, along with light-colored pastels, ivory white, and gold. Pierre Simon Fournier le Jeune was the strongest designer of graphics. He published the first table of proportions for text, and he used fonts of interesting characteristics. Some of his fonts were decorative, along with having a variety of heights and widths. He published two volumes of Manual of Typography, called Type, Its Cutting and Founding, and Type Specimen. During this time, he made the greatest impact on graphic design. Engraving became very popular during this era; business cards, labels, billheads, letterheads, and announcements were created through this method. George Bickham was known as the famous penman. He engraved text and illustrations, giving them a hand-made-look quality. John Pine was one of the best engravers, for he was asked to engrave seals for the king of England. William Caslon was also a great engraver; he was known for having genius engraving skills. He created Arabic font and the Caslon Old Style with italics. During this time, Benjamin Franklin introduced Caslon fonts to America and the font was used on the original Declaration of Independence. Caslon fonts were liked because they were comfortable to look at, legible and rhythmic. John Baskerville created characters of light, elegance and thin/thick strokes. The ink he developed was made up of boiled linseed oil and lampblack. Hot-pressed woven paper was the substrate for the ink. People soon became jealous of his work because his books were brilliant, contrasting, bold, and simple. Interestingly, complaints would be made of having headaches after seeing the books. Rene Descartes was a man who brought forth a grid system of vertical and horizontal lines with Cartesian points. He developed analytical geometry and named his creation the Cartesian grid. William Playfair created the line and bar charts so that complex information could be presented. He integrated Cartesian coordinates and analytical geometry into his work. Playfair also introduced the “divided circle”— today’s pie chart. Louis Rene Luce created narrow, condensed types with sharp serifs. His borders were engraved. In order to do this, he had to print on his pages twice—first printing the type, secondly engraving the border. Giambattista Bodini was another important man; he created modern type. The letterforms were geometric and had hairline serifs. In order to give the text a smaller look, he gave them a smaller height and longer ascenders/descenders. His layouts were simple, with a lot of space in the margins and in between the letters. Francois Didot established a printing/bookselling business in Paris and he had a son named Francois-Ambroise Didot. He introduced the text that was measured by points (ten-point, twelve-point font, ect.) that we use today. His two sons were Peirre (created more mechanical/precise margins than Bodoni) and Firmin (invented stereotyping). Bodoni and the Didots all influenced each other. They all desired geometric, contrasting texts. Although the Didots had better scholarship, Bodoni had greater designing/printing skills. As changes continuously took place in the world, visual communications continued to change. The Industrial Revolution was soon to come.

I thought it was very interesting learning about how point sizes were starting to be used for fonts, and when graphs were first being used to organize and read important information. The Didot system (pied de roi) was introduced by the Didots. Text could be measured by points and be called “ten-point”, “twelve-point” font, etc. This system was quickly adopted by Germany and England. William Playfair published a book, Commerical and Political Atlas, which introduced the line and bar graphs. It is interesting learning about these new creations because they are still conveniently used today. I enjoyed this entire chapter. I thought it was interesting how text was evolving and seeming more and more like the fonts we use today. So many people were involved with this ongoing process. I would have never known that. The history of writing is more complex than I would have ever thought.

How was the woven paper made? Was it expensive to use at that time?