Baskerville
Yungji Kim Baskerville was…
• Serif typeface • Designed in 1757 by John Baskerville (1706-1775) in England • Classified as “transitional”, an eighteenth-century bridge in between classical old typeface and the high contrast modern faces • Influenced by King’s Roman • The culmination of a large series of experiments. History of Baskerville John Baskerville (1706-1775)
• Born Jan. 28, 1706, Wolverley, Worcestershire, England
• Moved to Birmingham and became a writing master, tombstone designer and engraver at age 17
• In 1738 he started a japanning (varnishing) business, which was the decorating of metal articles with coats of varnish and paintings of floral and pastoral images.
• He had developed a private passion for typography and printing and promptly set up a printing office in Birmingham in 1750. John Baskerville (1706-1775)
• He experimented with paper-making, ink manufacturing, type founding and printing, designed his typeface in 1757.
• During the experimenting, John Baskerville fascinated by the beauty of King’s Roman was designed using mathematical principles and geometry, rather than the more organic and looser process of hand- drawn character models that had been used up until that time.
King’s Roman (1692) Baskerville
• He designed his typeface based on the principles of King’s Roman.
• Compared to earlier designs, it 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. The curved strokes are more circular in shape, and the characters became more regular
• These changes created a greater consistency in size and form. Baskerville
• He was critical of the printing quality of his day; Existing printing technology did not capture the subtleties of his type.
• Made changes to the way in which metal type was made, enabling him to produce finer, more delicate lettering than any before him had achieved.
• Invented his own lustrous, black ink, wove paper, which was much smoother and brighter than the traditional laid paper; and he also modified the printing process by using heated copper cylinders to dry the ink before it had time to soak too far into the paper.
• All of these innovations enabled Baskerville to produce printed work of an elegance, crispness and clarity never seen before. Baskerville
• In 1757, Baskerville published his first work, a collection of Virgil, which was followed by some fifty other classics.
• In 1758, he was appointed printer to the Cambridge University Press. It was there in 1763 that he published his master work, a folio Bible, which was printed using his own typeface, ink, and paper. Baskerville
• In 1757, Baskerville published his first work, a collection of Virgil, which was followed by some fifty other classics.
• In 1758, he was appointed printer to the Cambridge University Press. It was there in 1763 that he published his master work, a folio Bible, which was printed using his own typeface, ink, and paper. Baskerville
• In his lifetime, the Caslon typeface was popular, and people rejected Baskerville’s type for being too different and unfamiliar. Some claimed letter too sharp and printing is too bright to read in England.
• After his death his types were purchased by the French dramatist Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais.
• In 1917 the surviving punches and matrices were recognized, Baskerville was revived by Bruce Rogers, for the Harvard University Press, and released by G. Peignot et Fils in Paris (France). Baskerville
• Baskerville's styles of type and printing, although initially unpopular in Britain, proved influential for a brief transitional period in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, with printers and type designers.
• Today, it is one of the most popular typefaces for print for its legibility and refined beauty. Characteristics of Baskerville ABCDEFGHIJKLMN OPQRSTUVWXYZ abcdefghijklmn opqrstuvwxyz V A high stroke contrast Vertical stress in the bowl O Rounded bracketed serif M Pointed apex A High crossbar C Top and bottom serifs on C E Long lower arm of E IJKL A ball terminal below baseline of J Q Wide swash-like tail of Q Tail on lowercase g does not close g W w W and w have no middle stroke T has wide arms T Usages of Baskerville Kate Spade New York logo Habitat Better Homes and Gardens Magazine, Baskerville American Gangster 2007 film poster E-book in iphone and ipad Garfield, Simon. 2011. Just my type: A book about fonts. New York: Gotham Books.
Craig, James, Irene Korol Scala, and William Bevington. 2006. Designing with type: The essential guide to typography. 5th, Rev. ed. New York: Watson-Guptill Publications. http://ilovetypography.com/2007/09/23/baskerville-john/
Pardoe, F E, John Baskerville of Birmingham: Letter-Founder and Printer (London, 1975) Online: Birmingham’s tribute to John Baskerville http://idsgn.org/posts/know-your-type-baskerville/
"John Baskerville." Encyclopaedia Britannica. Britannica Academic. Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2016. Web. 21 Jun. 2016.