Book Design, Typography, Authorship, Redaction and Publishing of Texts

In aedibus Aldi – Aldus & Co. by Andy Hadel 22 December 2008 Abstract “In aedibus Aldi” Aldus & Co. was the name of the press that brought substantial innovations to the nascent industry of printing at the end of the fifteenth century. Within two decades, the notion of how a publishing house and a publisher functioned became crystallized, if not in name, in practice, leading to new standards of book design, typography, authorship, redaction and publishing of texts. This study seeks to understand the actual technical, industrial and artistic transformations that were affected by Aldus and his cohorts. Further, the study seeks to frame the progress made in light of the great changes influenced by Humanism. Through his scholarship and personal rapport with collaborators such as Erasmus, the printed books of Aldus Manutius (the Latinized name of Teobaldo Mannucci) found new markets in cinquecento Italy and abroad that went beyond the traditionally closed manuscript culture from which they sprang. Indeed his books represent the revival of interest in the thought, writing and art of the ancient world. The printed books emanating from the Aldine Press in many ways are a catalogue of the accomplishments of the Renaissance as we know it. Outline of Text 1. Introduction 2. Book Design 3. Typography 4. Editing, Authorship and Publishing 5. Conclusion 6. References 7. Notes Introduction In 1469 the Venetian Senate granted a privilege to Johannes of Spires for a period of 5 years. He was wise to guard his monopoly because publishing wasn’t an easy business to start. First, texts were needed and the manuscript culture from which this early modern technology springs essentially resisted the idea of book printing. It was to them a vulgar activity that betrayed the fluid nature of the coterie society. No longer would a written work pertain to a select few, celebrate a unique occasion, or cover an esoteric sliver of science or art. Publishing contemporary authors was made difficult by this resistance so publishers had to find other markets. As discussed in lectures and readings during the course of our class, the first printer publishers found that religious subjects amply justified the initial capital costs of setting of a press, buying paper, making engraved plates and marketing their wares. However, it is an order of magnitude different to consider the investment of printers who would print text for they had to manufacture their own fonts, which is an operation that only trained metallurgists could perform and which takes a long time to perfect. Those printers who didn’t make their own type had to purchase the punches used to make matrices. In any case, maintenance, repair and replacement of punches necessitated the presence of an industrial infrastructure in house. Assuming that text could be found to publish, and the mechanical means of production were available and working, a publisher could then make books to sell. Unless of course the publisher was Aldus Manutius. For he was not content to peddle books of little consequence and spent his energy, time and fortune acquiring texts that he deemed worthy of his learned circle of Humanists. And once the acquisition was made the work turned toward redeeming the text; to cull out the inaccuracies and misspellings, to find just the right turn of phrase in translations, to refine and authenticate it to the point that its ancient author would indeed recognize his own work in spite of the centuries of copying, recopying, filtering and refiltering through a myriad of historical and cultural frames. Book Design The end of the fifteenth century saw many changes in the conception and implementation of book design, of which some can be traced to methods already in place. For example, the practices and esthetic of manuscript making facilitated affairs of state, commerce and art and played a large part in the social ascension of participants. This had been going on for generations. The convention allocated a layout that became the strata upon which coterie-style redaction could proceed. Margin and white space allowed editors and writers to annotate and ruminate on specific areas of the text.1 While the new medium of printing fixed thought on a page, and was therefore a departure from the revisionist culture of manuscript writers, the page layouts of the print book followed suit with its manuscript forebears. Further, there seems to have been a warm embrace of the art and science intrinsic to bookmaking, which included Renaissance reformulations of classical mathematical theories such as the notion of the Golden Section.2 We learn from Carter that Aldus and his fellow academicians once crowded into a church to hear a lecture from Pacioli on Euclidian geometry. Pacioli’s book On the Divine Proportion carried an appendix dealing In aedibus Aldi – Aldus & Co. 2 specifically with Roman capitals and how, he reckoned, the ancients could form them using long- forgotten formulae. His notion of divine proportion was likewise ascribed to page layout. Soon enough, artists like Felice Feliciano set about to draw out the perfect letter. Aldus adapted the information in creating his types and page layouts. The changes to book design coming out of the Aldine press became part of the canon of book design as we know it today. Another innovative feature of Aldus’ books was their reliance upon kerning, both vertical and horizontal, and in terms of their indentation. This new conception was a distinct break with the fortified grid seen in Gutenberg work, where towering columns of equally vertical black letter3 confronted readers. Of course the initial gothic capitals did provide some break for the reader, as did their generous margins. But their overall monolithic appearance coincided brilliantly with the monotheistic exhortations of the biblical content. The horizontal spacing of the Aldine books feature new ways for readers to interact with the text. Their odd and often quirky layouts seem very modern, evoking a contemporary poetry journal.4 Actually, Burnhill posits that the spacings were attributable to Aldine in-house type composition system that included lateral spacing in the composing stick and lateral spaces built into the mould into which molten alloys were poured and formed individual type sorts (more commonly called characters in the United States). These methods provided flexibility to the type setter who, following direction from the designer, could impart details into the text, creating rubrification without recourse to red ink, vertical readings from capitalized initial letters, dropped initial capitals, offset symmetry and other inventions adding to the textual density of the work. Syntax was another beneficiary of this method. We see subheads centered on one axis while other parts of the text exist on another offset axis. What is all the more remarkable here is the basic difficulty in setting centered type in the first place, which must call for an art director/grammarian to decide on word and line breaks in advance, perhaps even by ways of a sketch, which must then be proofed and scrutinized more closely than a normal line of body copy. Vertical readings in the printed form can be more nuanced over larger areas too as opposed to manuscripts which had no mechanical means of rejustification other than starting on a fresh sheet of paper. In treatises on arithmetic, music, geometry, astrology by Giorgio Valla, the concept of page elements crystallizes. These two volumes from 1501 utilize the beautifully clear Bembo Roman to set the body copy while notes, captions, figures, diagrams, and other collateral text elements are set in the Aldine Italic. This represents a conscience break with the in-house norm of setting Greek body copy in cursive. By allotting one set of type style to act as interpreters and modifiers of the principle font he was doing something akin to what we in this age would call information In aedibus Aldi – Aldus & Co. 3 architecture. This isn’t just an esthetic flourish for it actually facilitates cognition and tasking of the reader. It is arguable that the Aldine concept of page layout and book design reached a zenith in the Hypnterotomachia Poliphili of 1499.5 In contrast to the Gutenberg Bible of 1455, which has a stern, somber and regimented appearance, the Poliphili is exuberant, florid and thoroughly Humanist. The story tells of a lover’s unrequited search for a distant mistress. The book samples culture, religion and languages with Humanist skepticism as its measuring guide romping through paganism and eroticism. It has been compared to James Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake with its joyful modelings of bizarre and iconographic prose. Poliphili features two hundred woodcuts arranged in unique layouts that make the most of the art director’s skill: large pictures seamlessly glide into lithe swathes of copy, many of which taper to a center point, some even borrowing odd shapes like goblets and bells. In all cases, use of white space is opulent. This edition aims at a luxury market with it large folio size and binding that was achieved in the ―Greek style,‖ which essentially describes folded pages sewn into to the spine of the book. Moroccan leather was garnished with gold leaf filigrees wrapping around architectural elements on the edges of the covers. This process was an innovation in 1499 and has endured due to its efficiency and beautiful esthetic. Aldus was probably proud of the high production values of the Poliphili but he never lost sight of a market segment that could have afforded it less well. Indeed, the advent of printing neatly coincided with the coming of age of scholarly, polyglot Europeans seeking to make their way at the courts of ruling powers and municipalities. They were lawyers, scriveners, scribes, writing masters, clerks, secretaries, courtiers, engravers, gold and silversmiths, and librarians who used writing and handwriting professionally.

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