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GUILLOTINE type evolution by revolution by Zena Martin type Viva la révolution! The history of typography is a series of unbloody revolutions. Actual bloody revolutions have been armed with words dressed in . Kings, merchants, monks, rebels, artists, designers, and inventors have all shaped the letters that we write with today. And legibility it held to tightly. As it evolved, modern variations and letters began to appear, such as the s, v and w. But as time passed, these forward-moving steps became negated and the 12th century saw the letters become tighter, thicker and use fewer ligatures. The legibility was diminishing in these evolved shapes as long lines and large words became less decipherable through their rigidity and uniform shapes. The script was becoming less calligraphic and more mechanical in many ways.

By this stage, Carolingian Minuscule has essentially turned into what we now consider to be blackletter. It had spread across Europe and was being used by many countries and regions, each putting their own accept upon the shapes of the characters. DESIGNER UNKNOWN The purpose of Carolingian 1455 saw the birth of the Minuscule, above all else, , with Gutenburg’s was legibility. It was the Bible serving as the first script in which a clear platform. It is with this in difference between mind that the birth capitals and lowercase of the font came to be letterforms, as well as one — for the first time in of the first in which a strong history, space between words, became an easily adaptable was required. form of reproducing texts. Typography as we know it was born and at the heart of it sat Textura — a Northern European form of blackletter. Excerpt from Retinart.net Garamond

CLAUDE GARAMONT These letterforms were While seeing the thinner and more delicate differences between many than those before it, which of the old-style typefaces both allowed the ink to today can be hard for bleed on the page without the untrained eye, it is overly distorting the words important to note the true and used less ink. They also significance of Claude were more decorative than Garamond’s place in the those modeled directly history of type. Prior to from the hand. Garamond’s work, the Excerpt from MeaningfulType.com practice of making type was to make as exact as possible replicas of a scribe’s handwriting. Garamond was the first to craft letters to the medium. He was the first to deviate from a purely handwritten-style to make letters that would read better when printed. hang Garamond!

JOHN BASKERVILLE Compared to earlier designs, 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. 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’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. Excerpt from Wikipedia ROBERT BESLEY Slab typefaces originated in Britain in the early nineteenth century, at a time of rapid development of new, bolder typefaces for posters and commercial printing. The first slab-serif to appear in print was Compared to Figgins’ created by the foundry “antique”, the of Vincent Figgins, and design uses somewhat less given the name “antique”. emphatic serifs, which are Others rapidly appeared, bracketed rather than solid using names such as “Ionic” blocks, that widen as they and “Egyptian”, which had reach the main stroke of the already also used as letter. Besley’s design was a name for sans-serifs. (At not the first font with this the time typeface names style by at least three years, were often adjectives, often as typefaces labeled “Ionic” with little purpose to their had already appeared in name, although they may this style (other typefaces have been in this case would copy this name), but reference to the “blocky”, the Clarendon design was geometric structure of particularly popular and classical architecture. There its name rapidly copied. was limited separation Historian between the name of suggests that an inspiration typefaces and genres; if for these designs may have a font proved popular it been the style of hand would often be pirated and lettered capitals used by reissued by other foundries copper-plate engravers. under the same name). Excerpt from Wikipedia Clarendon put Baskerville on the slab! SOMETIMES, THE CROWD DEMANDS... Off with his head!

BUT SOMETIMES, THE BATTLE CRY IS... OFF WITH HIS

Who needs feet? Without feet, we won’t spend money on shoes! EDWARD The typeface (which was first designed for printed posters) had to stand out with bold clarity from the visual clutter of Edwardian , a place plastered with competing commercial slogans emblazoned in ever more elaborate scripts.

As the ultimate purist, Johnston went right back to the source – all the way back to Trajan’s column, the sharply cut letterforms of which he was deeply enamored. He thought that Roman capital letters “held the supreme place among letters for readableness and beauty”, that they The resulting typeface, were “the best forms for now known as Johnston, the grandest and most took the Roman capital important inscriptions”. And and stripped it right back, what grander project than creating something that a scheme to link the whole felt at once timeless and of London with a consistent radically modern. visual identity? Excerpt from The Guardian What will the next revolution be?