Influential Typographers Baskerville John Baskerville was His letterforms were also wider and born in Worcestershire, England his italics showed his calligraphic in 1706. As a young man he was mastery. Baskerville’s page layouts introduced to the art of letters while were spartan (especially compared working as a master writing teacher to the ornate designs of French and and stone engraver. He later began Italian renaissance printers). General- a career in manufacturing, making ly, they were completely typographic, japanned ware (a type of lacquered allowing his letterforms to stand on metalware popular at the time). their own. His designs stand as a pin- He soon amassed great wealth and nacle of transitional typography and purchased an estate near Birmingham. as a prelude to the modern Didone design of later years. Around 1751, Baskerville began ex- perimenting with printing. Baskerville Baskerville’s work was widely was a perfectionist, and as such he dismissed during his time by British demanded complete control over the contemporaries as the work of an entire printing process. He designed amateur. However, his influence on and created type and layouts; im- type and printing spread to Italy and proved the presses and inks; and de- France where Giovanni Battista Bodo- veloped new paper making techniques ni and the Didots furthered his ideas. enabling the creation of smooth bright papers. Baskerville’s type was influenced by the works of Italian renaissance printers, like his English contempo- rary, William Caslon. But Baskerville refined their forms--creating type with more extreme contrast of thick and thin strokes. This gave his text great lightness and color. Baskerville Type Face 4 Typography Through Time Influential Typographers Renner Futura Type Face Paul Friedrich August Renner was born in Wernigerode, Germany on August 9th, 1878. Growing up into his teenage years he studied Greek and Latin for 9 years, and then moved on to study art at a higher level, finishing his formal education in 1900. Following this Renner became involved with design and became concerned with typeface and book design. During the summer of 1924, Renner started to work on what would become a typeface called Futura, his most well-known work. Futura was a very import- ant type of the time, especially in Germany, as it was a movement towards the modern roman letter and a departure from the Blackletter. Renner’s Futura has also become the inspiration and foundation for many geometric types to date, and for that alone he deserves mention. During his career he designed two other typefaces, Plak and Tasse, which like Futura are also commercially available. Furthermore, throughout his time, he wrote a number of books; Typographie als Kunst (Typography as Art), Die Kunst der Typographie (The Art of Typog- raphy) and Color Order And Harmony to name a few. After a long career at the age of 78, Paul Renner died on April 25th, 1956 in Hödingen, Germany. Influential Typographers Typography Through Time 5.