Chapter 9

SUMMARY:
The Industrial Revolution was a tremendous change of social and economic proportions. It wasn't just a time period. Energy took on a whole new meaning with the use of animal and human power and the emergence of factories. Cities grew quickly along with population. Political power became more important than the aristocracy that ruled prior centuries. Manufacturing dominated production and science became important in improving it. The capitalist replaced the landowner and nearly everything became a matter of efficiency.
With the emergence and frequency of manufacturing, this obviously led to a significant increase in typeface innovation. It was no long solely a matter of 26 letters and grammatical symbols but rather letters became visual and abstract forms. Major design innovators of this time were the London type founders. These type founders assisted in the shift mentioned above by inventing a more decorative type. They also developed the "bold" type and sans serif.
During the economically important time the woodtype was developed to replace the heavy metaltypes used in printing. They were expensive and difficult to produce. The wooden types were light, cheap and just as efficient. Printing also took a big shift when the steam-powered printing press was invented. Next it was modified more when the first version of the type writer was released. This sped up newspaper printing and book making.
Photography also became an important part of this era of change. Photography was initially a research tool that was used to developed wood-engraved illlustrations. It was used to capture major events and eventually became a very important part in mass communication. Many different people worked at developing a simpler process for photography. It began to define human history and began to capture very important events such as the Civil War.

Most Intersting
I found Victorian typography and other parts of this period very interesting. I sort of wish I would have done my project on this!

WEEKLY IMAGE

Gold Leaf Keyboard!

Other than looking AMAZING, this keyboard has a typical keyboard function. Plus its has had a gold leaf applied to it.

I am very interested in gold leaf and illuminated manuscripts so I perused flickr in hopes of finding something interesting.

The letters upon the keys are sans serif. They are simple an easy to read. They object itself has a gold leaf applied to it.

Obviously it's pretty intense considering that the keyboard as a whole as the gold leaf. This definitely took a great deal of craftsmanship.

I am very attracted the the effort used with the gold leaf. It has a pleasing effect to the eye and is very nice looking.

Lately in class we have discussed the various uses of the gold leaf in relation to illuminated manuscripts. This shows how this technique has been translated into this generation.

After Class 2/19

SUMMARY:

Today in class we had our debate about three different Renaissance men. The first man was Erhard Ratdolt. He was one of the men that made steps towards a printed book.  He was a master printer and invented the first title page for a book. We talked about Aldus Manutius which my group talked about. He had a vision to publish the ideas of the great thinkers of Roman and Greek scholars. He also developed the italicized type. We also talked about Geoffroy Tory. Besides being someone who made significant leaps in the world of typography he was also a professor, scholar, translator, poet, author, publisher, printer, bookseller, calligrapher, designer, illustrator, and engraver. He basically did it all! He was an excellent definition of a Renaissance Man.

MOST INTERESTING:

A very interesting fact was how Geoffroy Tory developed so many different punctuation marks still used today.

QUESTION: A question I have is how punctuation was really developed into what it is today? Its just strange to me how it became what it is now.

Chapter 7

SUMMARY 

Our Renaissance man was Aldus Manutius, who is arguably the most influential Italian designer of his time. He founded the Aldine Press in Venice when he was forty-five because it was his dream to publish the great Greek and Roman works. He recruited his staff, which was comprised of important scholars and skilled technical workers who helped him print a five-volume edition of Aristotle .

Manutius's publications were famous for their beautiful combinations of typography and illustrations. In 1501 he decided that he wanted to publish a smaller, pocket sized book. The prototype for this was Vergil's Opera. He and his partner, Griffo, developed the first italic style typeface for this book. Around 1502, Manutius and Griffo went their separate ways. Griffo became unsuccessful without his partner, unable to sell is original designs to other printers. Manutius, however, continued to thrive and print many classical editions in his pocket book size with italic typefaces and was successful until the day he died in 1515. Design innovation ended in Venice with the departure of Manutius and Griffo.

MOST INTERESTING 

The most interesting thing I found in the reading is how unsuccessful Griffo was after he left Manutius. Griffo supposedly designed the popular italic typeface design, and his designs made Manutius's company famous.

Chapter 8

SUMMARY

The use of Graphic Design was slightly declined during the 1600's, but during the 1700's typography came about much more. Scholars began to develop a new type for the King of France. These letters were designed "scientifically". The new type face had an increase in contrast between the weight of the strokes.

The French art style, rococo, flourished in art in architecture and began to influence the graphic design aspect of the area. Fournier le Jeune developed an independent type-style. He developed decorative types. They worked remarkably well with roman fonts. Overall printing can be referred to as "the artillery of the intellect". Engraving also emerged as a technique of graphic design. Engraving is drawing made with a graver instead of a pencil. This can be done on a smooth copperplate instead of a sheet of paper. Engravers became very skillful. They began to produce books independent of typographic printers. They hand engraved both illustrations and text.

Type and design ideas traveled across the continent from Holland, where William Caslon emerged as a forerunner of type design.  He opened his own shop that showcased his engraving skills. He began to take up type design and founding and was very successful. His type designs were not very fashionable or innovative. But they were very popular due to their legibility and sturdiness. They were comfortable to read. He worked in the old style of roman typography and graphic design that had began over 200 years ago. 

John Baskerville was an innovator who broke rules of design and printing and produced 56 editions from his press. The paper he used have a smooth, glossy furface that had not yet been seen before. The most ambitious book he published was a folio Bible. This book was seen with indifference and hostility. The design of the type and books became very important across the continent and many people became very enthusiastic about his work.

The term modern defines a new category of roman type. It was first used by Fournier le Jeune in his Manual typographique to describe the design trends that culminated in Bodoni's mature work. These were thin, straight serifs. Bodoni made letters that were created through a combination of very limited identical units. His work was very dcorative and functional. The page design was simple and had generous margins with wide letter and line spacing. 

Overall this was the era of typography and the slow emergence of graphic design during the 18th century and in Europe.

MOST INTERESTING: 

The most interesting thing I found was how the book talked about William Blake. I thought it was very interesting how he incorporated the style of expressionism, Art Nouveau, and abstract art within his work with bright colors and organic forms.

After Class 2/17

CLASS 2/17

In class today we talked about the emergence of printing in Europe and how graphic desing was slowly introduced as well. One of the first signs of printing in history was the use of chops in Asia. The chops were used for identification. Another theory of the first sign of printing would be the Phaistos disk, which was a relief print (or xylography) found on an island near Crete in 2000 B.C. The Chinese began to move towards movable type but ceased due to the abundance of characters their language contains (44,000 at the time). As printing came to Europe playing cards became some of the first objects to be produced. They broke the social classes, allowing everyone to make use of them. Gutenberg was inspired by cheese and wine presses and went through a great deal of drama to achieve his goal of inventing printing. He used punches to type. The process of printing contained many jobs such as; producing parchment, paper making, arranging the type, removing sheets from press, illustrating, cutting woodblock, applying color and gold leaf, and book binding. Playing cards and prayer cards began to be printed in mass quantities. Metal prints were used for movable type along with copperplate engravings. We discussed "incunabula period". The word incunabula means "cradle" or "baby linen". It symbolized a new birth of printing and typography.

MOST INTERESTING:

What I found most interesting was how the Starbucks logo evolved from a French watermark.

QUESTION:

What I find intersting is the gold leaf aspect. How was this done exactly?

Chapter 6

Summary:

The emergence of graphics within texts occurred quickly after Gutenberg produced his printed book. Printing spread very rapidly and by 1500 over 140 towns were practicing this technique. Over nine million books were produced in this time. Book prices declined quickly. Typography can be considered a major communications advance between the invention of writing and electronic communication. Printing played an immense role in the social, economic, and religious changes occurring during the 15th and 16th centuries. Illiteracy declined very very quickly. Learning shifted into a private process instead of something involving a community. The Renaissance began to change information systems by creating two new visual systems. Painting could display illusions of the natural world and typography created repeated information and space. Very few printers still at this time could contribute to the advancement of graphic design, but design innovation began to occur in Germany with the publication of The Apocalypse. This was a book that illustrated surprising emotion through very graphic expressiveness. 

MOST IMPORTANT:

The most important aspect of this chapter would have to be the publication of The Apocalypse which managed to incorporate the use of graphics along with typography to evoke emotion.