The centerpieces of Garamond's collections were his Caractères de l'université and grecs du roi which, like his other specimens, became the property of the French government. Although, unlike Garamond, most printers designed and cut their own type, they still bought Garamond's type-or the matrices and punches used to create them-in great quantity, as they were widely recognized for their great beauty. Garamond created a number of roman faces based loosely on Jenson's roman alphabet, and also designed and cut a number of other types of alphabets, including Greek characters, used widely in the printing of Bibles and classical works which were very popular during the Renaissance. One of the most influential type founders was Claude Garamond who, in a new turn of events, was not a printer himself. Although today we use italic for emphasis and other special uses, Manutius used it for the entire text, essentially as a way of fitting more characters on a page and thus reducing the amount of paper he would have to use in a book. The most successful early Venetian printer was Aldus Manutius who, in the early sixteenth century, was the first to use italic type. Augustine's De civitate Dei ('City of God') in a form of black letter he had designed he also designed a roman alphabet that has since become the model for many old style typefaces. French-born Nicolas Jenson, at the age of 70, moved to Venice and in 1471 printed a version of St. In 1469, Johannes and Wendelin da Spira, the first printers to set up shop in Venice, were the first to use roman rather than gothic typefaces. Initially, printers strove to duplicate the style of lettering used in manuscripts-the black letter, or gothic style found in Gutenberg's Bible is one particular example of this-but as the process caught on designers began to create new and distinctive varieties of type. When it was removed, he had a a raised letter which could then be assembled into a frame with other letters of the same size, inked, and transferred to paper. His process was to punch a character-say, the letter "a"-into a bar of metal, fit it into a matrix, fill it with molten metal, and let it cool. His enhancements of the process centered around his knowledge-as a goldsmith-of the punch, the matrix, and the adjustable mold. (See Printing.) Even though Gutenberg may or may not have invented the process, it was he who first made it practical. It was only after Gutenberg, and after his process spread through Europe, that printing became a force to rival handwritten manuscripts. The invention of printing from movable metal type in Europe is commonly attributed to Johannes Gutenberg, a German goldsmith who, in the mid-fifteenth century, produced the first printed books, notably his "Gutenberg Bibles." It is believed that the Dutch developed the process first, a man named Coster being held to have invented printing. The first use of metal type dates from 1403 Korea, and printed books from these types began to appear in large numbers. In 1314, Wang Chên used wood in the making of type, which was more practical at the time. Tin eventually replaced clay, but neither of these two types gained widespread use. Pi Sheng used clay to make raised letters from which prints could be made. The first use of movable type was in China in the middle of the eleventh century. The invention of movable type is inextricably linked to the invention of printing it was movable type that made printing commercially viable. Typography refers to the rules and conventions that govern the assembling-or composition-of type into aesthetically appealing and legible pages.Īlthough in this age of desktop publishing we tend to take type for granted, typography was at one time considered something akin to an art form. The term type is used generally to mean letters and other characters assembled into pages for printing or other means of reproduction.
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