GIC Test 1

• writing on clay mud tablets
• Sumerians in the city of Uruk
• earliest for of writing - 3100 BC

• 2nd century AD - Greece
• develops more rounded writing style, easier to read
• written between guidelines called “uncias” (the Roman inch)

• relief printing from a raised surface
• originated in Asia
• (wood block printing)

term for printing with independent, movable, and reusable bits of metal / wood, each of which has a raised letterform on one face

• (wood) block printing, originated in China
• 1st woodblock playing + devotional cards in Europe

• a book made by wood block printing?!
• ex: the German Illustrated Book, ars memorandi

• (Mainz, Germany) father of typography
• made the first printing press

2 characters designed to work together as a single unit

• became the most important printing firm in the world (1450's)
• Fust was the businessman
• Schoeffer was the artist / designer, possibly the first typeface designer

• started by an unidentified artist called the Master of the Playing Cards - who was linked to Gutenberg by time/place/style
• Drawing is scratched into a smooth metal plate, ink is applied into the depressions, the flat surface is wiped clean, and paper is pressed against the plate to receive the ink image.

• Latin for “cradle” or “baby linen”
• name for books printed from Gutenberg’s invention of typography until the end of the fifteenth century

• technically, a single leaf of paper printed on one side only
• "broadsheet" is when both sides are printed, however, these terms are often used interchangeably

• set up a printing press in Bruges
• his translation of “Recuyell of the Histories of Troy” became the first typographic English language book (1475)

printer’s flowers, cast decorative elements

• typeface of the king; French king Louis XIV (1692)
• has increased contrast between thick and thin strokes, sharp horizontal serifs, and an even balance to each letterform
• Imprimerie Royale was the royal printing office est. 1640

• the evolution between old style and modern typefaces
• ex: Baskerville

• 1730s - height of Rococo
• (fanciful French art/architecture, floral, intricate, pastels)
• Fourneir le Jeune, copperplate engraving
• ends with the French revolution and it is replaced by Neo-Classicism

• Manuel Typographique, 1764 and 1768
• type manual is a masterwork fo rococo design
• his work loses social relevance because he dies before the Revolution

• Italian son of indigent printer
• runs the official press of Ferdinand, Duke of Parma
• influenced by Fournier, brilliant sharpness and contrast = modern style
• standardization of units was a concept of the emerging industrial era of the machine
• precise, measurable, repeatable forms.

• the term modern, which defines a new category of roman type, was first used by Fournier le Jeune in his Manuel Typographique to describe the design trends that culminated in Bodoni’s mature work
• condensed letterforms, lighter typographic tone and texture

• Rococo ends with the French revolution and it is replaced by Neo-Classicism
• Giambattista Bodoni, title page from Saggio tipografico (Typographic Essay, 1771) reflects 18th century neo-classical style -- what we will call modern style
• extreme contrast of thick and thin.