Shockingly, I decided to blog about fonts again. Fonts are so simple, we interact with them on a daily basis and yet they are also intricate pieces of art and vitally important in the clear presentation and dissemination of knowledge. I really have become obsessed with fonts as of late. This can probably be attributed to the fact that I am working at a graphic design firm and am surrounded by people who appreciate the subtle art of font design.
The Renaissance marked an influx of secular knowledge with the movement known as humanism. Scholars in during this period of time turned to the ancient wells of knowledge from the Greeks and Romans. With this new wave of secular information new more legible, clear, simple and secular fonts were required. It was the first time in the history of typography where artisans looked to the past to influence their font designs. Latin and Greek culture and art heavily influenced the type design masters of this era. Improvements in the actual printing methods and machines brought new inventions within the typography realm. Designers were starting to introduce ideas of wider margins and clean typesetting. The Renaissance truly influenced all areas and aspects of life and learning; font design not excluded.
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| page from Aldus Manutius' book on Aristotle |
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| all Aldine books bear his logo |
The first person I would like to highlight in my exploration of Renaissance font design is Aldus Manutius (1450–1515). Aldus was a humanistic scholar that through his tutoring of the wealthy Pio family acquired his own printery in Venice. From this printery he published Greek and Roman classics, including a five-volume set on the works of Aristotle. One of his main focuses was to print small format books at low cost to scholars. His biggest contribution to the world of type was that he designed the first Greek alphabet typesetting. He also invented a space saving Latin font based off Italian cursive fonts. All his books (called Aldine books) bear his logo of a dolphin and an anchor and a dolphin.
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| Granjon, designed by Robert Granjon is considered to be the closest typeface to the original Garamond |
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| Adobe Garamond font The differences in the two fonts above are very subtle. Can you find them? |
Claude Garamond (1480–1561) was a Parisian publisher and font designers. He was one of the most famous type designers of his time. I mentioned this in my bibliography post. I mentioned in my post that his work is so famous that it is still in use today and that Harry Potter was printed using Adobe Garamond. He first gained popularity in 1541 when three of his Greek typefaces were used in a royal book by Robert Estienne. His inspiration for these three fonts came from the handwriting of Angelo Vergecio, the King's librarian at Fontainebleau, and his ten-year-old pupil, Henri Estienne. His influence spread beyond France with his Roman typesettings that followed in the 1540s. His work is still considered to be among the finest within the realm of typography.
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| from Troy's famous work Champ Fluery |
The last person that deserves attention is Geoffroy Tory (1480-1533). He was one of the prominant printers of Paris during the beginning of the sixteenth century. His most famous work is the the theoretical treatise on the design of Roman capital letters in 1529. Tory followed the common practice of the day of finding relationships between the proportions of type and the shape of the human body. Thus Tory was known for drafting letters with geometrical aids to better analyze their resemblance to the human body.
Thus concludes my brief examination of the Renaissance of font design with a look at three prominent designers and their individual influence on typography. Thank you for everyone bearing with me as I explore a particular branch of knowledge that frankly I love. I think it is so interesting how we often disregard the subtle beauty and pure art involved with typography. We are surrounded by type everyday and yet we don't actually pay attention to it. How can something be in our face but we don't truly see it?
I think it is way cool how the different people had different impacts on type for a long time. It is cool how we were able to see all of these different things in class today in special collections. I had never realized that the italicized font was to save space or that the greek or roman fonts had any difference. originally garamond had the descenders and ascenders just as big as the lowercase letter body inself and we could look at specific examples and see exactly how the designs worked. I never thought of ascenders or descenders or even that they existed until we tried calligraphy out the other day. Or the serifs how they actually help ups read better. Its all pretty crazy stuff.
ReplyDeleteI really liked the illustrated capitals by Gray. Very much in the Renaissance spirit. I can honestly say that never before have I contemplated the connection between the shape of letters and human anatomy.
ReplyDeleteI am glad that you have such an interest in typology; I have enjoyed reading your posts on the topic
Like Alicia, I'm impressed by the connection between letters and the human body. If some letters in the alphabet were inspired by the human body, does that mean it can be considered a type of art?
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