typography thesis draft 1: Comparing the two Renaissances of Typography

I just wanted to "claim" my idea for a thesis. This immediately came to my mind during class:

Reminiscent of the transition from handwritten to print, eReading has its advantages but these should not come at the sacrifice of the beautiful and purposeful typographical design of the original print medium.

I'm concerned that the focus is too modern, but I really want to compare and contrast these two transitions.

The Renaissance of font design

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. 

page from Aldus Manutius' book on Aristotle

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.

Granjon, designed by Robert Granjon is considered
to be the closest typeface to the original Garamond

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. 

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?

Typography

So first of all I would like to apologize for not getting this post up yesterday. I can of had an emergency yesterday in which I got stuck on a cliff/mountain up Rock Canyon with my roommate and my cousin for the better portion of the day. Needless to say I forgot to bring my computer and the HBLL with me so I didn't get this post up yesterday.

It probably came to no ones surprise that I chose to do my bibliographical post on exploring the different typefaces and fonts that were popular between the years 1450-1700. I love everything design oriented and since interning at Vada Creative Studio I have come to really appreciate the beauty and intricacies of typography. Wikipedia defines typography as: [coming] (from the Greek words τύπος(typos) = form and γραφή(graphy) = writing) is the art and technique of arranging type in order to make language visible. The arrangement of type involves the selection of typefaces, point size, line length, leading (line spacing), adjusting the spaces between groups of letters (tracking) and adjusting the space between pairs of letters (kerning). Additionally, I must admit that this post really stretched me, I am much more comfortable to researching online. I read physical books, but mostly for pleasure. So, it was quite an experience to actually dust off the pages of some good ol regular books. It was also pretty distracting I found myself browsing through many books on typography even though I knew I wouldn't be able to use them in my post because they were too modern. I guess that is the beauty of self directed learning- getting lost in the knowledge of what you love...