Before the printing press writing was produced by scribes, mainly in monasteries at first and later, by the 12 century, by members of the lay community. The first book produced by printing press was the Gutenberg Bible, which first appeared in 1454. Gutenberg is thought to be the first European to have used printing, though the Chinese had invented it centuries before this. Within fifty years at least a thousand printers had set up in business across Europe.
The method devised by Gutenberg for his printing press has remained in use until the present day, being replaced only from the late 19th century onwards. The basic method was to punch a letter of steel into a softer metal, lead, and to use this as a cast to produce the type letters. Steam presses came into use around 1814 and rotary presses in 1868, replacing hand printing. Linotype was introduced in 1889 whereby type was chosen, used and then recirculated back into the machine.
Photo-typesetting became popular in the 1950s with typeface masters stored on film and projected onto photographic paper. Digital printing was developed in the early 1970s and has become predominant on the desktop, although most high-end printing is still done by printing to film and then copying to printing plates.
The earliest typefaces, at the time of Gutenberg, were the 'blackletter' style (often called 'Old English'), which continued in Germany until the 20th century and even enjoyed a brief revival under the Nazis (until they decided it was 'Jewish'!).
This style was largely replaced in the 17th century by 'Old Style' fonts such as Garamond, which were probably easier to read and were widely used in the humanist books of the renaissance. The letter designs of these fonts was based on Roman type that was chiseled into stone and tried to copy the same effect.
Between Old Style and Modern fonts is a period known as 'Transitional', extending from the 18th century to the early 19th. Examples of fonts from this period include Baskerville, introduced by John Baskerville in the 1760s.
Modern fonts, with characteristic horizontal and narrow serifs, are exemplified by the work of Giambattista Bodoni. The contrast between fine and thick lines in the Bodoni font required finer paper and higher quality printing. The Bodoni font was one of the most popular designs throughout the 19th century and its strength and clarity appeared to capture the spirit of the Enlightenment.
In the early 18th century typeface designers took the radical step of removing the serifs to produce 'sans serif' or 'Gothic' or 'Grotesque' faces. Another variation of type design was also added at this time, the 'slab serif', which can be seen as either a sans serif design with added serifs or an extension of the serif design.
The end of the 19th century saw the emergence of ornamental fonts based on the aesthetics of the Art Nouveau movement. This was countered in the 1920s by the Art Deco and Futurist movements in which a return was made to simpler geometric forms.
In the late 20th century font designers threw out the rule books and introduced alternative or 'grunge' fonts that break rules of geometry, aesthetics and even legibility. In these styles the message is the type itself rather than the text the type is supposed to convey. Grunge typography embraces the industrial and rebellious styles of Bauhaus and Dadaism.
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