"This richly illustrated book guides readers through four centuries of visual and trade history, equipping them to contextualize the aesthetics and production of typography in a way that is practical, engaging, and relevant to their practice. It is fully illustrated throughout with 200 color images of type specimens and related ephemera, and written for design educators, advanced design students, design practitioners, and type aficionados"--
The Plantin-Moretus Museum has one of the world's richest collections of type specimens, many surviving nowhere else. They include types by Garamont, Granjon, Van den Keere, Briot, Van Dyck, Kis, Fournier, Rosart, Gille, Didot and many other masters from the fifteenth to the nineteenth century. Since the Plantin-Moretus printing office acquired most of the specimens when new, moreover, the collection as a whole tells a story in a way that collections assembled piecemeal in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries cannot. Finally, the Museum's archives help to document the origins of many specimens. This first detailed catalogue of the Museum's specimens reports the styles and sizes of type shown, describes the structures and paper stocks, notes relations with other specimens in the collection and elsewhere, and provides references to literature on many of the individual types shown. Preliminary notes on the type founders and printers who issued the specimens include chronologies of the foundries and information on the origins of their materials, sometimes supplemented with information about the history of the firms and the genealogy of the founders. Nearly all of the nineteen specimens illustrated at their original size appear here for the first time, and extensive indexes make this book a powerful reference tool for type specimen enthusiast and printing historians.
In 1985, Berkeley-based graphic design company Emigre, the publisher of the legendary design magazine of the same name, launched one of the first independent digital type foundries to explore the new design possibilities offered by the MacIntosh computer. To announce each of their new typeface releases, Emigre published small booklets displaying the virtues of the fonts and revealing the processes used to design them. By creating specific contexts, many of these so called "type specimens" went beyond being simple sales tools. In fact the Emigre booklets were meant to be enjoyed as much for the typefaces as for their esoteric content.
This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.
This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.
