Tag: type history
After more than 50 years, the Association Typographique Internationale (ATypI) chose to de-adopt (dump) the Vox-ATypI font classification system. Why the breakup? And does it really matter? Is there anything to be gained by devising replacement systems? Do we need font classification at all? And what’s a typographic dog? News has been around as long as humans have. From word of mouth to handwritten newsletters to printed newspapers in the early 1600s, the news has always captivated us. It has evolved from an expensive and bespoke service for an elite few into a major part of today’s mass media. We don’t know for sure what prompted Hans Gensfleisch to leave his hometown of Mainz in western Germany for Strasbourg in the south but leave he did, probably in the early 1430s. Founded in the first century BC by the Romans, under emperor Augustus, Mainz had for a time, after the construction of its cathedral […] The pointed finger must surely be one of the oldest human gestures. In deep prehistory, long before the evolution of spoken language, and when we were considerably hairier, it is not difficult to imagine one of our primitive human ancestors pointing to a lion, a landmark, or a lemon. Printing was introduced into the Americas by the Italian Giovanni Paoli, better known as Juan Pablos. The first book issued from his press in Mexico City was Doctrina breve, a Spanish handbook of Christian doctrine, written by Juan de Zumárraga, Mexico’s first bishop, and printed in 1539 — making it the Western Hemisphere’s first printed […] The European Renaissance was obsessed with classical antiquity. For many of its intellectuals it marked a cultural and scientific golden age. Many classical authors, among them the likes of Lucretius and Cicero, were rediscovered and celebrated. And among the disciplines given a new lease of life during the Renaissance was geometry. A branch of mathematics […] For the best part of 2,000 years, the earth stood at the center of the universe. It did not move but was surrounded by a series of embedded transparent spheres. Each hollow sphere, for the Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn and an outermost sphere or firmament of fixed stars, rotated around our […] Within several decades of its invention in Europe, the printed book was already outselling handwritten or manuscript books. A very conservative estimate would be that 12 million books were produced from the publication of Gutenberg and Fust’s first printed Bible in about 1455 until the end of 1500. In those first decades, printing was an […] Enigmatic Emblem Books were one of the best-selling literary genres of the Renaissance and Baroque periods. Learn who invented them and why they were so popular. What do Machiavelli, tea cosies, swash capitals, Requiem & the Godfather Part II have in common?
Talking about Type
May 31, 2021
Who invented the newspaper?
September 28, 2020
Road-trips & the Invention of Print
April 2, 2020
Point, don’t point
January 27, 2020
The Oldest Book in America
January 13, 2020
The Geometer’s Compass
December 2, 2019
Long-Haired Stars & the End of the World
October 3, 2019
Pomp, Type & Circumstance
August 21, 2019
Renaissance memes
July 4, 2019
The Prince & the fleur-de‑lys
June 16, 2019
