1. James Clough’s Roman letter

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    Some notes from James Clough’s fascinating workshop on 2,000 years of western typography. 

    • The inscription at the Trajan column (AD 114) is considered to be most famous, and one of the most beautiful examples of the Roman letter. (More on that tomorrow when we actually visit it.)
    • Roman letters were originally painted red for visibility.
    • The thick and thin strokes of many letterforms in use today developed with the Romans.
    • The earliest Roman inscription is a combo of Greek and Etruscan, 575-550 BC.
    • Sans serif letterforms have been found as early as 1st century AD, Aqui Terme.
    • But serifs really developed late in the Roman empire – 2nd century AD.
    • Trajan by Carol Twombly (Adobe 1989) is a revival of the letterforms on the Trajan column.
    • The Renaissance saw a new kind of interpretation of the classical Roman letter by architects and sculptors. 
    • Alphabetum Romanum by Felice Feliciano, 1460 illustrates an interpretation – 1 copy remains, at the Vatican library. Feliciano’s alphabet was re-drawn by Giovanni Mardesteig in 1960. The “Felix” face by Monotype (1934) is also an interpretation of Feliciano’s set.
    • Luca Pacioli’s Divina Proportione, printed in Venice 1509, uses ‘scaffolding’ to construct Roman letterforms based on idealized geometric forms.
    • For hundreds of years it was believed that the Romans used idealized geometry to construct letterforms, including the serifs. But in 1968, Edward Catich in Iowa published “The Origin of the Serif” and demonstrated that the brush strokes used when painting the letters with a calligraphic flat brush and ink create entry and exit strokes, or flourishes where the pen touches and is lifted from the surface. The stone carver used a chisel to copy the painted letters exactly, and this is how the serif began.
    • One painted sign discovered at Pompeii proves the point. Only a photograph survives, as it was bombed in WWII.
    • Romans had cursive handwriting too. Notes could be taken on an iPad-like device – a framed wax tablet that could be wiped clean and re-used.
    • As manuscripts got longer and longer the writing became quicker, and the majuscule (upper-case) letterforms evolved into minuscules (lower-case).
    • Drop caps and more sophisticated line-spacing developed in 9th century.
    • From the 10th to 14th centuries Carolignian letterforms developed into Gothic.
    • The Gothic script used by the 1430s was referred to as “textura” because of the even texture of copy that covered the reading area, like a texture. Letter-spacing was being perfected, but justification was still difficult. Hyphenation was marked in the margin with “=” sign.
    • The Humanists, in mid-15th century, started transcribing original classic texts, writing in imitation of late Carolignian forms instead of Italian rounded forms, which we now know as humanist script. Became very popular.
    • Humanists printing Virgil or other manuscripts to be memorized used initial caps separated from the first line as a mneumonic device – the caps were visualized as a graphic line running down the page.
    • Gutenberg achieved justification for the first time with his Bibles, 1455. He used a character set containing 300 letterforms and glyphs, and no numerals. The drop caps were hand-painted with red ink, afterwards. He achieved amazing word and letterspacing using variant letterforms and abbreviations.
    • Ligature = legare = to link. To save space, in order to justify the line.
    • The first book printed in Italy was by Sweynheym & Pannartz from Mainz, who probably trained with Gutenberg (Subiaco, Venice, 1465).
    • They moved to Rome 1468 and developed a second typeface, which was immediately referred to as “Roman” by others throughout Europe who wanted to copy it.
    • But the history of Roman type is located in Venice, an independent republic at the time, where wealthy merchants could publish what they wanted, with paper mills nearby and closer location to Germany.
    • By 1469 there were no longer any exit strokes and the epigraphic serif had developed on lower-case letterforms. This type is very close to what we use today. 
    • Nicolas Jenson (1471) was sent to work in Venice, from France. Started a press and perfected serif Roman type. De Preparatione Evangelica is known to be the first perfect example of printed serif type. Details included inclined hyphens, star periods, a tiny dot on the “i” off center to the right. Adobe Jenson is a fairly faithful revival of this.
    • Aldus Manutius printed De Aetna in Venice, 1496, for Pietro Bembo. The type was cut by Francesco Griffo 25 years after Jenson. This is the second canon of Roman type, even more similar to what we use today. Finally, the lowercase “e” got a horizontal stroke, the comma and semi-colon were introduced. This is considered the perfect definition of Roman type. Claude Garamond copied it.
    • The same De Aetna face was used to print the Hypnertomachia Poliphili, 1499, by Manutius. A pagan book in Italian/Latin. It was badly printed but is considered today to be the most beautiful book printed in the Renaissance. (We saw a copy at the Biblioteca Angelica on Tuesday.) Pagination was shown as “q iii” – meaning, page 3 in signature “q.”
    • Manutius developed the first italic (italian) type simulating handwritten letterforms, with The Letters of St. Catherine of Siena, 1500 in Venice.
    • Robert Granjon, one of the great type punchers, perfected the italic in 1562. The subordination of the italic form to Roman, instead of being thought of as a separate face, happened in the 16th century and is still true today.
    • Stanley Morison’s (1888-1967) Bembo (Monotype 1929) is an interpretative revival of Garamond’s Bembo. ITC Garamond is a bad interpretation (or rather, mis-use of the Garamond name).
    • Small caps and large headline type developed by Simon de Colines in 1536.
    • Before the pt system developed in the 19th century different sizes of type were given different names. “Italique Gros Canon” and “Petit Canon de Garamond.”
    • William Caslon (18th c) – first great English type designer.
    • Adobe Garamond is considered fairly “authentic” 1989. 
     
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