Baskerville basking in
A love story of typography by Nancy Research
Research Sources: 1. Linotype: The source of the originals: Stevens Titling Badger Brush 2. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Wikipedia Typography: I love Typography (ILT) Fonts, typefaces and all things ... http://ilovetypography.com/ 3. http://graphicdesign.spokanefalls.edu/tutorials/process/ type_basics/transitional.htm 4. Typedia: A Shared Encyclopedia of Typefaces http://typedia.com/ 5. https://www.myfonts.com/person/John_Baskerville 6. Identifont http://www.identifont.com/index.html 7. Know Your Type: idsn: A Design Blog (October 26 2010) http://idsgn.org/posts/know-your-type-baskerville/ 8. ilovetypography.com/2007/09/23/baskerville-john/
“A typeface must achieve an optimal reading experience, conspicuity while keeping the passage aesthetically pleasing.”
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askerville can be described best as a passage of typeface. It is of the distinct style of classical typefaces and displays the characteristics of the high contrast modern typefaces as well. Unlike earlier typefaces with calligraphy-like movements such as handwriting, this exquisite typeface is best described as having crisp edges, high contrast and generous proportions.
John Baskerville was the printer who brought Baskerville, a typeface, to life in 1754. He was raised in Birmingham, England, serving in the clergyman’s house where his employer observed his great ability in penmanship. He was thus sent to be educated in writing. Though he was illiterate, calligraphy piqued John’s interest and he mastered handwriting and inscription. Through his studies and practice, he would later introduced these stokes and embellishments in his own classic typeface. John became a master at typography and printing. He designed, cast and sold type. He owned a japanning business ( japanning being a type of finish, usually based in lacquer, that originated as a European imitation of Asian lacquerware) that he switched to a type foundry. He would sell a font at a particular size, which consisted of upper and lowercase letters, numbers and punctuation. Ligatures, a particular letter combination cast as one piece (ex. fi), were also included. This was because with metal letters, the tang on an f when next to another f or an i would overhang so that the metal types could not sit next to each other. The cast of letters/numbers/ligatures would come on a wood base wrapped in stiff paper and cardboard. A complete case of letters would be enough to print a pamphlet. Futura was such a typeface made in the 1960s. Baskerville designed his primary roman typeface to be a refinement of the popular British typography, Caslon. The geometric mathematically-drawn characters used in Phillipe Grandjean’s exclusive Romain Du Roi for Louis XIV, which was circulated in Europe at the time, inspired Baskerville to design a typeface with rounded bracketed serifs and a vertical axis.
“Baskerville was originally created as a way to improve upon the fonts of William Caslon, who was a bookbinder and an engraver of gun locks in the early 1700s. Caslon’s typefaces were widely popular in England, and were used for the first printings of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States. They inspired John Baskerville, a businessman who sold papier-mâché, to create an updated version himself. His types were used for an edition of Virgil that he printed on woven paper, a folio Bible, and works produced by the University of Cambridge. (Fun fact: John Baskerville was likely the inspiration behind the title of Arthur Conan Doyle’s famous Sherlock Holmes story.)”
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“Typography is a tool that can add emotion, drama and personality to the printed matter, making it more visually appealing.”
“John Baskerville was a perfectionist and self-taught printer who designed the typeface, Baskerville, in 1754.
Baskerville is most known for its crisp edges, high contrast and generous proportions. The typeface was heavily influenced by the processes of the Birmingham-bred John Baskerville, a master type-founder and printer, who owed much of his career to his beginnings.
Baskerville is categorized as a transitional typeface in-between classical typefaces and the high contrast modern faces.”
(idsn: a Design Blog: Know your type: Baskerville by Cheryl You)
Baskerville’s interest in improving the quality of printing in England was accomplished by an exquisite kind of paper. European Magazine, in 1785, described it this way: “His paper was of a finer gloss, and his ink of a brighter black than ordinary; his type was thicker than usual in the thick strokes, and finer in the fine, and was sharpened at the angles in a novel manner.” Baskerville’s title pages consisted of greater leading between lines and all capital titles with increased spreads between the letters to make the page feel more unobstructed and graceful. This master piece of eloquence is evident in just about every quality art book that has been viewed. To truly understand and appreciate the fine attributes of the typeface Baskerville, its process and creation needs to be understood. The typography was born out of a progressive experimentation with print technology. John Baskerville created beautiful bright woven paper and dark inks through his own methods. Through the tedious process of boiling fine linseed oil to a certain thickness, dissolving rosin, allowing months for it to subside and eventually grinding it before use, he created an extreme black ink pigment. Exploring the methods of other printers closely, Baskerville would copy their methods of printing through similar purchases to obtain the same press. By these actions and studies, he produced a higher standard for presses. The delicacy and acuteness of Baskerville’s type could not be duplicated by the current printing presses, so he redesigned the press, replacing the wooden platen with a brass one in order to allow the planes to meet more evenly.
The wooden platens of these presses were usually covered with thick tympanum, which helped to absorb pressure and reduce type depth. Baskerville’s press used thin tympanum around the metal, and the platens were heated before use. This combination of the contrasting cut in his letterforms, the process of printing, the gloss of his paper and the intensity of his inks was what made each print so cultivated.
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f g Influence Within Britain and Elsewhere John Baskerville’s typface was not a significant success during his lifetime. There was a huge European influence after his widow sold the Baskerville punches and matrices to France. The typeface was widely used among establishments. Isaac Moore from Bristol’s Fry Foundry created its own Baskerville in 1766, along with Bell and Scotch Roman, which all reflected the sharpness of the Baskerville roman. Admiration for the English typeface in France and Italy spread, and Baskerville’s high contrast letterforms evolved into an emergence of modern faces such as Didot and Bodoni. American typographer Bruce Rogers saw Baskerville type in a Cambridge bookstore in 1917. Later as a printing adviser to Harvard University Press, he recommended that the type be used from the original Baskerville matrices, bringing the typeface back to popularity in the 20th century.
“Having been an early admirer of the beauty of letters, I became insensibly desirous of contributing to the perfection of them. I formed to myself ideas of greater accuracy than had yet appeared, and had endeavored to produce a set of types according to what I conceived to be their true proportion.” — John Baskerville, preface to Milton, 1758 (Anatomy of a Typeface) Achieving crisp perfection.
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A Typeface Lives On
Baskerville in use: The Metropolitan Opera logo by Pentagram, poster by Bradley Hoston, Kate Spade New York logo, Better Homes and Gardens magazine, Canada wordmark, Baskerville ampersand from The Ampersand letterpress poster, Baskerville Type greeting card, American Gangster 2007 film poster, Baskerville on iPhone
In 1996, the printer Zuzana Licko designed a contemporary Baskerville awakening, Mrs. Eaves, named after his mistress. Using a small x-height in relation to the cap-height and high contrast within the strokes, Licko imitated Baskerville’s style. Baskerville was popular for its calligraphy influence and swashes, and Licko incorporated a lot of ligatures into Mrs. Eaves to mimic this style. “In an interview in 2002, Licko expressed that the revival of classical typefaces such as Baskerville required scrutiny that later influenced her ideas for letterforms in fonts such as Tarzana and Solex.” Baskerville is used widely in documents issued by the University of Birmingham (UK) and Castleton University (Vermont, USA). It’s a classical font that is a very readable text and is often still used in books and magazines.
Compared to earlier designs in the 1960s, Baskerville enlarged the contrast between thick and thin strokes, sharpened serifs that were more tapered, and shifted the axis of rounded letters to a more vertical position so they had a more circular shape. There was more consistency in size and form. In more modern times, features such as bold emerged. Today Baskerville remains one of the most popular and classic typefaces for print for its readability and classic elegant beauty. Its book face, evolved through John Baskerville’s artistic creativity, is a purely typographical masterpiece.
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Baskerville
basking in Baskerville The story of a typeface created by John Baskerville
Art by Curran, Inc.