presents:
Historical Forms
1: John Baskerville
J
ohn Baskerville was born in 1706 at Wolverley in Worcestershire. He was a man with a lifelong passion for beautiful lettering and books. By 1723 he had become a skilled engraver of tombstones and was teaching writing. He moved to Birmingham in about 1726 and set up a school in the Bull Ring where he taught writing and book-keeping, whilst still maintaining his work as an engraver. In 1738 he set up a japanning business in Moor Street (japanning was an early form of enamelling), in which he first showed his mettle as an innovator, ‘effecting an entire revolution’ in the manufacture of japanned goods, and specialising in salvers, tea trays, bread baskets and the like. Within a decade he had become a wealthy man and had bought an estate of some eight acres and a large house on the site of the present-day Baskerville House.
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Historical Forms
Whilst keeping on his japanning business, in about 1750 he once again turned his attention to his passion, typography. He experimented with paper-making, ink manufacturing, type founding and printing, producing his first typeface in about 1754. Never afraid to innovate, he made changes to the way in which metal type was made, enabling him to produce finer, more delicate lettering than any before him had achieved. He invented his own lustrous, uniquely black, opaque ink; he was the first to exploit commercially James Whatman’s invention of wove paper, which was much smoother than the traditional laid paper; and he modified the printing process by using heated copper cylinders to dry the ink before it had time to soak too far into the paper. All of these innovations enabled Baskerville to produce printed work of an elegance, crispness and clarity never seen before. In 1757 he published his first book, an edition of Virgil. This was followed by some fifty other classics. In 1758 he became printer to the Cambridge University Press for which, in 1763, he published his masterpiece. Ironically for a confirmed atheist, his greatest work was a folio edition of the Bible, which. represented a monumental advance upon the standards and practices of the time. He established a lasting friendship with the American scientist and statesman Benjamin Franklin, who had built up a successful printing business in Philadelphia, and who visited Baskerville in Birmingham. John Baskerville’s guiding principles in his work were simplicity, elegance and above all, clarity. The typeface that bears his name remains one of the most pleasing of the all-time great classical fonts, vastly superior to the dismal Times Roman which, sadly, has become all too ubiquitous. He lived with his partner, Sarah Eaves. He was accused of creating type that was "unattractive and painful." Baskerville turned the creative process on its head: he designed his namesake typeface not in accordance with the technological capabilities available to him, but rather to suit his particular aesthetic sensibilities. He then proceeded to redesign the printing press, and paper-finishing to accommodate the reproduction of his type. It took John Baskerville six years to complete the drawings
1: John Baskerville
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In 1757 John Baskerville printed his famous edition of Virgil on a new kind of paper, called Wove (known in Europe as VĂŠlin). This paper is now known to have been made by the elder James Whatman.
for his type and another two to oversee its cutting. When finished, he discovered that conventional printing presses could not adequately capture its subtleties and redesigned his own. In place of wood, he used a machined brass bed and platen and a smooth vellum tympan (a sheet that was placed between the impression surface and the paper to be printed) packed with fine cloth to ensure that the two planes of the press met more evenly. Setting up a mill on his own land in Birmingham, Baskerville manufactured what we today refer to as wove paper, made on very fine meshes that resulted in smooth, silky stock. Baskerville invented an ink that was both quick-drying, allowing him to print the reverse sides of his paper faster, and uncommonly rich, black and lustrous in appearance. While printers and type founders in England claimed that the combination of fine type printed on smooth, reflective paper made his books difficult to read, John Baskerville's efforts were praised by his peers in both Continental Europe and the United States. Printing and typographic luminaries no less than Ben Franklin and Giambattista Bodoni were great admirers and lively correspondents.
The Baskerville typeface The Baskerville was originally designed as a metal character for manual composition. Many digital versions with the name of Baskerville are sufficiently faithful to the original design, but often lack the small caps and old style figures, which are essential for the spirit of nature and the graphic uniformity of the text. "Baskerville's type was unlike anything that had come before it. Considered by contemporary historians to be the quintessential example of a transitional face, it featured rounded characters, a perpendicular axis, strong contrasts between thicks and thins and very fine, sharp serifs, all of which clearly distinguished it from the old-style faces it followed."
The high-contrast, sparkly look of ITC New Baskerville is well-suited to longer texts and display uses.
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Historical Forms
ITC New Baskerville 13pt
abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ 0123456789 - 0123456789 Roman abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ 0123456789 - 0123456789 Italic abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ 0123456789 - 0123456789 Bold abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ 0123456789 - 0123456789 Bold Italic
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog Q: Are we not men? A: We are Devo
fight 1: John Baskerville
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Baskerville’s double-story open ‘g’
ITC New Baskerville Std
QQ Baskerville Old Face
The Baskerville is classified as transitional. As a matter of fact, with its generous proportions, it appears not very different from its predecessors. But the difference between fine and bold strokes is more marked, the lower-case serifs are almost horizontal and the emphasis on the stroke widths is almost vertical. The Baskerville typeface is the result of John Baskerville's intent to improve upon the types of William Caslon. He increased the contrast between thick and thin strokes, making the serifs sharper and more tapered, and shifted the axis of rounded letters to a more vertical position. The curved strokes are more circular in shape, and the characters became more regular. These changes created a greater consistency in size and form. Baskerville's typeface was the culmination of a larger series of experiments to improve legibility which also included paper making and ink manufacturing. The result was a typeface that reflected Baskerville's ideals of perfection, where he chose simplicity and quiet refinement. His background as a writing master is evident in the distinctive swash tail on the uppercase Q and in the cursive serifs in the Baskerville Italic. The refined feeling of the typeface makes it an excellent choice to convey dignity and tradition. In 1757, Baskerville published his first work, a collection of Virgil, which was followed by some fifty other classics. In 1758, he was appointed printer to the Cambridge University Press. It was there in 1763 he published his master work, a folio Bible, which was printed using his own typeface, ink, and paper.
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Historical Forms
marked difference between fine and bold strokes
axis of rounded letters shifted to a more vertical position
the curved strokes have a circular shape
1: John Baskerville
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block block The perfection of his work seems to have unsettled his contemporaries, and some claimed the stark contrasts in his printing damaged the eyes. Abroad, however, he was much admired, notably by Fournier, Bodoni (who intended at one point to come to England to work under him), and Benjamin Franklin. After falling out of use with the onset of the modern typefaces such as Bodoni, Baskerville was revived in 1917 by Bruce Rogers, for the Harvard University Press and released by Deberny & Peignot. In 1923, the typeface was also revived in England by Stanley Morison for the British Monotype Company as part of its program of revivals. Most recently, the Baskerville typeface was used as the basis for the Mrs Eaves typeface in 1996, designed by Zuzana Licko. The font is used widely in documents issued by the University of Birmingham. A modified version of Baskerville is also prominently used in the Canadian government's corporate identity program窶馬amely, in the 'Canada' wordmark.
Baskerville Regular and Italic. The difference in proportions is remarkable, while the weight perception is almost the same