What type are you? page 6
June 2013 Volume 106
The “anatomy� of Baskerville page 2
Grpahite Std
Broadway
Mongolian Baiti
MV Boli
Forte
Minion Pro
Letter Gothic Std Courier New
Berlin Sans FB
Informal Roman
Page 2
The “anatomy” of Baskerville
Page 8
What type are you?
JUNE 2013
CONTENTS
Cover Stories
[ Enjin ] June 2013
The anatomy
of th
Stem/Main Stroke
Baske
ASCENDER LINE
Shoulder
CAP HEIGHT
Eye
Terminal
Arm
X-HEIGHT
BASELINE
DESCENDER LINE
Aperture
Serif
Leg
Spur
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page 2
[ Enjin ] June 2013
“He had various innovative experiments in an attempt to improve legibility...�
he
erville Tittle
Ascender
Shoulder
e
Overshoot
Finial
Typeface
page 3
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[ Enjin ] June 2013
Type founder, printer, stone cutter and lacquer ware professional
J
ohn Baskerville is most famous for the publishing house set up in his later life and his work on designing new fonts, like Baskerville, although he is less celebrated for his religious believes.
Baskerville’s most noted works are Milton’s Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained, Book of Common Prayer, and his Bible of 1763. This masterpiece became popular when he published it in 1763 while working as a printer for the He began his career as a servant to Cambridge University Press; it was a clergyman, who soon noted that published as a folio Bible including Baskerville was good with the quil his own typeface, paper and ink. and had him teach the poor boys in the community how to write. Later The Baskerville typeface was created he applied for a job as writer at King in Birmingham, England. The Edward’s School and taught writing typeface is known to be transitional and bookkeeping. Afterwards serif, it is a mixture of old style with Baskerville decided to move on modern style. Baskerville intended to new things he tried japanning to improve upon the typefaces (an early form of enameling) and of William Caslon, known as the started a new business that made Caslon typefaces. He boosted the candlesticks, stands, salvers, bread contrast between thick and thin trays and other household goods. It strokes, making the serifs of the was after this that he finally found font’s sharper, shift axis of rounder his passion for typography. letters to a more vertical position and he made the curved strokes He mastered many 18th century more circular. These changes created crafts, mentioned above, before greater stability in size and form. becoming obsessed with creating a font which typified elegance, It wasn’t until the 1920’s simplicity and clarity. He was one of that Baskerville received the the first designers to use wove paper. consideration he deserved. The He also adjusted the printing press American typographer, Bruce by using heated copper cylinders Rogers (designer of the Centaur to dry the ink before it had time to typeface), was a big participant in soak too far into the papers. the rebirth of Baskerville’s typeface. He had various innovative experiments in an attempt to improve legibility; these experiments did not only include typeface but papermaking and ink manufacturing too. His work reflected ideals of perfection, simplicity and refinement. Among
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and Writer of the 18th century), who already had a successful printing business. He influenced Baskerville and admired him as well. With his return to the US with Baskerville’s work, Franklin popularised it through its adoption as one of the standard typefaces employed in federal government publishing. “A research study showed that the use of the Baskerville font increased the likelihood of the reader agreeing with a statement by 1.5% as compared to the average of five other fonts, including Comic Sans which had the most negative effect on agreement of the six.” - Sourced
Baskerville’s work was admired through Europe’s flourishing printing circles and a close friend of him was Benjamin Franklin (Inventor, political leader, scientist
page 4
[ Enjin ] June 2013
Eye
Shoulder
Arm
Interesting fact about John Baskerville
H
e was an atheist during the time that it was morally questionable and on the verge of being illegal. He was in a relationship with a married Mrs. Eaves and afterwards they started living together as man and wife. Later on when her husband had died Baskerville married Mrs. Eaves. Unfortunately the only child they had together, a little boy, died when he was still a baby. But it was only after his death in 1775, that the real sad story took place. In Baskerville’s will which he wrote in 1773, he stated that he wanted to be buried in unconsecrated grounds on his own premises in a mill that was painted by him that had a vault. When he died it was literally impossible for his body to find peace in resting. He was buried in his colonial tower but in 1789 his property was sold and during the Birmingham Riots the house
page 5
was under siege and burned to the ground. It is said that his religious believes led to the attack. But the tower remained and his body laid in it for a further fifty years. In this time the property had a new owner and he was then moved to a plumber’s warehouse. The body was owned later on by Mr. Marston and kept for showcasing. Afterwards Marston wanted the body to be buried at St Philip’s Church next to Baskerville’s wife but due to Baskerville’s Atheism the request was turned down. But the body was secretly buried in a Mr. Knott’s own vault in Christ’s Church. Then the curse struck again the property had to be demolished due to city upgrading.
Again they tried St Philips and yet he still strongly refused. Later on in the 1890’2, more than a century afterhis death, his remains finally found a resting place. It was buried in the deconsecrated grounds of a demolished chapel in Warstone Lane.
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B
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askerville The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog
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Calfish Scritp Pro
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[ Enjin ] June 2013
Minion Pro
Verdana
Calfish Scritp Pro
Script Pro page 8
Calfish
Calfish Calfish Scritp
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Calfish Scritp
Calfish Scritp
Script Pro
Calfish Scritp Pro
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[ Enjin ] June 2013
Calfish Scritp Pro
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Calfish Scritp Pro Script Pro
Pro
What type are you
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Calfish Scritp Script Pro Script Pro Script Pro
“...each of these individual aspects differs from one person to another. And so do typefaces...”
Pro
Calfish Scritp
Calfish
?
Pro
Calfish Scritp Pro
Pro
page 9
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S
[ Enjin ] June 2013
Everyone is unique from head to toe, not just physically but mentally, intellectually and most importantly of all: creatively too.
T
he same set of rules applies in each person’s “construction”. We all have fingers, eyes, toes, hands, legs, ears, noses, mouths and hair, etc. But each of these individual aspects differs from one person to another. And so do typefaces also differ. They have a same set of rules within their structure but they have [ www.enjin.co.za/magazine
different characteristics to that structure. Font metrics are things like the baseline, x-height, cap height, ascender line and descender line. Typefaces with the same font metrics are classified as “metrically compatible”; that is so that they can be substituted for one another in a document without changing the document text flow.
Related people make up a family. Together they therefore will have features that look the same; for example their eyes or mouths. In a similar manner so do typeface families consist of different “members” who have features that are the same. Typefaces often come in families, with individual typefaces for italic, bold and other variations page 10
on the main design. A set of one or more fonts each composed of glyphs that share a common feature is known as a font family. Each font of a typeface has a specific weight, style, condensation, width, slant, italicization and ornamentation. There are thousands of typefaces in existence and new ones are being developed constantly.
Groups contain faces which are designed for either the setting of large amounts of body text while others are primarily for decorative use. Typefaces can be proportional, containing glyphs of various widths, or mono-spaced, which uses a single standard width for all glyphs in the font. Any two lines with the same amount of characters in each line if mono-spaced would usually Contained within any specific display as an equal width in the font family are glyphs, which each typeface but if the same two lines represent an individual letter, are in proportional relationship number, punctuation mark, or other then the typeface may have radically symbol. Fonts of specific weight different widths. People’s taste and stylistic variants have led to differs in clothes and attire. Some of font families, collections of closely us wear glasses; we tie our hair up related typeface designs that can or wear it loose. Just so do different include hundreds of styles. They typefaces have different decorations only differ in weight, orientation, and ornamental aspects. width, etc. The times family is an example, within the family there is Just as in general where people have Times Italic, Times Roman, Times different body types; tall, fat, thin, bold which all are individual fonts short, petite, plus size, skinny and but together also make up the family. so on, a so do we also have page 11
Pristina
Corbel
handwritings that are as uniquely interesting too. These styles can be classified as loose, thin, large, tiny, compressed, free, neat, skew, etc. All of us have a name and surname, unique to us as a person, just so does a typeface have its own name. It can usually even be the name or surname of the creator of that certain typeface. As varied as people and families are so too are typefaces different within themselves with a host of different styles identifiable within categories, and all are branded with unique names.
Papyrus
Script – this is based upon the varied and often fluid stroke created by handwriting. They range from highly formal types like cursive writing to loose and more causal scripts.
Gill Sans Mt Condensed
Slab serif – this is a type of serif typefaces characterized by thick block-line serifs; they are either blunt and angular or rounded.
Tektion Pro
Euphemia Edwardian Script ITC
Berlin Sans FB
Sans serif – this is the typeface that does not have the small line features, serifs, at the end of strokes.
Typographers have developed a comprehensive vocabulary for describing the many aspects of typefaces and typography. Typography can be divided into four categories: • Serif • Sans serif • Slab serif • Script Serif and sans serif are the two main groups.
[ Enjin ] June 2013
Serif – a serif is the small line at the edges of letters and symbols.
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