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BASKERVILLE
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he creator of Baskerville, John Baskerville, was born in 1706 in England. He got his start with typography by engraving tombstones (Lienhard). In his twenties, J. Baskerville was already teaching writing and bookkeeping as well as running an engraving business. When J. Baskerville decided to start a type foundry, Phillipe Grandjean’s type, Romain du Roi for Louis XIV, was
circulating around Europe. The mathematically precise characters felt too “cold” to J. Baskerville so he decided to create a softer typeface with rounded bracketed serifs and a vertical axis (Yau). By applying his unusual engraving skills to typography, J. Baskerville created his type Baskerville in 1754 after four years of working on it (Lienhard). John Baskerville died in 1775.
“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 endeavoured to produce a set of types according to what I conceived to be their true proportion.� John Baskerville
Baskerville Old Face
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Personally, Baskerville is a very appealing typeface. It is elegant and classy and works well in both large and small font sizes. This font is appropriate for long paragraphs of text, quotes, and headers. I do not believe Baskerville could be used as an energetic or exciting typeface but would do better to contribute sophistication, calmness, and elegance to a design.
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Baskerville Regular
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Baskerville
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Baskerville is classified as a â&#x20AC;&#x153;transitionalâ&#x20AC;? type, because it is said to bridge the gap between old-style type and modern type. Old style type is often low contrasting and oblique, whereas modern type is very high contrast and high finish. Baskerville fits nicely in the middle of these two styles with its round and open shapes as well as its vertical stress and low contrast (Stanley).
Old Style
Old Style, or Humanist typefaces, are designed to mimic the handwritten look of calligraphy (Lupton 42). The serifs of Old Style typefaces are much softer than both Transitional and Modern type faces and include less verticle axis.
Didot
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Like Transitional, Modern type faces are also more organic, however, they tend to be even more abstract (Lupton 42). These typefaces have verticle axis, thin-straight serifs, and a greater contrast between thick and thin strokes.
At first, Baskerville was not well known to the public and died out shortly after it found its way to France. The revival of Baskerville started with American typographer Bruce Rogers who found a Baskerville type specimen in a Cambridge bookshop (Lawson). When Rogers became printing advisor for Harvard University Press in 1919, he recommended the purchase of Baskerville types cast from the original matrices. Benjamin Franklin also admired Baskerville and began to use the type in his own shop (Lawson). Thus, Baskerville was publicized in America. After the Lanston Monotype Corporation of London also decided to revive Baskerville, the type was readily available within a year and became rapidly popular among typographers everywhere (Lawson).
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Bibliography 1. Lawson, Alexander S. Anatomy of a Typeface. Boston: Godine, 1990. Print. 2. Lienhard, John H. “No. 1761: John Baskerville.” The Engines of Our Ingenuity. N.p., 2002. Web. 21 Oct. 2014. <http://www.uh.edu/ engines/epi1761.htm>. 3. Lupton, Ellen. “Classification.” Thinking with Type: A Critical Guide for Designers, Writers, Editors, & Students. New York: Princeton Architectual, 2004. 42-43. Print. 4. Stanley. “Baskerville.” Typophile. Punchcut, 21 May 2005. Web. 21 Oct. 2014. <http://typophile.com/ node/12622>. 5. Yau, Cheryl. “Know Your Type: Baskerville.” Web log post. Idsgn. Idsgn, 26 Oct. 2010. Web. 20 Oct. 2014. Designs by Kateland Pricer