The remarkable story of early African American print culture; its authors, editors, journalists, printers, and publishers. From protest pamphlets to the first Black newspapers, periodicals and books.
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Articles by John Boardley
The Font Game (level 1)
The Font Game is back! Thirty multiple-choice questions to test your font identification skills.
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Font Anatomy Game
How well do you know your fonts? Can you tell your flags from your finials, your loops from your legs? Twenty-five multiple-choice questions to test your knowledge of font anatomy.
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The Writing Mistress
From around the beginning of the 1600s, there was a renewed interest in calligraphy. At the same time, women, known as writing mistresses, begin to teach handwriting and calligraphy to young women. Maria Strick in the Netherlands and Marie Pavie, perhaps from France, are the first two women to have their calligraphy copybooks published in print.
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The Font Game (level 2)
Level up! This one is quite a bit harder. Are you up for the challenge? Another thirty multiple-choice questions to test your font identification skills.
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Death of a Typeface
Robert Granjon (1513–90) was a French type designer who, in 1557, invented a new style of typeface which later came to be know as Civilité, after the civilité or etiquette books which the typeface often appeared in. Although Granjon wished for his Civilité to become the national typeface of France, it never really caught on, and it never seriously competed with Roman and Italic fonts.
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Fun with Fonts
Today I launched two short multiple choice quizzes. The first starts at the beginning with Gutenberg, with questions about his life and his famous Bible. Some of the questions are pretty easy; others you might find rather difficult. The second game, Glorious Glyphs, tests your font identification chops by having […]
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The Glorious Glyphs Game
Test your typeface identification skills in this fun multiple-choice font game.
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ILT QUIZ: Early Printing
A multiple-choice quiz to test your knowledge of the early years of printing in Europe, from Gutenberg in the 1450s, through to the year 1500.
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ILT QUIZ: Gutenberg
Test your knowledge of Gutenberg and the first European printing in our multiple choice quiz.
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