Perhaps this article should have ended at the question mark in its title. And by the end of it, you may well concur. However, in the meantime, and before I get started?—?and I promise this won’t take long?—?let me be clear, I am not, I repeat, not (in bold for […]
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Basically, two things came together. First: I am fascinated by the mesmerizing richness of detail in medieval initials. And I admire the patience and drawing skills those medieval monks possessed – perhaps because I actually lack both. In the Middle Ages the more detailed and elaborate the decoration was, the […]
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Like a tiny seed growing into a giant tree or a butterfly emerging from a chrysalis — type design isn’t! Forward steps, missteps, steps retraced — that is type design. Sometimes the development is natural and organic; at others it is perhaps more akin to working for a typographic Dr. […]
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A Review by David Wolske In his foreword to the 2010 Liber Apertus Press reissue of Rob Roy Kelly’s American Wood Type 1828–1900, David Shields wrote:
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ISIA Type Design Week is a one week intensive summer course in type design and lettering held at the ISIA – the High Institute for Applied Arts of Urbino. Since 2009 ISIA has been running a graphic summer school organised by Leonardo Sonnoli in collaboration with the Dutch Werkplaats Typografie, and in 2011 Type Design Week was introduced to expand the school’s summer programme.
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“Finally I found what I have been looking for – this typeface suits the specific requirements of my project: balanced proportions, space saving and very legible in small sizes. Just the color is a bit too light – if I could only switch to a slightly darker grade …”
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Over the past couple of years I have been researching and writing a book about the fifteenth-century German printer, Erhard Ratdolt. He printed over 200 titles during his career, and part of my work is to study the content and typography of as many of those editions as possible. Recently, […]
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The very first printers’ mark or printers’ device dates back almost to the very beginning of Western typography. In Mainz, Fust and Schoeffer, employed a printers’ mark in a Bible that they published in 1462. There is an earlier example in their Mainz Psalter of 1457, though many now believe […]
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“Designing Zapfino Arabic takes everything I ever learned about type design and then some… Have never, ever, worked on anything this challenging.” — Facebook status: Oct. 24, 2013
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In my recent article on The First Book Printed in Italy, I introduce the first books printed by Sweynheym and Pannartz in the Subiaco monastery complex in the Sabine hills to the west of Rome from 1465.
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