LEGENDS

Here we introduce some of the legends who have created the culture of type. In the centuries between the birth of type and the current era of rich digital fonts, there were many type designers who experimented and innovated in a variety of ways. Many of the classic fonts still in use today were created between the 15th and 19th centuries and are often named after their creators. Strictly speaking, digital fonts are redesigns, but the basic concept is based on the original movable type. We will examine how the originals became classics, as well as the background of their creators.


JOHANES GUTENBERG

Johanes Gutenberg( 1400 – 1468 )

Born in Mainz, Germany in the 15th century, Johannes Gutenberg is widely known as the inventor of letterpress printing. In the 1450s, he created the world’s first printed book, the 42-line Bible, known as “Gutenberg’s Bible,” of which 48 copies remain in the world today. The typeface of this world’s first printed book was blackletter. Since the Bible was originally produced in manuscript form, the heavy, angular blackletter typeface was chosen, similar to that used by the learned scribes of the time. It is believed that the history of type began with Gutenberg as the starting point for the art of printing and the mass production of metal type, leading up to the modern digital font. The technology of printing was not limited to this, as it also triggered mass communication to disseminate the contents of scriptures and other knowledge that had previously been monopolized by the powerful, and it helped the Reformation, science, and the Enlightenment to be understood and spread, which was a step toward the modernization of the West. His influence on culture as a whole is also highly regarded.


CLAUDE GARAMOND

Claude Garamond( 1480 – 1561 )

Claude Garamond was a Parisian type engraver of the 16th century who was the first to specialize in type design and to offer type design to other printers, thus beginning the role of today’s type designers. He was a central figure in the development of type design in Paris. He matured Roman type design and established the foundations of letter design that are still used today for a long time. His type was widely referenced and copied throughout Europe, and his roman style became the standard. The style is known as Old Face. After his death, his equipment and father’s type were released, making it difficult to trace the legitimate origin of his type, and in the 20th century, when it was revived as a font, the typeface of Jean Janot and others was incorrectly referenced, resulting in several different fonts with different shapes and lineages appearing under the Garamond name from different manufacturers. The original typeset is now in the Plantin-Moretus Museum in Antwerp, Belgium.


WILLIAM CASLON

William Caslon I ( 1692 – 1766 )

William Caslon I was an 18th century English type designer.Caslon is known as the first Englishman to develop a complete typeface for the domestic market.During the 16th century, civil war and the suppression of guilds restricted the freedom of engineers in England, and Dutch type was imported for domestic use and used for printed matter at Oxford University Press and other institutions.The original typeface designed by Caslon, which was based on the highly refined Dutch old-style type design, was highly acclaimed in England and became the first English-style typeface. The typeface was used in the printing of the Declaration of Independence in 1776, and is regarded as the standard typeface of all standard typefaces, as in “When in doubt, Use Caslon”. It is also well known that his great-grandson, Caslon IV, was the inventor of the first sans serif typeface.


JOHN BASKERVILLE

John Baskerville(1706 – 1775 )

John Baskerville was an English printer and type designer.He established a printing press and hired type engraver John Handy to design new type. He influenced many printers with his bold innovations not only in type but also in paper, ink, and casting for the finest detail.In England, Caslon’s type, which was based on classical type, was highly acclaimed, while Baskerville’s type was not much in the country because it incorporated his own sense of calligraphy, which was delicate and precise, with a design that was a little unorthodox at the time in its subtlety and delicacy of detail. However, he was highly acclaimed abroad, including by Bodoni in Italy and Benjamin Franklin in the U.S., and his influence was carried on in the modern type that followed. His typefaces are considered to be transitional typefaces, changing from old face to modern face, and are classified as Transitional typefaces in the typeface classification.


GIAMBATTISTA BODONI

Giambattista Bodoni (1740 – 1813 )

Italian Typographer.Bodoni began his career as a printer in Parma, Italy, in 1768. After studying the type books of John Baskerville, he perfected a distinctive type with a strong contrast of fineness and thickness. The type was designed with a more abstracted, geometric approach, moving away from elements derived from calligraphy by the human hand-drawing.Bodoni’s type was highly acclaimed in Italy, and his influence spread not only to Europe but also to England, where his style, along with that of his contemporaries the Dido family, became known as “modern face,” a style of type representative of the modernizing and changing European world.Fonts based on his type are widely used today in everything from news headlines to high fashion magazines.