Stephen J. Eskilson, Graphic Design: A New History (New Haven: Yale UP, 2nd Ed., 2013). Old Edition works too!

Stephen J. Eskilson, Graphic Design: A New History (New Haven: Yale UP, 2nd Ed., 2013). Old Edition works too! 10 Pre-Publication Material. Eskilson/GRAPHIC DESIGN: A NEW HISTORY, SECOND EDITION Preface This book emerged in the context of the radical changes that have revolutionized graphic design over the last few years. Digital technology, which had already substantially influenced the field for two decades, has transformed the way in which many designers conceive of and execute their work. Newly established branches of graphic design such as motion graphics and the demand for highly interactive web-based media have spurred a reevaluation of aesthetic principles that had previously gone unquestioned. At the same time, designers have had to cope with an almost constant state of flux in the advertising industry, while at times balancing their commercial work with a broader commitment to shape society in a positive way. These significant developments are discussed at length in Chapter 10. Each year, more scholars of the history of art and design devote themselves to interpreting and evaluating the myriad social and aesthetic implications of graphic design. This greater awareness has spawned numerous books grappling with key figures and defining moments in design history. Considering these developments along with the recent transformation in studio practice, it seemed that the time was ripe for a book that would attempt an overall assessment of the history of graphic design, taking into account this significant new scholarship. It is my hope that this book will provide a sounding board for scholars and students of graphic design who are as devoted to this subject as I am. It is my belief that graphic design history has too often been presented through a parade of styles and individual achievements devoid of significant social context, and that this tendency has obscured much of the richness and complexity of its development. In contrast, this book is predicated on the idea that graphic design and typography are the most communal of art forms, and I strive to show how deeply they are embedded in the fabric of society in every era. The impact of political movements, economics, military history, nationalism, colonialism, and gender, as well as other germane topics, are treated continually across the breadth of the book. Another important focus of the book is upon the changing roles of graphic designers, an eclectic group of artists whose exact professional status has often been fluid and indeterminate, a situation that persists to this day. A consistent theme in this book is the aesthetic commonality of graphic design with architecture and other design practices, a factor that arose as part of the late nineteenth-century quest for a unified style, in both a visual and an ideological sense. The introduction and ten chapters are organized in a chronological fashion, although there is some overlap with certain topics spanning more than one chapter. For example, several (Chapters 4, 5, 6, and 7) must be read together to achieve a thorough understanding of graphic design in the seminal period of development between the First and Second World Wars. Also, certain influential movements such as Dadaism are threaded throughout multiple chapters (Chapters 3, 5, and 6) in an attempt to clarify the web of connections between its many disparate manifestations. The minor difficulties in navigating these disjunctions should be outweighed by the benefits of greater depth in the narrative. New to this Edition This second edition represents much more than the sum of cosmetic changes and factual corrections (crucial as those are). Rather, the publishers generously allowed me to revisit the image selections and include upwards of 75 new works. New images allowed me, in turn, to restructure and expand key parts of the text; for example, there is now a stand-alone chapter on nineteenth-century design, and considerably expanded treatment of the Swiss Style, Postmodernism and contemporary. Chapter Summaries The introduction traces the history of classical typography from the time of the Renaissance, introducing some key concepts about type along the way. Chapter 1, new for this second edition, examines how nineteenth-century industrialization and the concomitant role of mass communication transformed the visual culture of Europe and the United States. Chapter 2 traces the revolt against Victorian aesthetics initiated by the Arts and Crafts movement in the late nineteenth century, and tracks the flowering of Art Nouveau in France, the United Kingdom, the United States, Austria, and Germany. Chapter 3 recounts the decline of Art Nouveau in the face of the pioneering Sachplakat style that arose in Germany before the First World War, and then shifts gears, tracking two important trends closely tied to that war: propaganda posters and Dada experiments of the 1910s. In Chapter 4 the focus shifts to the links that were generated between graphic design and emerging modernist art movements, especially Cubism, Futurism, Vorticism, and Purism. The chapter concludes with a thorough consideration of how these influences coalesced to help form the commercial design style now known as Art Deco. Chapter 5 traces the pivotal role that artists of Dutch De Stijl and Russian Constructivism played in formulating a geometric abstract style that would have longstanding and unforeseen consequences for the history of graphic design. In Chapter 6 we consider the complicated origins of the Bauhaus and the New Typography in Germany during the 1920s, which set the stage for Constructivist precepts to subsequently spread across the rest of Europe. Chapter 7 shifts the focus back to the United States, investigating the gradual adoption of Art Deco and Constructivist techniques, the latter promoted in the 1930s mainly by the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. This chapter also delves into the reemergence of strident propaganda in Germany under the National Socialist regime, concluding with propaganda produced by the adversaries in the Second World War. Instructors: View additional resources at Yalebooks.com/Eskilson 11 Pre-Publication Material. Eskilson/GRAPHIC DESIGN: A NEW HISTORY, SECOND EDITION Chapter 8, now expanded, traces the triumph of the International Style through which European and American graphic design was swept up in a newly reinterpreted version of Constructivist aesthetics. In Chapter 9 we explore the first wave of resistance to the International Style that developed in the 1960s, which eventually coalesced into the group of styles and ideologies that formed Postmodernism. In this second edition, Chapter 9 now gives a more complete accounting of the theoretical and ideological underpinnings of Postmodernism. Chapter 10, the last and longest chapter, examines contemporary developments in graphic design and typography, finding much both to celebrate and to question in recent years. With the addition of over thirty new images, Chapter 10 closes with a completely up-to-date survey of the wealth of aesthetic, conceptual, and technical developments—from motion graphics to the citizen designer—of the past several years. by reviewers. In the UK: Charlotte Gould, The University of Salford; Paul Linnell, De Montfort University; and Graham Twemlow (thanks again). In the US: John T. Drew, California State University, Fullerton; Samantha Lawrie, Auburn University, College of Architecture, Design, and Construction; Scott Boylson, Savannah College of Art and Design. Close to home, Arlene Eskilson has read through each successive draft of the manuscript and made many valuable observations. This book would never have been completed without the joy created at home by my three sons David, Gavin, and Jack, who brighten every day, and without the assistance of their two grandmothers, Arlene Eskilson and Gail Friedman. My wife Jordi is the underlying inspiration for all my hopes and accomplishments. Stephen J. Eskilson Acknowledgments At Brown University, Kermit Champa and Dietrich Neumann served as my scholarly role models. At Eastern Illinois University, Art Department Chair Glenn Hild has been supportive, while my colleague Robert Petersen was always on hand with learned advice. This book was originally accepted by former Publishing Director Lee Ripley at Laurence King Publishing, who kept it on track throughout the writing of the first edition. My thanks also go to picture researchers Emma Brown and Amanda Russell, and the Picture Manager Sue Bolsom. Richard Hollis, Elaine Lustig Cohen, and Emma Gee all graciously helped fill in the gaps. At Yale University Press, Art and Architecture Publisher Patricia Fidler and Senior Editor Michelle Komie have been tremendously supportive. For this second edition, Editorial Manager Kara HattersleySmith has deftly guided me and the book. Project Manager Johanna Stephenson assisted me this past year through the pitfalls of textual revisions and page proofs. Likewise, Amanda Russell has worked assiduously on the images for the second edition. The designer Grita Rose-Innes had an especially delicate assignment in creating the look for a text on the history of graphic design, and she has continually impressed me with her striking graphic solutions. During the writing process I received indispensable help from the reviewers who helped me to shape the structure of the final text. In the United States these include Carolina de Bartolo of Academy Art University, San Francisco; Rhonda Levy of the School of Visual Arts, New York; and Nancy StockAllen of Moore College of Art and Design, Philadelphia. In the United Kingdom Graham Twemlow of the London College of Communication and the Surrey Institute of Art and Design, and Ian Waites of the University of Lincoln, both provided astute comments for which I am grateful. Additionally, the second edition was greatly improved by the insights provided Instructors: View additional resources at Yalebooks.com/Eskilson Pre-Publication Material. Eskilson/GRAPHIC DESIGN: A NEW HISTORY, SECOND EDITION Instructors: View additional resources at Yalebooks.com/Eskilson Pre-Publication Material. Eskilson/GRAPHIC DESIGN: A NEW HISTORY, SECOND EDITION Instructors: View additional resources at Yalebooks.com/Eskilson 14 THE ORIGINS OF TYPE AND TYPOGRAPHY Pre-Publication Material. Eskilson/GRAPHIC DESIGN: A NEW HISTORY, SECOND EDITION was 104% now 98% was 35.5% now 30% 1 Johann Gutenberg, Gutenberg Bible, Mainz, Germany, 1455. The British Library, London. 2 Johann Fust and Peter Schöffer, Mainz Psalter, 1457. The British Library, London. M any centuries before graphic design was established as a professional practice during the late nineteenth century, typography played a vital role in the culture of Europe. It was the development of movable type during the fifteenth century that allowed the widespread printing of works in the Latin alphabet during the time of the Renaissance in Europe. The name most commonly associated with the invention of mechanically assisted printing is that of Johann Gutenberg (c. 1398–1468), an entrepreneurial-minded man from Mainz, Germany, who had trained as a goldsmith. Although Gutenberg did not himself invent the printing press, oil-based inks, or cast metal type, he seems to have been the first person in Europe to combine these tools successfully in order to publish books. This new technology allowed for the mass production of printed material on a heretofore unheard-of scale, and quickly replaced the agonizingly slow block printing and hand copying that were predominant at the time. Instructors: View additional resources at Yalebooks.com/Eskilson FROM GUTENBERG TO BODONI 15 Pre-Publication Material. Eskilson/GRAPHIC DESIGN: A NEW HISTORY, SECOND EDITION From Gutenberg to Bodoni Around 1455, Gutenberg published his famous Bible, commonly known as the Gutenberg Bible (fig. 1). A huge two-volume work comprising 1,282 folio pages of 42 lines, it had been in production in his workshop for almost two years. Gutenberg printed fewer than two hundred copies of the Bible, which, though produced on a modified wine press using movable type, were subsequently rubricated by hand, greatly increasing the amount of time needed to complete each volume. (Rubrication refers to the process whereby words and phrases are highlighted with different colored inks that either underline the text or are used for the letters themselves.) In later years, the invention of two-color printing would accelerate the printing process because it completely eliminated the need for manual additions to a given book. Eventually, the use of italics and small capitals would replace the use of color as a way of showing emphasis. Gutenberg’s Bible was set in a typeset variant of gothic script called Textura, a name that refers to the dense web of spiky letterforms that fill the completed page, giving it a “textured” look. Textura was an example of blackletter type, meaning that the letters strongly resembled the calligraphic writing of medieval scribes. The layout of the Bible is elegant and straightforward, with the text arranged in two columns that are symmetrically balanced. Both columns of text are justified left and right, although most copies feature letter illuminations that defy the boundaries which constrain the body text. Just as important as Gutenberg’s synthesis of various printing technologies was his commitment to making mechanically printed books that aspired to the same high aesthetic standards as handwritten volumes. It was important that his Bible was beautiful, in order to compete with the richly decorated manuscripts that dominated the market at this time. Books such as those published by Gutenberg were rare, cherished objects and would have been far beyond the means of all but a tiny slice of European society. From the first, Gutenberg’s aesthetic feat pushed book printing into becoming a field with a very high standard of typographic quality, a standard that was maintained in subsequent generations. The release of the Gutenberg Bible demonstrated the potential for printing, and over the next few decades the technology spread across most of Europe. By 1500, there were over a thousand printers in Germany alone. When Gutenberg defaulted on his business loans in 1455, his workshop was seized by the businessman Johann Fust (d. 1466). Fust, along with his assistant Peter Schöffer (1425–1503), published the lavish Mainz Psalter in 1457 (fig. 2). The Mainz Psalter represents an important development in that it combines printed type with woodcut illustrations, a technique that would become the basis for centuries of letterpress printing. Woodcuts and metal type made to the same thickness could be printed together, facilitating a close aesthetic relationship between text and image. A third work of immense importance to the development of the book was printed by Anton Koberger (1440–1513) in 1493. The Nuremberg Chronicle, as it is known in English, had been developed by a team made up of investors, a printer, an author, and illustrators. Hartmann Schedel (1440–1514), author—perhaps compositor is a better term—of the Latin text, was a local scholar who put together the pieces of the narrative, a meandering account of the history of the world from creation until the present day (1493), divided into the conventional six ages. A seventh age served to offer the reader a hypothetical view of the future. Michael Wohlgemut (1434–1519) and his sonin-law Wilhelm Pleydenwurff (1460–1494) provided the 1,804 woodcut images that were printed from a total of 652 blocks. Many images, such as those of historical figures, were used more than once. Koberger, supported by Sebal Schreyer (1446–1520) and Sebastian Kammermeister (1446–1503)—who acted as publisher—printed as many as 2,500 copies of the Chronicle, first in Latin and then some months later in German. The Nuremberg Chronicle represents one of the earliest high-quality books in which the text and illustrations appear on the same page. This relief printing process, placing metal type and woodcut images side by side, would remain the mainstay of printing for centuries. It allowed for a visual and conceptual complexity that opened up a new realm in the history of book design. Koberger offered two versions of the Chronicle, an inexpensive one with black and white pictures and a deluxe one with hand-colored images. Perhaps the most prized and influential illustrations from the Nuremberg Chronicle show views of major cities. While some of these, such as the view of Nuremberg itself, have many recognizable features, in other instances the views were generic. In fact, only 26 unique woodcuts were utilized to show 69 different cities. The doublepage view of Venice shown here (fig. 3) was individualized so that it has a number of recognizable features including the Doge’s Palace and St Mark’s Cathedral. The text refers to Venice as “the most powerful city on land and water,” while the woodcut gives some sense of the terrain as the city appears almost to float upon the waves. Books published before 1501, such as this one, are called incunabula, from the Latin word for “cradle.” Because of the tremendous expansion of the printing industry in the late 1400s, over 40,000 incunabula were published before the close of the century. While Gutenberg, Fust, and Koberger had printed their works in blackletter, a competing style, roman letters, emerged in Venice in the 1460s in mechanical printing. The development new 3 Nuremberg Chronicle, spread showing Venice, 1493. Instructors: View additional resources at Yalebooks.com/Eskilson 16 THE ORIGINS OF TYPE AND TYPOGRAPHY Pre-Publication Material. Eskilson/GRAPHIC DESIGN: A NEW HISTORY, SECOND EDITION 4 Nicholas Jenson, Evangelica Praeparatio from Veneta in Urbe, Jenson-Eusebius Typeface, 1470. The British Library, London. 5 Aldus Manutius, De Aetna, Bembo, 1495. The British Library, London. 6 Martin Luther, trans., New Testament, 1522. Woodcuts of the Apocalypse by the Master (sometimes identified as Hans Cranach). The British Library, London. new 7 Claude Garamond, Gros Canon Romain typeface (adopted by Hendrik van den Keere), c. 1570. Museum Plantin-Moretus/Prentenkabinet, Antwerp. Instructors: View additional resources at Yalebooks.com/Eskilson FROM GUTENBERG TO BODONI 17 Pre-Publication Material. Eskilson/GRAPHIC DESIGN: A NEW HISTORY, SECOND EDITION of roman type is directly tied to the central role that printing played in the Renaissance. (The term “Renaissance” is used generically to designate the period from roughly 1300 to 1600, when much of Europe enjoyed a significant economic expansion, but it refers specifically to the rebirth of interest in the Classical culture of ancient Greece and Rome.) Renaissance printing in Italy was influenced by scholars known as humanists, who concentrated their energies on the study of philosophy, literature, the arts, and languages. Italian humanists had adopted a type of handwriting called Carolingian minuscule that was based on the style of writing used for official documents in the Carolingian Empire during the ninth century. Partly derived from ancient Roman cursive, this handwritten script was adopted by Renaissance humanists because of its ties to antiquity. During the late fifteenth century, this style became known as Humanist minuscule, and it is the basis for roman forms through to the present day. As the printing industry became more respected and commercially viable, there was even greater use of roman letters because it was no longer necessary for printed works to imitate the gothic script of handwritten works in order to be deemed valuable. Printing was the core technological achievement that made possible the advent of an era of increased scholarship during the Renaissance. While in previous centuries it had taken years for scribes to produce a few hundred copies of a book, with mechanical presses thousands of copies could be made in a matter of months. One of the finest early books printed in Venice using roman type was Eusebius’s treatise De Praeparatione Evangelica. Eusebius was a fourth-century Christian theologian who is considered one of the first historians of the Church. The treatise was published by a French expatriate, Nicolas Jenson (1420–1480). Jenson had learned the technique of printing in Mainz, where he lived prior to moving to Venice in 1467. Jenson proved to have an excellent eye for forms that were both highly legible and beautiful, and Jenson-Eusebius, with its light, open roman letters, is much admired to this day (fig. 4). The contrast in forms and the sloping stress are both derived from writing with a quill pen. Despite the handwritten roots of the typefaces, it is significant that typographers such as Jenson were essentially metalworkers, who designed letters as part of the process of engraving the metal punches—they did not draw their type by hand. This fact makes the smooth, flowing forms and good “color,” or overall visual texture, of Jenson’s roman that much more remarkable. Around 1500, Aldus Manutius (1449–1515), a Venetian humanist and printer, published the first work in roman italic type. Based on cursive handwriting, italic was not used as a subset to create emphasis, as it mainly is today, but was its own style—one that proved valuable because more words could fit on each line than with either gothic or roman. In 1501, Manutius, in association with the punch cutter Francesco Griffo, released a volume of poetry by the ancient Latin author Virgil. Manutius’s attention to economic issues led him to become one of the first publishers of small printed books, called octavos because each sheet was folded so as to create eight leaves. Manutius also produced a number of roman forms, and the one he used in his 1495 volume of De Aetna, by Pietro Bembo, proved highly influential (fig. 5). This essay tells of the Renaissance author’s journey to Mount Etna, the volcano in Sicily that was sacred to the ancient Romans. The type designed for the book, now referred to as Bembo, was even more readable and harmonious than similar ones produced by Jenson. Its refined proportions allow the eye to flow smoothly across the page. While the individual letters are eminently legible, they are also quite stylish; the midbar of the “F,” for example, is elongated for aesthetic purposes. Along with Jenson-Eusebius, Bembo is the basis for the group of roman types called Old Style, which together are distinguished by their understated contrast, bracketed serifs, and oblique stress. Historic typefaces are traditionally grouped into three stylistic and chronological categories: Old Style, followed by Transitional, and then Modern. Another important contribution to Renaissance typography was made by the French printer and publisher Claude Garamond (1480–1561). One of Garamond’s key contributions was an adaptation of Manutius’s Bembo that is perhaps more refined than the original (fig. 7). With their broad forms and light proportions, Garamond’s designs represented a startling change from the rather heavy contemporary French gothics. In absorbing Italian aesthetics, Garamond was following the path paved by his mentor, Geoffroy Tory, a humanist who had journeyed to the Italian peninsula and brought back an enthusiasm for the work of Jenson and Manutius. This was in concert with the strong overall trend in French art and culture during the later Renaissance to admire and absorb Classical forms that were being revived in Italy. While Garamond’s roman faces have many Italian characteristics, overall they have somewhat more pronounced contrast and slimmer, mainly horizontal serifs. It is important to be aware that contemporary versions of historic typefaces such as Garamond are often not true to the originals. It was Garamond’s promotion of Old Style typefaces that resulted in the gradual disappearance of blackletter in French publishing, as roman faces came to the fore during the sixteenth century. In fact, from that time on, roman type became strongly associated with the French and Italian traditions, while Germany laid claim to the blackletter form. Garamond is also credited with establishing the first type foundry, as he would make copies of his faces and sell them to other printers. He was the first typographer to use italic as a complement to roman type, and he designed the first italic face that was intended not to stand alone but to serve as a partner to roman letters. At the time of the invention of mechanical printing, so-called gothic, or blackletter, scripts predominated in Europe. While the older styles called Textura, used by Gutenberg, and Rotunda— which had also been around since the Middle Ages—continued to be used, the new styles called Schwabacher and Fraktur would prove to be much more influential in future centuries. The reason for this longevity was related to their roots in Germany, through which Schwabacher and Fraktur came to be associated with that region’s national identity. Schwabacher appeared in Germany as early as 1480, but its importance was greatly increased in 1522, when it was used for the publication of Martin Luther’s (1483–1546) German translation of the New Testament (fig. 6). In rejecting the authority of the pope and the Roman Church, Luther sparked the establishment of Protestantism, a process Instructors: View additional resources at Yalebooks.com/Eskilson 18 THE ORIGINS OF TYPE AND TYPOGRAPHY Pre-Publication Material. Eskilson/GRAPHIC DESIGN: A NEW HISTORY, SECOND EDITION 8 Philippe Grandjean, Romain du Roi typeface, 1702. St Bride Printing Library, London. Instructors: View additional resources at Yalebooks.com/Eskilson FROM GUTENBERG TO BODONI 19 Pre-Publication Material. Eskilson/GRAPHIC DESIGN: A NEW HISTORY, SECOND EDITION now referred to as the Reformation. However, Luther’s choice of Schwabacher for his text also signaled a rejection of the roman type that prevailed in Italy, giving his seal of approval to the idea that blackletter styles were somehow quintessentially German in character. From the standpoint of our current era in which so much is made of the impact of digital communication on culture and subjectivity, it should be recognized that it would be hard to overstate the revolutionary effect that the invention of mechanical printing had on European society. When Martin Luther wrote his “95 Theses on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences” in 1517, a new chapter in the history of Christianity began. It began because of printing. Luther’s protest spread across Europe in a matter of months in a manner that would have been inconceivable a century earlier. Not just the Protestant Reformation, but the Enlightenment (see below), even the development of democracy itself, would have seemed unlikely without the invention and dissemination of the printing press. Eight years before the publication of Luther’s New Testament, in 1514, the printer Johannes Schönsperger the elder (d. 1520) had developed the type called Fraktur (somewhat confusingly, the term “fraktur” is also used generically to refer to all blackletter scripts created after 1450). Based in Augsburg, Schönsperger relied on that city’s long tradition of fine calligraphy in order to design his new type. As suggested by its name, Fraktur features broken curves and oblique strokes that retain the character of the calligrapher’s brush which originally inspired the forms. Fraktur first appeared in 1514, when Schönsperger published the Gebetbuch, a kind of prayer book, for Kaiser Maximilian I. As would be the case with Luther’s book, this event helped to reinforce the concept that blackletter was related to the religion, government, and culture of Germany. By the end of the sixteenth century, roman and blackletter type were both flourishing and were often printed side by side; however, the roots of their future opposition had already been established. In the seventeenth century, at a time when the roman Old Style faces had become established across much of Europe, there was continuing typographic development, resulting in a new class of typefaces called Transitional. Transitional type gradually arose during the Baroque era, a period that is roughly synonymous with the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. While the word “baroque” has stylistic connotations in the fine arts, where it refers to a break with Renaissance harmony in favor of greater expressiveness, in typography the term does not really carry any stylistic meaning. In fact, baroque Transitional faces are very closely connected to the Renaissance aesthetic, emphasizing classical balance over any other attribute. An important event in typography during the Baroque period was the increasing patronage of the French royal government. This development was part of a broader movement whereby the government under Louis XIV (r. 1643–1715) instituted a state policy through which the arts would be funded and controlled through official institutions. Cardinal Richelieu (1585–1642), a key advisor to the king, had earlier overseen the establishment of an Imprimerie Royale, or “royal printing works.” In 1692, the king ordered that a new set of royal typefaces be created for the use of the Imprimerie Royale. After years of research and discussion by a government committee at the Academy of Sciences, Philippe Grandjean de Fouchy (1666–1714) was appointed to cut the new type. The resulting Romain du Roi, “roman of the king,” would influence European typography for well over a century (fig. 8). The invention of the Romain du Roi probably represents the first time that a horizontal and vertical grid became the basic tool for structuring a typeface. The commission that designed the typeface used a 64-square grid, with each unit further split up into 36 smaller squares, so that the entire system totaled 2,304 tiny squares. This design process gave typography the imprimatur of a scientific pursuit, whereby letterforms are worked out not by intuition but by rational, logical processes. In a sense, this episode established the final link in the definition of typography that exists unto the present—a field that requires a synthesis of many disparate skills: the practical knowhow of the manual worker, the creativity of the fine artist, and the logic of a scientist. The Romain du Roi established the stylistic principles of the Transitional faces, including more vertical stress, greater contrast in stroke width, wider proportions, and thin, elegant serifs. Another French typographer, Pierre Simon Fournier (1712– 1768), made a major contribution to the field in 1737, when he invented the first point system for measuring type. Fournier’s system, a part of the trend toward treating typography with the rational approach of the empirical scientist, used a scale based on inches, which were divisible into 72 points. Fournier also published the first encyclopedic survey of typography, the twovolume Manuel typographique (1766; fig. 9). This work represented the first comprehensive overview of type ever published, and it included a discussion of type from across Europe, offering examples of different regional trends. This kind of attention to the classification of a given subject or phenomenon was quite was 101% now 83% 9 Pierre Simon Fournier, Manuel typographique, vol. 1, Paris, 1766. St Bride Printing Library, London. Instructors: View additional resources at Yalebooks.com/Eskilson 20 THE ORIGINS OF TYPE AND TYPOGRAPHY Pre-Publication Material. Eskilson/GRAPHIC DESIGN: A NEW HISTORY, SECOND EDITION left: 10  William Caslon, A Specimen, 1734. opposite: 11  John Baskerville, Baskerville typeface, William Congreve, The Works of Mr. William Congreve, Birmingham, 1761. new characteristic of the philosophical movement known as the Enlightenment, which began in France in the eighteenth century. Enlightenment thinkers were consumed with the idea of compiling and analyzing human knowledge, and the first universal encyclopedia was published during this era. The scientific approach to typography, whereby it was treated as a field with consistent, mathematically based rules, suggests the application of Enlightenment philosophy to type. In 1725, William Caslon (1692–1766) set up a type foundry in London that would eventually turn into a family legacy as future generations of the Caslon family continued to operate it well into the nineteenth century. Before Caslon, English printing, which had been pioneered by William Caxton (c. 1422 – c. 1491) in the fifteenth century, had remained a somewhat haphazard affair, lacking a clear aesthetic direction. While Caslon designed over two hundred typefaces during his career, the type known simply as Caslon, which was based on contemporary Dutch models, would always lie at the root of his designs (fig. 10). Caslon would become the most influential face ever produced in England. What made the original Caslon so popular was not any dramatic, stylish flair, but rather its solid functionality. The type is eminently legible, meaning that each character can easily be recognized, as well as readable; text set in Caslon seems to flow effortlessly past the reader’s eyes. Versus Old Style faces, Caslon has a larger x-height, more vertically oriented stress, greater contrast, and finer serifs. In addition, Caslon appears overall more fluid than Old Style. In 1734, Caslon issued a broadside specimen detailing 37 typefaces that firmly established his reputation as the premier English typographer of the day. Caslon became more than just an official type like Grandjean’s Romain du Roi; indeed, it became invested with the idea that it encapsulated English national identity. As a national type, Caslon was used in a wide variety of printed matter, from the most exalted government proclamation to the most ephemeral broadside. Caslon made its way across the Atlantic Ocean to the United States, where it was also used as an official type, notably on early printed copies of both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. The pre-eminence of Caslon, which is Instructors: View additional resources at Yalebooks.com/Eskilson FROM GUTENBERG TO BODONI 21 Pre-Publication Material. Eskilson/GRAPHIC DESIGN: A NEW HISTORY, SECOND EDITION new based more on its overall usefulness than its aesthetic qualities, prefigures the similar widespread use of Helvetica in the second half of the twentieth century. The other notable English typographer of the eighteenth century was John Baskerville (1706–1775). Around 1751, Baskerville established a printing business in Birmingham, producing his first book, a volume of Virgil, in 1757. The edition titled The Works of Mr. William Congreve (English playwright, 1670–1729), published in 1761, aptly demonstrates the fluid readability of Baskerville’s type designs (fig. 11). However, in direct contrast to the outstanding success of Caslon, the Transitional types created by Baskerville (the punches were cut by John Handy) were almost universally condemned for what was perceived as their stark, abstract qualities and extreme contrast in stroke widths. In addition, the delicate forms of the letters were criticized as too thin to be read easily. A desire to print his typeface accurately had led Baskerville to a number of innovations in the printing process. First, Baskerville had invented new inks in order to make the slender, delicate shapes of his letters stand out on the page. He experimented with different paper types, finally settling on wove paper that had a smooth, glossy finish. Baskerville also used a technique called “hot pressing,” whereby he would heat newly printed pages between copper plates, a process that smoothed the sheet while also setting the ink more effectively. It is hard for modern eyes jaded by an astonishing range of typeface designs to understand why Caslon could have been viewed as a supreme achievement in type design, whereas Baskerville’s types were condemned as experimental, amateurish products. Today, only committed typographers would be likely to note the differences between these two romans, which have a number of similarities in terms of stress and basic letter shapes. While the lighter proportions of Baskerville in comparison with Caslon are quite evident, it is difficult to imagine an age when such apparent subtleties would be recognized and debated outside the profession itself. Furthermore, it may be difficult to conceive of an era when homely appeal won out over stylish experiment. The second half of the eighteenth century witnessed the continuing evolution of typographic styles, in particular the creation of Modern typefaces. (This term may prove confusing in the context of other usages of the word “modern,” which is commonly associated in the history of art with developments in painting from around 1850.) Modern typefaces tend toward even greater contrast between thin and thick strokes, so much so that the thin ones are often no more than hairlines. Serifs also are reduced to hairlines. The stress of a Modern face is decidedly vertical, as is the overall geometry of the individual letters, which are more abstract in appearance. The Modern style represents a decisive move through which metal type no longer resembles handwriting but consists of forms built on an armature of horizontal, vertical, and circular elements. In line with the Enlightenment’s exaltation of science, it became common for typographers about this time to use tools such as the compass and ruler in the development of typefaces. One of the most successful firms in France to pioneer the Modern style was owned by the Didot family, and was a business that was originally established as a bookseller in 1713 by François Didot (1689–1757). Didot’s business eventually expanded into printing and type design. One of the founder’s sons, François Ambroise Didot (1730–1804), was responsible for a number of typographic innovations, including the introduction of smooth wove paper to France. As was the case with Baskerville in England, this achievement allowed for the accurate printing of the hairline strokes that became an important part of the Modern style. The younger Didot also invented a new system of type measurement based on Fournier’s original one, but now using the French pied au roi, or foot, as the basis. This unit was divided into 12 inches, each consisting of 72 points. Didot rationalized the system of names given to different type sizes, replacing the older, whimsical terms such as parisienne with the point system. This radical new system would quickly spread across the whole of Europe, thus creating an international language for classifying type. François Ambroise Didot’s two sons, Pierre and Firmin, were mostly responsible for the final form of the eponymous Modern roman, Didot. Around 1783, Firmin Didot refined his Instructors: View additional resources at Yalebooks.com/Eskilson 22 THE ORIGINS OF TYPE AND TYPOGRAPHY Pre-Publication Material. Eskilson/GRAPHIC DESIGN: A NEW HISTORY, SECOND EDITION left: 12  Firmin Didot, Oeuvres de Jean Racine, Nouvelle Edition, Paris, 1801. The British Library, London. below: 13  Johann F. Unger, Unger-Fraktur typeface, 1793. Instructors: View additional resources at Yalebooks.com/Eskilson FROM GUTENBERG TO BODONI 23 Pre-Publication Material. Eskilson/GRAPHIC DESIGN: A NEW HISTORY, SECOND EDITION family’s roman face to help create the new Modern style. Didot would soon become the most influential Modern face, because it set the standard for contrast, stress, and geometric structure. It also introduced the Modern technique of regularizing the width of capitals, so that they do not disrupt the consistency of a line of text with too many disparate sizes. Along these lines, conventionally wide letters such as the “M” are condensed, while narrower ones such as “T” are expanded, making for a bold block of text. Also, the Modern style eliminated ligatures between letters, such as the “st” which had been common in the Old Style. Didot represents one of the first instances in which a type designer seemed to be aware of the virtues of white, negative space, as the extreme contrasts of the strokes brought this element to the fore. Firmin Didot’s type was brilliantly employed by his brother Pierre in the latter’s acclaimed edition of the works of the foremost French dramatist of his age, Jean Racine (1639–1699). The title page of the first volume, shown here (fig. 12), displays the great elegance of Didot, its bold contrasts grabbing the eye of the reader. Its simple, strong geometric quality formed a strong parallel with the contemporary painting style called Neoclassicism. As the name suggests, Neoclassical painting revived the linear style of the Renaissance, but it also strove to simplify forms and compositions to reach an almost abstract ideal. Similarly, Didot is a reductive typeface that does away with unnecessary flourishes in order to stress its clear and direct underlying structure. In 1793, Johann Friedrich Unger (1753–1804), reacting to the increasing dominance of roman forms in Europe as well as to the great expense suffered by German printers who had to work in both blackletter and roman forms, sought to create a variant of Fraktur that would be more universal in appeal. The resulting type, Unger-Fraktur, represented an attempt to inject some of the geometric clarity of roman Moderns into the German type (fig. 13). Together with Didot, Unger produced a number of variants of his hybrid type, but was unsuccessful in promoting their adoption commercially. Already, the association of roman with the French–Italian tradition and of blackletter with the German tradition had become too deeply entrenched, and European typography would remain split until the mid-twentieth century. In Italy, Giambattista Bodoni (1740–1813) of Parma introduced the Modern style in the late eighteenth century. Influenced by the work of the Didot foundry, Bodoni created a beautiful roman that further defined the Modern style. In designing this typeface, Bodoni adopted many of the innovations of Didot, but was arguably less adventurous, as some of the contrasts, for example, are not as radical as those found in the French one (fig. 14). Five years after Bodoni’s death in 1813, his Manuale Tipografico—which included a comprehensive discussion of over three hundred typefaces from across Europe as well as Asia, and which would influence generations of future typographers—was published. This publication in many ways served as a culmination of the classical period of typography, which had begun in the fifteenth century, as changes in society during the nineteenth century fundamentally altered the field. During this era, the element of connoisseurship that had heretofore played such a prominent role in the history of typography would be devalued in favor of the pursuit of commerce. The nineteenth century also witnessed the birth of graphic design. new 14  Giambattista Bodoni, Bodoni typeface, Plautus, Trinummus, Parma, 1792. Instructors: View additional resources at Yalebooks.com/Eskilson