Burke, James. The Day the Universe Changed. London Writers Ltd., 1985. Burke describes the life of Gutenberg and his printing press then the development of standardized print type that followed. The humanist influences on style are described and the creation of "italic." I found this book in the bibliography of the Wikipedia article History of Western Typography.
Glen, Duncan. Printing Type Designs: A new history from Gutenberg to 2000. Akros Publications, 2001. Glen discusses the reasons for maintaining manuscript-style fonts in his printing, and the influences that brought about new typefaces. This book was sitting next to the book I was looking for on the shelf and it became one of my most important finds.
Haley, Allan. Typographic Milestones. Van Nolstrand Reinhold, 1992. Haley presents the men who had the most influence on type design throughout history, beginning with Gutenberg and concluding with Jan Tschicold (who died in 1975). The contributions each made and the fonts attributed to them are included. I found this book in the section of the library I was looking in and found it very useful.
Lawson, Alexander. Printing Types. Beacon Press, 1990. Agner describes the historical development of typesetting including the inner workings of the printing press as well as the development of typeface design. Fonts from Gutenberg to today are discussed. I found this book listed under "Related Books" on Google books when I searched for Updike's Printing Types: Their History, Forms, and Use.
Lieberman, Ben. Types and Typefaces. The Myriade Press, 1978. This book discusses the practical reasons for developing new fonts different from those modeled after the manuscript style. Mechanical considerations are explained as well as technical differences in print letters and those drawn by a scribe that made manuscript-style fonts ultimately impractical. I found this book near Printing Types on the book shelf.
Updike, Daniel Berkeley. Printing Types: Their History, Forms, and Use (volumes 1&2), 4th ed. Oak Knoll Press, 2001. This comprehensive history of fonts and typefaces describes the different types that developed around the world after the invention of the printing press, as well as the process of developing new typefaces and the cutting and casting of types. This book is an authority on the history of typefaces, nearly every book I looked at referenced this on in its bibliography. I first found it in the bibliography of The History and Technique of Lettering by Alexander Nesbitt.
I never would have found this out anywhere else. Who would have thought that type would be so important?
ReplyDeleteI think it is interesting that, even though your sources were in print, you used electronic media to find two of the six, and it sounded like from those two that you found some of the others. Searching libraries has become much easier since computers were invented. Before that you had to use the card catalog, which was a huge collection of pieces of paper with information about a different book on each one (My grade-school still had one when I was little, I'm not sure if any of yours did). They were sometimes cataloged by subject, but they are obviously not searchable like internet catalogs. Probably a lot more finding books happened by just going to the right part of the shelf and seeing what is there.
ReplyDeleteI have never had to use the card catalog that I can recalls. Ever since they taught us how to use the dewey decimal system in elementary school i am pretty sure we've always had computers to look up books. It definitely would be a different ball game with out it that's for sure.
ReplyDeleteIt's neat when you find the go to mother of all books type of a thing when you're doing the researching. Are they referenced so much because of the vast information or do you know why that one specifically is what it is.