The Development of the Printing Press

The earliest recorded printed book was “Diamond Sutra”, a Chinese book of wisdom which was printed using woodblock in the 1st Century. Woodblock print was the most common form of printing until the 15th century, when Johannes Gutenberg invented the first movable metal type printing press. Gutenberg’s system used sorts, small metal blocks with type characters etched onto the top. These sorts would placed together on a composing stick to form text before being set into the printing press. Gutenberg used this system to print the first printed text, the “Gutenberg Bible”. The early printed presses used Blackletter typefaces, which were designed to mimic the handwriting of the time. This was because the masses were uneasy with the printing presses ability to reproduce text with ease, so a skeuomorphic design was utilised to make the transition from handwritten to printed text easier.

What I found interesting about this is that the printing and distribution of the Bible upset the Church. Widespread availability of printed text saw a spread in the ability to read which lead to more people being able to understand the Bible on their own, taking power away from the Church who had previously been the only ones to own Bibles. The Church could no longer control the masses through the Bible, as people could now make up their own minds on it.


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The Rise of Typefaces

Due to the complexity of the early blackletter typefaces the development of more styles of typefaces was required. In 1470, Nicolas Jenson designed the first Roman Typeface with shapes and serifs we are used to seeing today. Inspired by the typography found on Roman buildings, this new style of typeface was easier to produce, and took up less space making for more legibility.

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Over 300 years later in 1815, Vincent Figgins created the first Slab Serif Typeface, using thick blocks at the end of strokes rather than serifs. The purpose of Slab Serif Typefaces was to grab attention, with the harsh boldness of the letterforms appearing to almost shout at the viewer. While a lot of slab serif typefaces where designed as display fonts, some where designed for the purpose of body copy, as it was claimed that this style was easier to read on lower quality paper which would lead to fuzzier text.

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Only a year later in 1816, William Caslon IV released the Caslon typeface. Caslon was the first sans-serif font, with the main shape taken from Roman typefaces however without the serifs. Sans-Serif typefaces eventually took off massively, and now with the variety of styles of typefaces, type design became more popular due to the industrial revolution leading to the need for more.

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