Discover a New Digital Version of Printing Sorts, the Authoritative Historical past of Printing & Typography from 1922

Occasions New Roman has been round since 1931, longer than most of us have been alive — and for longer than many people have been alive, word-pro­cess­ing appli­ca­tions have include it because the default font. We have a tendency, there­fore, to treat it much less as some­factor cre­at­ed than as some­factor for all intents and pur­pos­es eter­nal, however there was a time when pub­lish­ers needed to lively­ly undertake it. The primary Amer­i­can agency to begin utilizing Occasions New Roman was the Mer­ry­mount Press, which had already made a excessive­ly pres­ti­gious identify for itself with pub­li­ca­tions just like the ele­gant E-book of Com­mon Prayer financed by no much less a cap­tain of indus­attempt than J. Pier­pont Mor­gan. However oth­er print­ers knew Mer­ry­mount for a e-book that might have impressed in them an equal­ly wor­ship­ful impulse.

“Launched in 1922 with a lat­er revi­sion in 1937,” Print­ing Sorts: Their His­to­ry, Varieties and Use “grew to become referred to as the stan­dard work on the his­to­ry of [print­ing and typog­ra­phy] and a fundamental e-book for all inter­est­ed within the graph­ic arts. This two-vol­ume work spans close to­ly 450 years and contains detailed analy­ses of the print­ers and sort design­ers and their work.”

So writes the design­er Nicholas Rougeux, pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured right here on Open Cul­ture for his dig­i­tal edi­tions of vin­tage books like Illus­tra­tions of the Nat­ur­al Orders of Crops; British & Exot­ic Min­er­al­o­gy; A Mono­graph of the Trochilidæ, or Fam­i­ly of Hum­ming-Birds; Werner’s Nomen­cla­ture of Colors; Euclid’s Ele­ments, and Pierre-Joseph Crimson­outé’s col­lec­tions of rose and lily illus­tra­tions. His lat­est undertaking to go reside is a painstak­ing­ly assem­bled dig­i­tal edi­tion of Print­ing Sorts, which you’ll be able to discover right here.

That e-book was additionally orig­i­nal­ly the work of 1 man, Mer­ry­mount Press founder Daniel Berke­ley Updike. “Dur­ing his tenure at Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty, he taught a course on Tech­nique of Print­ing within the Grad­u­ate Faculty of Busi­ness Admin­is­tra­tion for 5 years,” Rougeux writes, “the lec­tures of which served as the premise for Print­ing Sorts.” Within the e-book, Updike affords a his­to­ry of “the artwork of typog­ra­phy from the daybreak of West­ern print­ing within the fif­teenth cen­tu­ry to the start­ning of the twen­ti­eth — focus­ing pri­mar­i­ly on Euro­pean print­ing in Ger­many, France, Italy, the Nether­lands, Spain, and Eng­land in addition to the Unit­ed States.” In trac­ing “the devel­op­ment of sort design,” he additionally dis­cuss­es “the impor­tance of every his­toric peri­od and the teachings they con­tain for con­tem­po­rary design­ers.”

Orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished in 1922 and exten­sive­ly revised in 1937, Print­ing Sorts lengthy stood because the writer­i­ta­tive his­to­ry of typog­ra­phy within the Latin alpha­wager, with its “greater than 360 fac­sim­i­le illus­tra­tions present­cas­ing examination­ples of typog­ra­phy, bor­ders, circulation­ers, and pages pulled from the books cov­ered.” Monitor­ing down the sources of these illus­tra­tions con­sti­tut­ed no small a part of the painstak­ing professional­duc­tion of Rougeux’s dig­i­tal edi­tion, and the 100 of them most excessive­ly praised by Updike have additionally been made avail­in a position for pur­chase in poster type. For individuals who do lots of work with textual content, in print or dig­i­tal types, it might professional­vide simply as a lot moti­va­tion as an actu­al copy of Print­ing Sorts on the shelf to search out our method past the defaults.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The His­to­ry of Typog­ra­phy Advised in 5 Ani­mat­ed Min­utes

See How The Guten­berg Press Labored: Demon­stra­tion Exhibits the Outdated­est Func­tion­ing Guten­berg Press in Motion

Dis­cov­er the First Illus­trat­ed E-book Print­ed in Eng­lish, William Caxton’s Mir­ror of the World (1481)

The Artwork of Col­lo­sort: See a Close to Extinct Print­ing Tech­nique, as Lov­ing­ly Prac­ticed by a Japan­ese Mas­ter Crafts­man

Behold a Dig­i­ti­za­tion of “The Most Beau­ti­ful of All Print­ed Books,” The Kelm­scott Chaucer

Fonts in Use: Enter a Large Archive of Typog­ra­phy, Fea­tur­ing 12,618 Sort­faces

Primarily based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His initiatives embody the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the e-book The State­much less Metropolis: a Stroll by Twenty first-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social internet­work for­mer­ly referred to as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.