An Epoch of Typographic Genius

 By the 1500's, printing was practiced in over 140 towns. In 1450 Europe's monasteries and libraries had housed a mere fifty thousand volumes. During the Incunabula period( writings that were printed not hand written), it is estimated that over 35000 editions, a total of 9 million books were printed. 
Single-leaf pages on one side,eventually evolved into printed posters, advertisements and newspapers.



 An Epoch of Typographic Genius


 The 18th Century brought significant changes to graphic design particularly in the realm of type design, typography and page layout. These changes occurred mainly in France, England and Italy. In France, a shift away from the calligraphic tradition of the old style Roman with its bracketed serifs and relatively even stroke weights had already begun. In the end of the 17th Century, King Loius introduced the new Romain du Roi typeface who's letters were inspired by measurement and drafting instruments as opposed to the chisel and flat pen. 
The very first printing of the Romain de Roi at the beginning of the 18th Century signified a shift to transitional Roman type design with increased contrast between thick and thin strokes, sharp horizontal serifs and a more even balanced to each letter forms.

Fournier le Jeune's typograhic innovations include standardization of type measurement, the concept of a type family and what this means is that there would be a family of a particular type. For example In Helvetica there is a type family. In that family there is Helvetica Bold, Helvetica Light, Helvetica Italic, Helvetica Medium, Helvetica Extra Bold and so on.

Another important factor seen in those days was the letter spacing. Letter spacing refers to the space between the letters. And then line spacing or lettering is the space between the lines and word spacing would be the space between words. So those are three kinds of spacing. Another name for line spacing is Letting.

The French Revolution brought an end to the lush designs of the French monarchy. But in Italy, Giambattista Bodoni led the way in evolving new type phases and page layout, which resulted in a new category of Roman type identified first by Fournier le Jeune as 'Modern'. This led to the more mathematical geometric and mechanical appearance of modern type with its un-bracketed hairline serifs, thin strokes thrimmed to the same weight as those hairline serifs. As for page layout, you have very open simple page design with generous margins, wide letter and line spacing and large areas of white space and this became a hallmark of Bodoni.
Bodoni is a very popular font that was created a long time ago by Bodoni ofcourse, and is still used today.

In Graphic Design, so pure and simple, every single adjustment of letter spacing and line spacing becomes critical to the overall design harmony.

The Didot Family was a dynasty of printers, publishers, papermakers and type founders and it began when Francoise Didot established a printing and bookselling firm in 1713. Didot's contributions included the point system, so points are how we measure type. We don't measure type in inches or cm, we say it is 5 point type or 6 point type or 25 point type.
So that refers to the scale.
Bodoni and the Didot's were rivals and kindred spirits who really pushed the modern style to the limit.

William Blake created all these poema and illustrations that offered a real counter point to the severe typography of people like Bodoni and Didot. This really led the way his work for things like Romanticism, Expressionism which were going to get into it in a big way, Art Nouveau, and abstract art.

Relying on analytic geometry, William Playfair used graphics such as line graph, bar chart and pie chart to present complex information. The goal was to truly make very detailed information more understandable to the masses. These information graphics are used till today and are found everywhere.