Chapter 5

Modern Typography and

the creation of a public sphere

[1660-1880]

Period Introduction

This period built on the advances.  The monumental invention of copper plates took new steps forward as improvements allowed greater detail, increasing the richness of designs and drawing more audiences to illustrated media.The Baroque movement heavily influenced graphic design sensabilities of the period, increasing it's elegance.  New administrative tasks in government expanded the role of writing to to include statistics.  Writing also became much popular among ordinary citizens.  Sporadic political satire of the rennaisance evolved in the press, a highly evolved system for reporting news to citizens.  Design and print continued to expand further into  th epublic sector and shaped culture there.  Meanwhile, scientific rationality flourished and typface design headed into different directions, as a result of cultural and ideologic shifts.  With the increased empircism, the disire for knowledge was abundant; And the press delivered in many forms.

Social/Political Characteristics

• Public sphere : virtual arena denoting public opinion.  Was shaped by the press.
• As scientific thinking gained a large commitment, it conflicted with religios groups and prior schools of thought.
• Printed news came to be a regular cultural occurence, and it's content provoked rigorouse debates.
• News sheets satisfied public demand for curiosity and scandal.
• Coffee served as a new social context to consume the news and discuss.  It became a way of life.
• Information and opinion became a commodity.
• Newspapers gradually incorperated other cultural things like advertisements.
• The priniters helped to instill a strong sense of indidualism in north american colonists, provoking their desire to seperate from the crown.
• News papers helped public to keep informed.
• Amendmant provided protection for the press for censorship.
• Knowledge embodied freedom.

Graphic Design Developments

• The role of design was contiually expanding in trade as well as poltical institutions.
• Advances made it easier to record history and knowledge.
• Printing became a highly inolved trade itself, which people prepared for extensively and dedicated their lives to.
• Visual designs were used to condense information such as statistics.
• Visual differences identified different businesses.
• Type design became it's own independant area of specalization.
• At the turn of the 18th century, public interested shifted back to classical styles (hairline serifs for example)
• Design of font faces was highly rational and founded in rational thought and geometrically based.
• Gone was the human feel of the renaissance.
• Roman de Rois, for example, created a type face that emphasized rationality and formality overy creativity.
• Pierre Simon created a standardized system of font sizes, which further brought printing  into the realm of consistency.
• As a a result of the printing press's ability to circulate information, design from the far east came into contact with european design philisophy.
• John Carlson created what came to be widely accepted as the standard English type face.
• John Baskverville pioneered many breakthroughs : darker ink and calandared paper (smoother and glossier)
• Giambattista  Bodoni tooktype face design into the modern age with a series of neoclassical fonts firmly grounded in modernity.
• Book illustrations became common.
• Academic groups' demand for graphic materials grew substanitally.

Person responce

The news paper, I feel, was a remarkable advance of this period.  It really established the newspaper as a personal commodity.  Before information was mostly for official purposes.  But now information became a liesurely thing.  People would sit in a coffee shop much like they did today and discuss the days news, as they do in a Starbucks these days.  I think that this would really have brought communities together.  Now, they would all have access to a regular standardized form of news.  Much like today, the newspapers seem like they would affect peoples opinions on a wide variety of subjects.  The debate over the newspapers of the time seems very similar to the debates that are currently going on over our media outlets such as Fox News.  

This periods take on graphic design seems really similar to today's.  Visuals played a large role in communication just like they do in any of today's informative works (such as documentaries.)  There were a variety of fonts tooo, and these became a serious aesthetic consideratio in design.

On the other hand, the conflict between religion and secular school of thought seemed to be much more active than it is today.  Religion still played a larger role and I think it would be de-emphasized in the comming decades.

I think the upcomming invention of the type writer will have an almost equally impressive effect on printing as Gutteberg's press did.  It wil be probabaly be cheaper than the press was, so a much wider variety of people can enter the trade because of the reduced entry barrier.  People will no longer need patrons to open up a shop.  Anyone could do it.  On the flipside, with the reduced cost, large businesses will also be able to hire many many more people and distrobute information even faster than ever.