Modern typographers view typography as a craft with a very long history tracing its origins back to the first punches and dies used to make seals and coinage currency in ancient times. The basic elements of typography are at least as old as civilization and the earliest writing systems—a series of key developments that were eventually drawn together into one systematic craft. While woodblock printing and movable type had precedents in East Asia, typography in the Western world developed after the invention of the printing press by Johannes Gutenberg in the mid-15th century. The initial spread of printing throughout Germany and Italy led to the enduring legacy and continued use of blackletter, roman, and italic types.
Origin theories
According to a tradition in Feltre and Lombardy, an Italian engraver named Panfilo Castaldi (1398–1490) introduced movable type to Europe after having seen Chinese books brought by Marco Polo. Inspired by the Chinese prints, Castaldi started using wooden movable type and he printed several broadsides at Venice in 1426. The tradition tracing movable type to Castaldi also states that Johannes Gutenberg's wife saw Chinese printing blocks in Venice, which inspired their own invention of printing. This story was recorded by Robert Curzon citing a news article written by a doctor from Feltre dated 1843. Henry Yule (1820–1889), who translated Marco Polo's works, viewed the story with skepticism but believed that Chinese wood blocks could have been transferred via travelers.
Guido Panciroli (1523–1599) disputed the theory of European movable type originating in China. Panciroli stated that Gutenberg's movable type was different from that of China and was a "modern thing" although he did not specify what the differences were. André Blum based the difference on the production of movable characters made from a fusible metal. This required three things: "a matrix or mould in which the letter is engraved in intaglio, an alloy cast in the matrix, and a reproduction of the character in relief on the punch". However, a similar metal casting method was used in Korea as noted by G. F. Hudson. According to Hudson, the Korean movable type preceded the European process and he argues that the burden of proof rests on those who assert an independent European invention of movable type. Other historians such as Frances Gies and Joseph Gies and A. Hyatt Mayor hold similar stances that printing was likely transmitted from China to Europe.Gies, Frances and Gies, Joseph (1994) Cathedral, Forge, and Waterwheel: Technology and Invention in the Middle Age, New York : HarperCollins, , p. 241A Hyatt Mayor, Prints and People, Metropolitan Museum of Art/Princeton, 1971, nos. 1–4.
As with woodblock printing, Joseph P. McDermot considers the theory of transmission for movable type to be untenable and disputes that European movable type was transmitted from China. He points out that "No text indicates the presence or knowledge of any kind of Asian moveable type or moveable-type imprint in Europe before 1450. The material evidence is even more conclusive." Gutenberg's production process, with the exception of the metal type, had no counterpart in traditional East Asian technology. Type molds are not described in any pre-Gutenberg Chinese record while metal-type frames in Korea were more primitive than in Europe. There are no texts indicating knowledge of Chinese movable type in Europe before 1450. There is also no archaeological evidence of Asian movable type west of Dunhuang and Turfan prior to 1450. McDermott considers both the transmission of woodblock and movable type printing to Europe to be highly conjectural. However, French scholar Henri-Jean Martin described Korean metal movable type as "[extremely similar] to Gutenberg's".Briggs, Asa and Burke, Peter (2002) A Social History of the Media: from Gutenberg to the Internet, Polity, Cambridge, pp. 15–23, 61–73.
Some scholars claim that movable type was not an original invention at all and was nothing more than previous methods of creating impressions such as seals, hand stamps, and the combining of movable letters as suggested by Cicero and Jerome. John Bagford (1650/511716) argues that because they did not know of the Chinese in the past, it was more likely that they took inspiration from Ancient Roman medals, seals, and marks or names at the bottom of sacrificial pots. Douglas Crawford McMurtrie argues Europeans may have learned of printing as an idea from Asia but not the process of printing.
Printing press types
Typography, type-founding, and typeface design began as closely related crafts in mid-15th-century Europe with the introduction of movable type printing at the junction of the medieval era and the Renaissance. Handwritten letterforms of the mid-15th century calligraphy were the natural models for letterforms in systematized typography. The scribal letter known as textur or textualis, produced by the strong gothic spirit of blackletter from the hands of German area scribes, served as the model for the first text types.
Johannes Gutenberg, around 1450, invented a lead type mold, applied it to an alphabet of about 24 characters, and used known press technology to print ink on paper. Prior printing had been done with woodblocks, but movable type was impossible due to fragility of wood at small sizes. Gutenberg employed the scribe Peter Schöffer to help design and cut the letterpunches for the first typeface—the D-K type of 202 characters used to print the first printed books in Europe. A second typeface of about 300 characters designed for the 42-line Bible c. 1455 was probably cut by the goldsmith Hans Dunne with the help of two others—Götz von Shlettstadt and Hans von Speyer.
Cultural tradition ensured that German typography and type design remained true to the gothic/blackletter spirit; but the parallel influence of the humanist and neo-classical typography in Italy (the first country outside of Germany with a printing press) catalyzed texture into four additional sub-styles that were distinct, structurally rich and highly disciplined: Bastarda, fraktur, rotunda, and Schwabacher. Notably, early printed books matched the style of handwritten manuscripts and did not contain title pages, page numbers, or headings.
The rapid spread of movable type printing across Europe produced additional Gothic, half-Gothic and Gothic-to-Roman transitional types. Johann Bämler's Schwabacher, Augsburg appeared in 1474. The half-Gothic Rotunda type of Erhard Ratdolt c. 1486 was cut to suit Venetian taste. In 1476 William Caxton, having learned his craft on the Continent, printed the first books in England with a so-called Bâtarde type (an early Schwabacher design), but soon abandoned it.printing in England
The early printers in Spain were Germans who began printing in contemporary roman types but soon gave these up and adopted Gothic typefaces based on the letterforms of Spanish manuscripts. Valencia in the Kingdom of Aragon was the location of the first press, established in 1473. From there printers moved to other cities to set up presses. Roman types were used by the printers of Salamanca for their editions of classical authors. Printing in Portuguese began at Lisbon in 1495 (the first book printed in Portugal was a Hebrew book printed in 1489).Steinberg, S. H. (1961) Five Hundred Years of Printing. Harmondsworth: Penguin; pp. 94, 96, 98
Classical revival In Italy, the heavy gothic styles were soon displaced by Venetian or "old style" Latin types, also called antiqua. The inscriptional capitals on Roman buildings and monuments were structured on a euclidean geometric scheme and the discrete component-based model of classical architecture. Their structurally perfect design, near-perfect execution in stone, balanced angled stressing, contrasting thick and thin strokes, and incised serifs became the typographic ideal for western civilization. The best-known example of Roman inscriptional capitals exists on the base of Trajan's Column, inscribed c. 113.
In their enthusiastic revival of classical culture, Italian scribes and humanist scholars of the early 15th century searched for ancient lower case letters to match the Roman inscriptional capitals. Practically all of the available manuscripts of classical writers had been rewritten during the Carolingian Renaissance, and with a lapse of three hundred years since the widespread use of this style, the humanist scribes mistook Carolingian minuscule as the authentic writing style of the ancients (as opposed to blackletter, incorrectly seen as the lettering of the Goths that conquered Rome). Dubbing it lettera antica, they began by copying the minuscule hand almost exactly, combining it with Roman capitals in the same manner as the manuscripts they were copying.Nesbitt, Alexander The History and Technique of Lettering (c) 1957, Dover Publications, Inc. . The Dover edition is an abridged and corrected republication of the work originally published in 1950 by Prentice-Hall, Inc. under the title Lettering: The History and Technique of Lettering as Design.
Upon noticing the stylistic mismatch between these two very different letters, the scribes redesigned the small Carolingian letter, lengthening ascenders and descenders, and adding incised serifs and finishing strokes to integrate them with the Roman capitals. By the time moveable type reached Italy several decades later, the humanistic writing had evolved into a consistent model known as humanistic minuscule, which served as the basis for type style we know today as Venetian.
Transition from humanistic minuscule to roman type The classically endowed city of Rome attracted the first printers known to have set up shop outside Germany, Arnold Pannartz and Konrad Sweynheim, closely followed by the brothers Johann and Wendelin of Speyer (de Spira), and the Frenchman Nicolas Jenson. The sequence of appearance and production dates for types used by these printers have yet to be established with certainty; all four are known to have printed with types ranging from textur Gothic to fully developed romans inspired by the earlier humanistic writing, and within a few years the center of printing in Italy shifted from Rome to Venice.
Some time before 1472 in Venice, Johann and Wendelin issued material printed with a half-Gothic-half-roman type known as "Gotico-antiqua". This design paired simplified Gothic capitals with a rationalized humanistic minuscule letter set, itself combining Gothic minuscule forms with elements of Carolingian, in a one step forward, half step back blending of styles.
Around the same time (1468) in Rome, Pannartz and Sweynheim were using another typeface that closely mimicked humanistic minuscule, known as "Lactantius". Unlike the rigid fractured forms of Speyer's half-Gothic, the Lactantius is characterized by smoothly rendered letters with a restrained organic finish. The Lactantius a departed from both the Carolingian and Gothic models; a vertical backstem and right-angled top replaced the diagonal Carolingian structure, and a continuous curved stroke replaced the fractured Gothic bowl element.
For details on the evolution of lower case letterforms from Latin capitals, see Latin alphabet.
Development of roman type
Nicolas Jenson began printing in Venice with his original roman font from 1470. Jenson's design and the very similar roman types cut by Francesco Griffo c. 1499 and Erhard Ratdolt c. 1486 are acknowledged as the definitive and archetypal roman faces that set the pattern for the majority of western text faces that followed.