Class February 18, 2009

Today in class we discussed the different styles of type, Rococo style, the Romain du Roi, Caslon, and Baskerville. The Romain du Roi was designed by Louis Simonneau, based on 2,304 squares, and was used for royal printing only! Any commoners who used this font would be killed. The Caslon family were printers for about 60 years, William Caslon's fonts were reported to be "friendly to the eye".  When Caslon was introduced into the American colonies it became very popular and was useda lot, Benjamin Franklin liked it so much that the official printing of the Declaration of Independence was printed in Caslon Old Style.  John Baskerville created woven paper which was smooth, glossy, and easier to write and print on.  People were jealous of him and did not like his style, they said it hurt their eyes.  His style was the transition between old style and modern style.  Bodoni was influenced by the Romain de Roi and liked Baskerville's theory of making the light strokes thinner to increase contrast. Modern style was much more even and symmetrical.

I found it interesting that people said that Baskerville's font hurt their eyes when in reality it wasn't much different from Caslon's. 

Why did Baskerville hide his innovations? Did he not care that people didn't like his font?