John Baskerville

Although John Baskerville was the creator and namesake of a typeface that is now widely used, his work suffered from criticism while he lived. In fact, Baskerville’s type only became popular in the 1920’s, almost one hundred fifty years after his death. The type is characterized by its clarity, vertical emphasis, almost horizontal serifs, and the marked difference in stroke width. This transitional type face is ideal for book making because of its legibility. It is known as a “transitional” type. Baskerville lived and worked in his native England. He worked as a stone carver, calligrapher, and printer as well as a type designer. In all his areas of work he strove for perfection. To further this goal, he made several innovations in the field of printmaking including a darker ink with a faster drying time, better paper, and hot pressing his pages. By pressing his just printed pages between hot copper plates he simultaneously set the ink in to the pages more than previously possible and smoothed the paper. Unlike many of his contemporaries, Baskerville favored legibility over ornamentation. He withheld many of the flourishes of other printers in his designs. He also increased the margin because he viewed the white negative space as intrinsic to his designs.

Sources:
http://www.myfonts.com/person/baskerville/john/
http://ilovetypography.com/2007/09/23/baskerville-john/
http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/storm/john-baskerville/familytree.html
http://users.1st.net/jweinstein/AA210f/Type210/Bask.html
http://www.graphic-design.com/Type/typography.html


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