The key figure in the history of printing is Johan Guttenberg who invented the printing press in the 1430’s. He had a business of around 25 men and it aims to print around 6 pages of a book per day. William Caxton from Britain went to Germany in 1446, and observed a printing business in Cologne. He printed the first book in Britain which was Chaucer’s Canterburt tales. Caxton is credited with standardising the English language (by homogenising regional dialects) through printing. This was said to have led to the expansion of English vocabulary and the development of inflection and syntax.
The Victorian period was a time of enormous change in the world of printing, especially with the development of the steam presses for printing large numbers of pages. Lithography was also subject to great improvements, powered litho machines were introduced and metal plates began to replace the original limestone slabs. Another development of great importance was the introduction of Chromolithography, with multiple litho plates being used to produce multi-coloured text.
In 1645, the first newspaper was published in Sweden, called the ‘Post-och Inrikes Tidningar’, which is still being published today. During the 17th century, there were many kinds of publications that told both news and rumours. Among these were pamphlets, posters, ballads etc. Even when the news periodicals emerged, many of these co-existed with them. A news periodical differs from these mainly because of its periodicity. The definition for 17th century newsbooks and newspapers is that they are published at least once a week. Johann Carolus’ Relation aller Fürnemmen und gedenckwürdigen Historien, published in Strassburg in 1605, is usually regarded as the first news periodical. In the beginning of the 17th century, the right to print was strictly controlled in England. This was probably the reason why the first newspaper in English language was printed in Amsterdam by Joris Veseler around 1620. This followed the style established by Veseler’s earlier Dutch paper Courante uyt Italien, Duytslandt. However, when the English started printing their own papers in London, they reverted to the pamphlet format used by contemporary books. The publication of these newsbooks was suspended between 1632 and 1638 by order of The Star Chamber. After they resumed publication, the era of these newsbooks lasted until the publication of the Oxford Gazette in 1665. The Civil War escalated the demand for news. News pamphlets or books reported the war, often supporting one side or the other. Following the Restoration there arose a number of publications, including the London Gazette, the first official journal of record and the newspaper of the Crown. Mercurius Caledonius founded in Edinburgh in 1660, was Scotland’s first but short-lived newspaper. Only 12 editions were published during 1660 and 1661.
The first Modern typeface is attributed to Frenchman Firmin Didot (son of François-Ambroise Didot), and first graced the printed page in 1784. His types were soon followed by the archetypal Didone from Bodoni. The Italian type designer Giambattista Bodoni drew his influence from the Romains du Roi (with its flat, unbracketed serifs) and the types of John Baskerville, for whom he showed great admiration. As the range of typeface designs increased and requirements of publishers broadened over the centuries, fonts of specific weight (blackness or lightness) and stylistic variants (most commonly regular or roman as distinct to italic, as well as condensed) have led to font families, collections of closely related typeface designs that can include hundreds of styles. A font family is typically a group of related fonts which vary only in weight, orientation, width, but not design. For example, Times is a font family, whereas Times Roman, Times Italic and Times Bold are individual fonts making up the Times family. Font families typically include several fonts, though some, such as Helvetica, may consist of dozens of fonts.
Typeface superfamilies began to emerge when foundries began to include typefaces with significant structural differences, but some design relationship, under the same general family name. Arguably the first superfamily was created when Morris Fuller Benton created Clearface Gothic for ATF in 1910, a sans serif companion to the existing (serifed) Clearface.
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