Homework #3

John Baskerville was a member of the Royal Society of Arts and one of the best English type designers/printers of the 18^th century. Baskerville is obviously modernly known for his innovation and creation of the typeface called “Baskerville” but accomplished much more during his lifetime. Baskerville began his early work 1757 as a printmaker and publisher where he printed and published his first book, an edition of Virgil. The following year in 1758 he became a printer at the University of Cambridge and published an edition of John Milton’s “Paradise Lost”. Though Baskerville was an Atheist, he produced a few editions of the “Book of Common Prayer”, and a New Testament in his original Greek type in 1763. Baskerville gained the respect and attention of many people such as Ben Franklin who was also a member of the Royal Society of Arts. Franklin introduced many of Baskerville’s works to the United States where they were noticed and used by the federal government. His work became very popular in the states but as any other designer’s work, resentful competitors profoundly criticized his until his popularity fell. Baskerville has had an astonishing influence and impact on modern day print and typography and will always be thought of as one of the founders of the art.

Some of Baskerville's work:

Baskerville is so unique because of its increased contrast between the thick and thin strokes which in return made the serifs sharper and more tapered. Baskerville's altered axis of the rounded letters to a more vertically placed position is also very unique. All of these specific tweaks and changes make the font unique and even more legible. The enhanced design makes for a font that fits together perfectly.

Adrian Frutiger is a famous typeface designer of the twentieth century. Adrian is best known for his creation and innovation of the “Univers” and “Frutiger” typefaces. As a child, Adrian concentrated on made-up scripts and stylized handwriting in negative reaction to the proper and cursive penmanship that the Swiss schools required. Adrian took a huge interest in sculpture though his father and teachers tried to stray him from that interest to make him focus more on the printing profession. By the early age of 16, he was already working as a printer’s apprentice close to his home; yet another prodigy. He later moved on to study at the Zurich School of Fine Arts and Crafts, which led him to Paris where he began working career at a type foundry called Deberny & Peignot. At this foundry, Adrian worked with classical typefaces and the transition more advanced and modern phototypesetting methods. Adrian also began to design and innovate his own typefaces, some of which would become very famous. Some of these typefaces included President (1952), Phoebus (1953), Egyptienne (1956), Univers (1956), Apollo (1962), and Frutiger (1975). Adrian’s work gained him a very popular identity as a father of modern typography design and he is still creating and modifying typefaces to this day.

Some of Frutiger's work:

Univers is such a unique font simply because of its multiplicity of different weights and variations within its type family (44 faces, 16 with numbered weights, width and position combinations, 20 fonts have oblique positions, 8 support the Central european character set, and 8 support the Cyrillic character set). Universe unlike other fonts was the first to designate numbers rather than names to its many weights and variations. This system has ever since been used by many other type designs.

The Univers font family has so many styles and variations that it has its own family-tree-like grid system...

This grid displays all of the styles and variations of the Univers font family according to Frutiger's unique numbering classification system. This genius system eliminated all of the naming and confusing specifying. This system was first used with the Univers font and later used in the Avenir and Neue Helvetica typeface families.