Whereas the earlier Humanist and Old Style types owed much to the handwritten letter form, the pen’s influence has all but disappeared in the Transitional types. “Baskerville has less calligraphic flow than most earlier typefaces”***, and this can be said of just about all the Transitional Style types. He achieved amplitude not merely by handsome measurement but by letting in the light.– Type, the Secret History of Letters, Simon Loxley, page 54 (quoting from English Printed Books) was not an inventor but a perfector….He concentrated on spacing. Space doesn’t permit to list all of his achievements suffice to say that he always strove to improve upon existing methods and materials, whether that be in his recipes for new inks, or his finer quality glossy papers. The Englishman John Baskervile is a fascinating character, and reading about him is like reading the biography of two men in one.
#Caslon font history full
In fact the full set of 82 fonts wasn’t completed until half a century later in 1745. The first book to use these types wasn’t published until a decade later in 1702. Also, the main strokes are thicker and the sub-strokes thinner…. Its horizontal and unbracketed structure symbolizes a complete break with the humanist calligraphic tradition. The principal graphic novelty in the ‘Romain du Roi’ is the serif. However, Grandjean himself was to produce the italic from his own designs. Interestingly, Jaugeon also designed a complimentary sloping roman (often referred to today as an oblique) as an alternative to a true italic**. The designs - also known as the Paris Scientific Type - were engraved on copper by Louis Simmoneau, and then handed to the punchcutter Grandjean (not to be confused with the earlier Granjon of course), who began cutting the type in 1698. One of the committee members, Jacques Jaugeon - at that time better known as a maker of educational board games - in consultation with other members, produced the designs constructed on a 48×48 grid (2,304 squares). The Romain du Roi is often referred to as Grandjean’s type, but the designs were produced by a committee* set up by the French Academy of Science. Remember, this is the Age of the Enlightenment, marked by resistance to tradition, whether that be art, literature, philosophy, religion, whatever so it’s no surprise that this same era should give birth to radically different types. The Romain du Roi marked a significant departure from the former Old Style types and was much less influenced by handwritten letterforms. But today we stand in the cobbled streets of 17th century France Louis XIV is on the throne and Jacques Jaugeon is working on what is now considered to be the first Transitional (or Neoclassical) style typeface, the Romain du Roi or King’s Roman, commissioned by Louis XIV for the Imprimerie Royale in 1692.
Today we’ve moved along the time-line to the cusp of the 18th century, the start of a period in history that we now refer to as the The Enlightenment, a time that was to sow the seeds of revolution in France, North America and beyond. In part two we considered the Old Style or Garalde types and also discovered how this era gave birth to the first italic type in 1501.
In part one we traveled all the way back to the 15th century to take a closer look at the Humanist or Venetian style types with their distinctive lowercase ‘e’ (remember that sloping crossbar?). Welcome to part three of our Type Terms series. For a modern-day transitional typeface, be sure to check out the Brill typeface family.
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