Day Two

Day's Notes

PLAYING CARDS

-Alcuin of York is Charlemagne's main scribe

-1400s playing cards were born

-Xylography is printing with wood 

-Cards used Xylography 

-Playing cards is a huge step for democratization 

-A king can have cards and a peasant can have cards

-Playing cards were one of the first form of entertainment

-Playing cards fundamentally change how brains work.

-Sequencing, memorization,

DEATH 

-We're all wired differently 

-With low block printing poor people can own art

-Mid 1400s death was a popular topic

-Plagues were all over 

-Ars Moriendi was a popular book about the art of DYING

GUTENBERG

-Factors put in place for Gutenberg to invent printing

-1. Growing middle class. Students/university expanding.

-2. Increased literacy 

-3. The monopoly of literacy is being taken away from the church

-Basically there is a demand. Kids in school need books

-Gutenberg creates ligatures and typography 

-Gutenberg was a regular guy.

EARLY PRINTING

-Needs lead to carve out the letter

-the letter has to be hand shaven

-the letter is put in a cast to make a mold

-Once done it gets smoothed by stone

-Printing was invented around 1455

-The first book printed was the Gutenberg bible 

PRINTING ACCELERATING 

- Typographic is the major communications advance between 20th century writing.

-Crusades, Shakespeare, Printing all happening at the same time

-Swevyheym and Pannartz - evolution to Roman letters

-1475 is the first English book

-Calendarium is a book on the calendar on moon and sun

- Renaissance really liked decorative art

ROCOCO 1720s

- King Louie of France wanted to create a royal typeface 

-The typeface was drawn on a grid

-Romainduroi became royal typeface

-Upon it's arrival typeface didn't not improve it stayed the same

-Classic Rococo design is clean, articulate, decrative, frilly, etc

-Pierre Simon Fournier created florins 

-Printing starts becoming common

-Copper plate ingraven becomes popular

-Which is scratching into a plate to create ornate designs

Personal Thoughts

In today's lecture one of my favorite sections of discussion were playing cards. I found it very interesting how they intertwine with early typography. Actually, I thought playing cards had no connection whatsoever with typography and printing development. Playing cards are really interesting to me because it's like an old "videogame". It's one of humanities first form of entertainment and I find it really cool. Who knew playing cards made people in the 1400s smarter!

I really like the concept of how you said that everyone is wired differently. It's really interesting that the thought that every generation is wired differently because of what's popular at the time. As a side note, I found the book of Ars Moriendi comedic. I can't believe it was a popular book about the art of dying.

Watching that video today in class was horribly boring. The process of creating type is so tedious and intricate it reminded me of the life of scribes we watched last class period. Talking about the process to create a font really made me appreciate our technology today.

Questions and Research

When did modern typeface (san serif) pop into history?