what can you tell me about Romans in regards to typography?

Answer 1

They invented the serif. Letters carved on stone tend to lose their incised corner angles when the sun slants on them, as eg in the Forum Romanum. So a small projection of the incision, correcting the optical illusion of a rounded corner but maintaining the side-to-side alignment, became what we now call a serif (or seriff, if you must). Rockwell and others spoiled all that delicate history!

Answer 2

take a look at your fonts... roman numerals!

okay here we go...

Typographic History at a Glance: Renaissance and the Incunabula

A Survey of Typographic Innovation
The word renaissance means "rebirth." Originally this term was used to denote the period that began in the 14th and 15th centuries in Italy, when the classical literature of ancient Greece and Rome was revived. Renaissance is used to encompass the period marking the transition from the medieval to the modern world. In the history of graphic design, the renaissance of classical literature and the work of the Italian humanists are closely bound to an innovative approach to book design, ornaments, illustration and type design were all rethought by Italian printers and scholars. The first stages toward the unique, Renaissance book designs are the roman alphabet designs of Sweynheym and Pannartz and the decorative borders of early French books. The advancement of a new approach to book design, independent of the German illustrated book, began in Venice and continued there during the last three decades of the 15th century.

The Renaissance embraced the humanist philosophy that flowered with the study of classical literature, a belief in human dignity and worth, a spirit of individualism and a shift from religious to worldly concerns. Typography too had made radical advancements towards establishing techniques and approaches that are still used today, over 550 years later.

The world of the Renaissance was consciously linked to Greek and Roman ideals, both in spiritual and artistic spheres. It was a time were philosophy shifted away from secular concerns. Typographical examples from the Renaissance period include the 1495 typeface by Bembo (Medici, the wealthy merchant family from Florence, Italy responsible for funding and commissioning grand artistic projects), a page designed by Dürer in 1525, a sample typeface by de Tournes designed in 1555 and a typeface example by Plantin designed in 1570.

The first 50 years of movable type printing, beginning from the time of Gutenberg’s first printed works, was called the Incunabula period (1450–1500). Incunabula is Latin for cunae, which means, “cradle”. This term describes the earliest stages in the development of the production of books. The example shows a spread (2 pages in tandem) from the Nuremberg Chronicle, 1493 by Anton Koberger. The book illustrates the biblical story of creation.


The example shows a spread from Gutenberg’s Bible. It was published 1450–55 by Johann Gutenberg. The book demonstrates excellent legibility and texture, generous margins and excellent presswork. An illuminator added the red and blue headers, initials and text by hand.


The type of Sweynheym and Pannartz was strongly influenced by the scrittura umanistica and bears gothic traces. Despite the gothic traces, it is considered to be the first roman typeface. The capitals are roman and the lines are spaced more widely than in gothic.


Nicolas Jenson, a goldsmith turned punch-cutter, was responsible for translating humanistic scripts from a calligraphic expression into cast metal types. His Venetian type illustrates his mastery for even ‘color’ of the type mass and great legibility of the forms coincided with the printer’s goals. Jenson’s contribution to typography was the form of roman type and the way it could be composed and arranged on a page. His forms are still used today, over 500 years later. The example shows an illuminated page 1476.


William Caxton, a wealthy silk merchant turned printer, learned how to print in Germany. In Belgium he printed the first book in English. The popular success of this book inspired him to move back to England and start a printing shop. He went on to print over 90 books in 20 years time.


Aldus Manutius is considered the foremost and most accomplished printer. He lived in Bassiano. Manutius was a teacher and fond of literary classics. He had a passion for Greek culture. One of his many claims to fame was his desire and fulfillment to bring to many people books of convenient size at reasonable sizes. Manutius introduced the 4.5" x 6.5" pocket book. His contributions to the art of printing and typography were: small capitals, our modern system of punctuation, fine italic types, he helped to transform printing into a profession and employed a scholar as proofreader.

His work Hypnerotomachia Poliphili was a typographical masterpiece. It used distinctive, clear-cut roman letters and ornamented with beautiful woodcuts. Albrecht Dürer was commissioned to do the illustrations, thus bridging gothic and humanist traditions. Dürer was a master of black and white line, making his style perfect for great detail and expression.


Aldus Manutius commissioned a cursive type based on chancery script, imitating Italian vernacular handwriting. Ludovico Arrighi was among the masters of chancery script writing. Arrighi was hired to produce simpler and more practical type with no excessive ligature use. The example shows a book printed in 1502.


Claude Garamond (1480-1561) is perhaps one of the most famous type designers of all printing history. He worked in a time when books had become accepted to a degree when it was no longer desirable to make them resemble manuscripts. In addition to this, type was designed to respond to the working qualities of steel, just as written alphabets had responded to the qualities of the quill and reed.


Robert Granjon was a Parisian with experience in all phases of early typography: publishing, printing, punch cutting and type founding. The example of the title page using Civilité (1557) shows the French style of Renaissance roman fonts. At this point in typographic history, type was divided into 2 groups—Venetian and French. Even though Garamond created typography and type designs removed from the handwriting and calligraphic tradition, humanist traditions unlike his approach were still being pursued.



Christoffel van Dijck, a goldsmith from Amsterdam, is considered one of the greatest 17th century Dutch type founders. The example shows the use of the Fell types (1670s), with roman and italic styles. The Fell types were designed for the newly invented intaglio printing process.


Robert Clee and his trade card for a liquor dealer. This example of copperplate-engraved design is typical of the Baroque and Rococo style (beginning 1590). Extravagantly ornate borders and luxuriant shapes represented age of wealth and abundance. Royal patronage gave rise to great achievements in theater, music, art and architecture. After the initial developments in typography of early Renaissance, Baroque and Rococo influences created a shift in typography called Classicism (1600-1800) —where the term “transitional roman” comes from. Transitional = mix between calligraphy based and constructed/surface based design—Romain du Roi and Bodoni


Philippe Granjon was the designer of the Romain du Roi (“Roman Royal”) typeface. It was considered the first transitional face, France 1693 to 1745. Inspired by math, the solution was to construct an alphabet on the basis of cross-sectioned, equal-sided rectangles, each letter with 2,304 squares.

Note the greater differentiation between hairline and stem thicknesses. Fonts were designed to be elegant, and they utilized greater contrasts in thick and thins. This typeface marks the beginning of the “transitional” style, where calligraphy was no longer a base for type design.


Caslon Old Face, designed by William Caslon in 1734, United Kingdom. Caslon’s fonts were influenced by Dutch patterns. Their formal qualities and legibility almost made them England’s national typefaces. Up to the time of Caslon, English printing and type founding was not highly developed due to wars and government regulations and the wide use of gothic forms.


Ben Franklin was a typographer in printer in United States. Since the Caslon face was introduced and produced during the final decades of the colonial government, it occupies a special place in American typography.


John Baskerville, considered the second most influential English type designer, created extraordinary transitional typefaces in the United Kingdom. The example shows a title page for John Baskerville’s Virgil 1762. He aspired to typographic neatness and an interest in letters and their arrangement and finish. This example from Virgil shows how layouts in typography typically used justification or central axis. The ideal in typography was to find the best-suited typeface for a specific requirement and for an optimally structured text.


Pierre Simon Fournier produced ornamented typefaces in France. The example is from the Manuel Typographique printed in 1764. In the Manuel Typographique, Fournier discussed sizes and styles of types, showed numerous European sources and gave accounts of the type foundries themselves. He was most noted for establishing an orderly means of typographic measurement, including the “point system”.


François Ambroise Didot, like Fournier, came from a large printing family. François was a bookseller and printer in Paris. He introduced a typographic measurement system, which was used throughout Europe. The metric system (1799 to France) eventually replaced his system. He was notably known for introducing our present style of identifying type sizes by their point body measure rather than their traditional names (gros-texte). Example shows first true Modern Style typeface in France.


Italian Giambattista Bodoni was the contemporary counterpart to the Didots, also developing Modern Style faces using geometry. This 1800 specimen of Bodoni illustrates how typography and type design is removed from written, calligraphic models. The transitional and modern typefaces mark the end of Renaissance typography. These fading years of Classicism (1810’s) saw two major developments, the sans serif and slab serifs. These developments mark the evolution of typographic techniques very different from the classical, traditional approach dating back to the 1450s.

Now you see... it was not only down too romans! Times Roman in your fonts! Included!