Claude Garamond – Early Life
Little is known about the early life of France’s most distinguished type designer Claude Garamond, though he is mentioned as being “at work” in the printing business early in the sixteenth century. Garamond was commissioned by the French monarch, Francis I, to cut a font of Greek letters, later known as the “Royal Greek Type.” An apprentice of France’s master typographer Geofroy Tory, Garamond eventually cut his punches and matrixes and became known by his contemporaries as the foremost type designer of his day. He designed many fonts during his most prolific period, but his work has never been wholly classified.
Contributions
He died in abject poverty in 1561: Garamond’s most significant contribution to his craft was creating letters that could be considered independent units, thus breaking away from the notion that type should be merely an adaptation of the hand-written script. His elegant, spirited form finally freed typography from the Gothic influence which had prevailed since Gutenberg’s day.
Source
Sat, Apr 11, 1953 – 15 · National Post (Toronto, Ontario, Canada) · Newspapers.com
More graphic designers
More Ceramicists
-
René Gabriel (1890 – 1950) French Interior Designer
René Gabriel was a follower of Francis Jourdain who made wallpaper, fabric, rugs, and porcelain for the Manufacture de Sèvres. He also designed bent-metal tubular seating and structures, and opened Ateliers d’Art, Neuilly. He taught at the Ecole des Arts Appliqués and was the director of the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs. His work…
-
The Adams Family Name and English Potters
In the 1800s, three separate members with the Adams family name—William Adams (1748-1831), Benjamin Adams (1820), and William Adams—made Anglo-Saxon pottery. (1898-1865). William Adams and Sons is a company that has been around since 1769. It is based in Tunstall and Stoke, both in Staffordshire. It was noted for making high-quality things, especially blue-and-white pottery…
-
Elizabeth Peacock (1880 – 1969) British textile designer
She was best known for the eight banners commissioned by Leonard and Dorothy Elmhirst for the Great Hall in Dartington between 1934 and 1938. She was a spinner, dyer, and weaver and an outstanding teacher from 1940 until 1957.Read More →
-
Henri Navarre (1885 – 1970) French Metalworker
Henri Navarre was a French sculptor, architect, silversmith, and glassmaker who was influenced by Maurice Marinot and exhibited his work at Galerie Edgar Brandt and Maison Geo Rouard.Read More →
-
Friedl Dicker – Austrian Jewish Designer: A Creative Journey
Friedl Dicker (1899 – 1944) was an Austrian architect and furniture, interior, and textile designer. She was active with Franz Singer in their Werkstätten bildender Kunst, Berlin, and amalgamated her studio with Singer’s, Vienna, designing houses, apartments, kindergartens, offices, textiles, interiors, and furniture. She was arrested during the Starhemberg Putsch in Vienna, practised interior architecture…
-
What Does Norman Foster Bring to the Table as an Architect?
Norman Foster is a British architect and designer known for creating neutral rooms and high-tech furniture systems. He was a member of the council and an honorary member of the Royal College of Art.Read More →
-
The Impact of Alan Fletcher on British Graphic Design
Alan Fletcher was a highly regarded British graphic designer who worked for IBM, Fortune magazine, and the Container Corporation of America. Fletcher was interested in visual ambiguity and added value, investing solutions with visual surprise and wit.Read More →
-
Uncovering the History of the Act of Parliament Clock
Pitt’s Act of 1797, which taxed clocks and watches, increased demand for Act of Parliament clocks, which were displayed in public spaces and had large faces with easy-to-read numerals and striking mechanisms.Read More →
-
What is Nottingham Earthenware Pottery?
Nottingham earthenware is English pottery from the thirteenth to the late eighteenth centuries. (The last authenticated piece was created in 1799.) Usually brown, with a faint metallic lustre. Often decorated with lines incised around the piece. Read More →
-
Walter Gropius (1883 – 1969) is the history of modern architecture
Walter Gropius (1883 – 1969) was an architect born in Germany in the early twentieth century who contributed to the founding of the Bauhaus School. He lived in the United States after 1937 and taught at Harvard University, where he continued to defend the principles of Bauhaus, especially the use of functional materials and clean…
-
Enid Crystal Dorothy Marx (1902 – 1998) British textile and graphic designer
Designs for London Underground seats. She studied painting and wood engraving at the Royal College of Art in London, as well as at the Central School of Arts and Crafts.Read More →
-
William Morris – Beauty of Practicality
Morris believed his responsibility was “to revive a sense of beauty in home life, to restore the dignity of art to household decoration.Read More →
-
Keyhole pattern – Dictionary of Silverware
Keyhole pattern is a type of pierced work found on porringers, typically consisting of four to ten additional holes, with the terminal hole resembling a keyhole. It replaced the geometric pattern of c. 1730.Read More →
-
John Fowler (1906 – 1977) British Interior Decorator
John Fowler was a British interior decorator known for his elegant and sophisticated style and worked on many high-profile projects, including the Queen’s private apartments at Buckingham Palace. Fowler’s style, scholarly eye, and recognition made him a valuable asset to the National Trust, inspiring conservationists today.Read More →
-
J.M van Kempen Dutch Silversmith
J.M. van Kempen was a Dutch silversmith who started a silver factory in Utrecht in 1835 and moved to Voorschoten in 1858. He hired English craftsmen to teach them how to make forks and spoons, and a separate studio was set up to make sculptures and silverwork parts. He didn’t hire outside artists until the…
-
Daniel Pabst (1826 – 1910) German American furniture designer
Daniel Pabst (1826–1910) was a German American furniture designer and cabinetmaker, best known for his work in the modern Gothic style. He studied at the technical high school in Hesse-Darmstadt and was one of the hundreds of German craftsmen and furniture workers who settled in Philadelphia in the mid-19th century. He opened his own workshop…
-
Punk Fanzine: Sniffin’ Glue
The DIY style was one of the novelties that British punk introduced in the 1970s. There were hundreds of these fanzines, the most well-known of which being Sniff in ‘Glue. i-D, published by the art director Terry Jones, evolved from a fanzine into a publishing success.Read More →
-
Greenwood Pottery – American Pottery – Trenton, New Jersey
Greenwood Pottery was an American pottery that made industrial white-granite and cream-coloured tableware, as well as ceramic hardware like doorknobs and electrical insulation.Read More →
-
Marcel Goupy (1886 – 1980) French Ceramicist
Marcel Goupy was a painter, ceramist, decorator of glass and crystal, and designer known for his Art Deco style. Marcel Goupy was an important figure in the Art Deco era, making glass vases, decanters, and lemonade and liqueur sets.Read More →
-
Things of Beauty Growing: British Studio Pottery (hardcover)
British potters have revitalized traditional ceramic forms for nearly a century by creating or reinventing techniques, materials, and display methods. Things of Beauty Growing delves into the primary vessel typologies that have defined studio ceramics from the early twentieth century, such as bowls, vases, and chargers. Read More →
You may also be interested in
William Dwiggins – Typographer and all-rounder – Encyclopedia of Design
William Addison Dwiggins was an American type designer and typographer. He was well rounded and was loved for his prolific work as an illustrator, book designer, type designer, playwright, (puppets) and author. Dwiggins was born in Martinsville, Ohio in 1880, he had studied East in Chicago, and then he moved to Boston.
Frederic Goudy (1865 – 1947) – Typographic Genius – Encyclopedia of Design
Frederic Goudy (1865 – 1947) was an American printer, artist and type designer whose typefaces include Copperplate Gothic, Goudy Old Style and Kennerley. Recognition of a man’s genius may come at the beginning of his career, or after long years of patient labour.
You may also be interested in
-
Paul Rand (1914 -1996) – Designer who led the way
Paul Rand, was a seminal figure in graphic design who made innovative visual identities for some of America’s major corporations and book and magazine publishers We all have seen the designs of Paul Rand at some stage of our lives. He had a career spanning nearly seven decades. There is the seminal logo for IBM…
-
Glyphs – Road to International Understanding
Glyphs are graphical symbols that are more or less universally used. The Ancient Greeks had a word for most of today’s needs, the glyph is a Greek word meaning carving. Glyphs should carve a road to international communication by breaking down language barriers.Read More →
-
Adrian Frutiger (1928 – 2015) Typographer – creator of widely used fonts.
Adrian Frutiger was a Swiss graphic designer and typographer. Frutiger created some of the most widely used fonts of the 20th century, and they can be seen daily in airports on street signs and in subway stations. He was the creator of many internationally known and loved fonts such as Avenir, Frutiger, Univers and Vectora.Read…
-
Wolfgang Weingart – Swiss Typographer and Designer
He was dubbed “the father” of New Wave or Swiss Punk typography . LEARN MORERead More →
-
Claude Garamond (1510 – 1561) made the letter a living thing
Little is known about the early life of France’s most distinguished type designer Claude Garamond, though he is mentioned as being “at work” in the printing business early in the sixteenth century, Garamond was commissioned by the French monarch, Francis I, to cut a font of Greek letter which later became known as the “Royal…
-
Jan Tschichold (1902 – 1974) – Swiss Typographer
German-born, Tschichold is one of the most outstanding and influential typographers of the 20th century, He cleared away the old typography of pre-1925 and made room for a modern, structured and regulated new typography. His work is characterised by rigorous structure, asymmetrical placement of contrasting elements, and layouts based on horizontal and vertical underlying grids.Read…
-
Million Mark Note – Design Classic
The Bauhaus was the most well-known design school of the 20th century. Herbert Bayer created notes in denominations of one million, two million, and two billion. The designs exemplify the ideology of hardline Modern Movement graphics.Read More →
-
Herbert Bayer (1900 – 1985) – Universal Typeface – Bauhaus Master
The universal typeface, 1925, was a geometric alphabet based on bar and circle and was designed by Herbert Bayer. READ MORERead More →
-
Typography Glossary – Design Terms
It helps to have an appropriate language to talk about typography. The following is a glossary of some of the words and their definitions that are used to described typography.Read More →
-
Herbert Bayer (1900 – 1985) American multi-disciplined designer
Herbert Bayer was one of the Bauhaus’s most influential students, teachers, and proponents. Most of Bayer’s photographs come from the decade 1928–38, when he was based in Berlin working as a commercial artist. He designed the show Road to Victory (1942), which would set the course for Steichen’s influential approach to photography.Read More →
-
Hermann Zapf (1918 – 2015) German Typographer and Calligrapher
Hermann Zapf (1918 – 2015) was born and educated in Nuremberg. Gudrun Zapf-von Hesse, a calligrapher and typeface designer, was his wife. Palatino, Optima, and Zapfino are some of the typefaces he developed.Read More →
-
Typography Books from Amazon
Typography is one of design’s most delightful frontiers, a strange medley of timeless rituals and timely transformation in the face of technical progress, whether you’re a serious artist, a recreational type-nerd, or a casual lover of the fine letterform you will enjoy this selection of books.Read More →
-
William Dwiggins (1880 -1956) – Typographer and all-rounder
Dwiggins was known for his “Metro” series of typefaces, the first designed specifically for newspaper headlines. He produced that in 1929 when he won the gold medal of the American Institute of Graphic Arts.Read More →
-
Karel Teige (1900 – 1951) Czech art critic, typographic artist
Between the wars, Teige was a prominent figure in Czech art and architecture. He was the editor of many avant-garde magazines, including Disk, Stavba, and ReD, and wrote about photography. Read More →
-
Aldus Manuitius (1449 – 1515) – pioneer of printing
The type in which this sentence is written is called “italic”. Aldus Manutius the man who invented it died almost 500 years ago and his type is still in use. Today publishing a manuscript is almost instantaneous, a new best seller can be placed on Amazon and I can buy a copy minutes later. To look at…
-
Stanley Morison (1889-1967) – Designer of Times New Roman typeface
Stanley Morison, widely regarded as one of the most influential typographic designers of the twentieth century, was drawn to the subject by his passionate interest. Early on, he worked for several publishers and printing houses, including Francis Meynell’s Pelican Press and the Cloister Press. Read More →
-
William Dwiggins (1880-1956) – Typographer and all rounder
Dwiggins was born in Martinsville, Ohio in 1880, he had studied East in Chicago, and then he moved to Boston. Between the years 1917-1918, he became the acting director of the Harvard University Press. He also worked for the Yale Universty Press, designing jackets, endpapers, bindings and posters.Read More →
-
7 Classic Design Books for your Library
It’s critical to keep up with the latest apps, technology, and trends in the fast-changing world of visual communication, but it’s also critical to have a good understanding of design as a subject of study with a long history of lessons to learn. With that in mind, here are a few must-have books for any…
-
Japanese Publication: Monthly Cosmopolitan. Cover
Japanese Publication: Monthly Cosmopolitan. Aoyama Nozomi and Wakida Asuka (Cosmopolitan). 2015.Read More →
-
Vernacular Typography – Motel Signs
Motel signs are one of my favourite examples of recognisable American vernacular typography. Read More →
I actually just took Designing with Type, thanks for the article!
Wow, that is terrific. It is important to always learn something new. SJ