John Baskerville... what a name. it feels old, generic and straight off of the Mayflower. But as I read all about this John Baskerville, I kinda figured out that he was a pretty cool dude. Being a fan of history, I thought it was cool that he was an atheist in a time of great religion and also that his work was admired by Ben FREAKIN Franklin. That says something. But anyway, John Baskerville was a member of the Royal Society of Arts, a fantastic printer and typographer and last but not least he kinda obviously invented/designed the font BASKERVILLE! Alot of his work was heavily criticized and kinda stopped being made, that is until its recent comeback. And with its recent comeback, some of his other fonts have come to light like Monotype, Linotype. He also created alot of sweet innovations in the paper, ink and printing areas like smooth white paper, and wide margins with increased leading. Some of the finer works that he had done include, "Paradise Lost" several bibles including the new testament, not to mention "Orlando Furioso" His unique style was used in a lot of the freshly made United States. WHICH IS COOL! Baskerville died in 1775.FYI.
Adrian Frutiger... was super gnarly kid born in the swiss land. By 16 (thus being a kid) he was an apprentice to printer in his home town. He then moved to the design capital of the freakin world also known as Zurich, where he actually studied "arts and crafts". that sounds like a real sweet major... anywho.... he went on to further typesetting technologies in his field, moving it towards the direction of phototypesetting . This is all good and stuff but it really doesnt compare to his latter achievments. THE DUDE DESIGNED UNIVERS! not to mention a whole bunch of other fonts like, President, Phobius, Ondine, Apollo, Serifa and of course Frutiger. Not to mention a bunch more. This dude was on his game when it came to designing sweet fonts.But lets get to the good stuff. UNIVERS was, and still is, a bomb diggity font and for many, many, many reasons. Most of which have to do with the fact that Univers has a ton of different varitions, weights and are in a strict organized form to make them easier to recall, and use. and of course they are all in the same family of fonts. it has something like 44 faces, quite a few of them numbered by weight and width. The univers grid is something special to look at. Pretty confusing to the average man, but to Frutiger and an experienced typographer, its a thing of beauty. Layed out on sweet chart based on stroke weight and kerning, orientation and style.
so really Frutiger did us all a gnarly favor by making Univers... or maybe he didnt, this homework is getting REDIC! but i kinda enjoy it.... peace out!
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