Renaissance Graphic Design

The word renaissance means revival or rebirth. The term was used to denote the period that began in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries in Italy, when the classical literature of ancient Greece and Rome was revived and read anew. The flowering of a new approach to book design that was independent of the German illustrated book started in Venice and continued there during the last three decades of the 15th century.

Graphic design of the Italian Renaissance

Johannes da Spira was given a five-year monopoly on printing in Venice, publishing the first book, Cicero, in 1469. His innovative and handsome roman type cast off some of the Gothic qualities found in the fonts of Sweynheym and Pannartz he claimed that it was an original invention and managed to restrict it to his exclusive use until his death in 1470. Printed to in partnership with his brother, Wendelin, da Spira's 1470 edition of Augustine of Hippo's De civitate Dei was the first typographic book with printed page numbers. The ending of the monopoly cleared the path for other printers such as Nicolas Jenson to establish presses in Venice.

Part of the lasting influence of Jenson's fonts is their extreme legibility but it was his ability to design the spaces between the letters and within each form to create an even tone throughout the page that placed the mark of genius on his work. He designed Roman, Greek and Gothic fonts and published over 150 books that brought him financial success and artistic renown. The characters in his fonts aligned more perfectly than those of any other printer of his time. The emblems bear witness to the revived attention to Egyptian hieroglyphics during the Renaissance. Renaissance designers had a strong preference for floral decoration. Another innovation was the way woodcut borders and initials were used as design elements. These type of features included naturalistic forms inspired by Western antiquity and patterned forms derived from Eastern Islamic cultures. The light contour style of woodblock illustration initiated the fine-line style that became popular in Italian graphic design during the later fifteenth century.

It was written in semi-Gothic script but has marginal corrections in a roman hand. The text is set in a tight column with wide outer margins and the freely shaped images spread across the pages in dynamic asymmetrical layouts, which gives the pages a lively visual rhythm. This was inspired from classical writings of Greek and Roman cultures. The typographic book came to Italy from Germany as a manuscript-style book printed with types.

Italian writing masters

The first of many sixteenth-century writing manuals was created by Italian master calligrapher, printer and type designer Lodovico degli Arrighi. Arrighi's directions were so clear and simple that the reader could learn this hand in a few days. Giovanni Battista Palatino produced the most complete and widely used writing manuals of the sixteenth century.

Giovanni Battista Palatino's works 

Innovation passes to France 

The cultural epoch was fertile for book design and printing and the sixteenth century has become known as the golden age of French typography. Books printed in roman types, with title pages and initials inspired by the Venetians, sprouting over Paris. The leading printers produced books of fine proportions, outstanding legibility, beautiful typography and elegant ornamentation. Claude Garamond designed roman typefaces in such perfection that French printers in the sixteenth century were able to print books of extraordinary legibility and beauty. He eliminated Gothic styles, achieved a mastery of visual form in a way that allowed closer word spacing and a type of design between capitals, lowercase letters and italics.

Claude Garamond's works

The seventeenth century

There were no important new layout approaches or typefaces to provide a distinctive format for the outstanding new literature. The nature of engraving, scratching fine lines into metal, encouraged the development of script letterforms of extreme fineness and delicacy, used with meticulously detailed illustrations. Their format designs were consistent, leading one prominent printing historian. 

Works from the seventeenth century

Bibliography

Anon, (2017). [online] Available at: http://file:///C:/Users/user/Desktop/Interactive%20Media/Contextual%20Studies/Meggs-History-of-Graphic-Design.pdf [Accessed 24 Jan. 2017].