Monday, August 24, 2009

Typo3: Stephen Fry Video Response

This video made me wonder if Gutenburg were still alive today, would he approve of all the ways typography and printing have evolved? Yes, his press made something priorly hand-made faster and easier to access, but there was also still a very keen sense of a personal touch in each page he printed. Hand crafted press, hand carved type, hand-made paper. Today, the pressing process is almost completely impersonal. It's almost depressing. I hit a key on a computer and hit another and I can print 4 billion copies of the same thing without even hardly being in the same room as the whole process.

Couple of facts that I found interesting from the video:
It would have taken the slaughter of 140 calves in order to get the amount of vellum needed for only ONE copy of the bible.
The mold used to quickly reproduce the letter E in the video was amazing but I didn't quite understand how that worked, if you're hand pouring something, how do you make the letters all the same height. I guess you possibly have to do some filing?
He possibly drew inspiration from a grape/wine press.
The man that made the press in the video based some of his design off of an illustration by Albrecht Durer.
One of the Brothers Grimm had written in the front of one of Gutenberg's bibles when he was working as a librarian.

1 comment:

Kidwell at 63-11 said...

insightful regarding the "DEpersonalization" aspect of today's "printing." perhaps fueling the demand for the letterpress?

mooo