Are there real advantages of roman typeface over gothic?

Gothic

Bembo

YES! 

Readability & Legibility: Roman typefaces have more open, evenly spaced letters, making them easier to read for long texts. Gothic typefaces have dense, ornate strokes that can be difficult to distinguish, especially at smaller sizes. 

Versatility: Roman fonts are highly adaptable across various media, from books to digital screens. Gothic fonts are more decorative and are often limited to specific uses like headlines, historical texts, or branding. 

Modernity & Universality: Roman typefaces are widely used in contemporary publishing, corporate communication, and design, making them more familiar to modern audiences. Gothic typefaces have a historical, medieval appearance, which can feel outdated or overly stylized in many contexts. 

Speed & Efficiency in Printing: Roman typefaces require less ink and are more suitable for high-speed printing. Gothic typefaces, with their thick strokes and intricate details, can slow down the printing process and require more ink. 

Compatibility with Different Languages: Roman typefaces work well with various alphabets, including Latin-based scripts, making them ideal for global use. Gothic fonts are primarily suited for Germanic languages and can be harder to integrate into international typographic standards. 

Aesthetic Simplicity & Elegance: Roman fonts, such as Times New Roman or Garamond, offer a balance of elegance and simplicity, making them timeless. While visually striking, Gothic fonts can be overwhelming in formal documents or body text. 

What prompts the shift from Gothic into Roman in less than a hundred years?

 

Jensen's roman

The transition from Gothic to Roman occurred gradually from the late 15th century through the early 16th century. There are cultural, technological, and aesthetic factors. 

1. Humanist Influence in Italy

Gothic typeface (also known as Blackletter or Textura) was the dominant script style in Northern Europe during the Middle Ages, influenced by medieval manuscript traditions. In Italy, scholars of the Renaissance, particularly in Florence and Venice, admired the classical Roman inscriptions and the more legible handwriting of Carolingian minuscule. This led to the development of Humanist scripts based on these classical ideals. 

2. The Role of Venetian Printers

Nicolas Jenson, a French printer working in Venice, played a crucial role in the 1470s by creating the first Roman typefaces. His designs were based on the humanist scripts but adapted for print, featuring more open, rounded, and proportional letterforms than the dense Gothic type. The success of Venetian printing houses, such as those of Aldus Manutius, helped spread this new style across Europe. 

3. Printing Technology and Readability 

The adoption of Roman typefaces was partly driven by practical reasons: they were easier to read, required less ink, and allowed for more efficient typesetting compared to the complex, angular forms of Gothic type. As literacy expanded and printed books became more common, the need for clearer, more legible typefaces grew. 

4. Geographical Variations 

While Italy and later France quickly adopted Roman typefaces, Gothic type persisted in Germany and other parts of Northern Europe well into the 16th and 17th centuries. In Germany, Fraktur, a variation of Gothic script, remained the dominant typeface for books and official documents until the early 20th century. 

5. Standardization of Roman Type

By the early 16th century, Roman type had primarily become the standard for Latin-based languages, while Italic type (introduced by Aldus Manutius) was used for emphasis and compact printing. The influence of Jenson’s and Manutius’ type designs laid the foundation for later developments in typography, leading to classic typefaces such as Garamond in the 16th century. In summary, the shift from Gothic to Roman was driven by Renaissance humanism, Venetian printing innovations, and the growing need for more readable and efficient typefaces.

la "Romain de Ratdolt" (from Euclid's Elements)

Augsburg-born printer (1447-1527). a master printer and type designer, he worked from ca. 1474 until ca. 1486 in Venice, where he printed many fine books. 

(Let's read with medieval glasses!)
See how the design is devoted not so much to the information as the consistency in the overall presentation. I'm not saying Ratdolt is eschewing information for style. No. I'm saying style is also information! All these borders and curlicues and interlacing you see are part of the environment of knowledge!  

Ratdolt returned home and produced the first printer's type specimens sheet with a beautiful decorative initial and 15 different fonts to announce the occasion. he had the first type specimens sheet in the world, showing rotunda, roman and Greek typefaces in various sizes (date: 1486). 

Ratdolt specialized in missals, liturgical works, calendars, astronomical, astrological, and mathematical subjects, and often included masterful diagrams to illustrate the text. 

In 1482, he printed Euclid's Elements of Geometry, which became William Morris's reference source for his "while-wine" decorative borders. ratdolt died in 1527 or 1528. he's one of the first to use the so called frontispiece orné.  he uses the referred to as Romain de Ratdolt (1486).

__________
FYI, Euclid's Elements is perhaps the most successful book ever written.

lettera imperiale (kind of the Norton anti-virus of middle ages)

lettera imperiale, Giovanantonio Tagliente (1523)

another development is the "lettera imperiale" provides evidence of the so-called "chancery" script well into the Renaissance.

Handwriting is not displaced but becomes more specialized.

why do some medieval texts seem to baroque and complicated? they become less susceptible to forgery. 

digital documents can be forged. they suggest an authentication process.   

Humanism' revival with its emphasis upon art and the senses marked a great change from the values of humility, introspection of the middle ages

nothing expresses the spirit of humanism in drawing like this sketch of leonardo da vinci. 

man is at the center. why inside a circle and a square? 

squaring the circle is a mathematical impossibility posed as a problem by ancient geometers (see this). 

da vinci proposes that humanity breaches the apparent contradiction between the two. a human is the paragon of physical measurement.

renaissance humanism affected the cultural, political, social, and literary landscape of europe. beginning in florence in the last decades of the 14th century, humanism revived the study of science, philosophy, art and poetry of classical antiquity. 

Once more: Incunabula (the different parts)

Incunabula refers to a printed book (not written) before the year 1501. Now, this is pretty arbitrary. There are two kinds of incunabula: (1) the woodcut, called xylography, and (2) the subsequent "typographic book," which is made with movable print. (2) is preferred to (1).

as a geographical distribution:

see that as we move to 1500, the printing process spreads all over western Europe for a total of about 282 towns!

title pages start appearing circa 1480

Like medieval manuscripts, early incunabula did not have title pages (the high cost of animal skin used as the medium did not allow the waste of any part of the material for other than the text). instead, the title, author's name, transcriber's name, place and year of transcription and other related matters were written at the end of the manuscripts.

Following the design of manuscripts, printers of incunabula also had the first letter (initial) of the first word of each chapter in large size and in red ink. in the process of printing, the corresponding part of the page for the initial was left blank, and later, a craftsman called a "rubricator" drew a decorative initial in that space. to designate the letter to be drawn, a small form of the letter was sometimes printed in the space beforehand. this small printed letter is called the "guide letter."

1- Rubrication: This is an important process at the beginning of the page. the capital, the beginning. the process is that the corresponding part of the page for the the R. was left blank, and later, a craftsman called a "rubricator" drew a decorative initial in that space. see that in the text above there is the rubricator and smaller capitals.

2- Marginalia: this is kind of our modern end notes in the margin, they provide info, i.e., source of quoted sentences, usually in smaller size types than those used for the main text.

3- Double columns: these are explanatory texts around the text, one informs the other.

4- Colophon: instead, the title, author's name, transcriber's name, place and year of transcription and other related matters at the beginning, the practice is to have it at the  end of the manuscripts (to save paper, which is very expensive). a colophon page below.

(All images and text taken from INCUNABULA).

the bible translation helped develop the secularization of modern european languages

gutenberg bible, 15th century

what happened? 

though the roman catholic church maintained that only members of the clergy were qualified to interpret the Bible, the new degree of access to religious texts provided by gutenberg's press and bible added a necessary impetus for a growing reformist movement. after Luther's Theses, the printing press became central to the protestant cause and ideology. 

protestantism encouraged the direct questioning of papal authority, accused church officials of abuses of power, and emphasized personal interpretation of scripture. 

Roman comes back! the marvel of BEMBO (by Manutius & Griffo)

this typography, famous for its quality and clarity (in roman typeface was cut by Fancesco Griffo for Manutius the designer) and used by the latter in February 1495, for De Aetna, a book for Pietro Bembo, a scholar and literary theories of the Reinassance, for which reason the typeface was named Bembo.

here a portrait of Bembo:

what are the characteristics? here's a copy of Manutius and Bembo De Aetna

manutius&griffo's bembo shows unsurpassed clarity and elegance.

1. minimal variation in thick & thin stroke weight,
2. ascender height exceeding cap height (something new)
3. oblique stress (not so new but designed in a new context)
4. short bracketed serifs with cupped bases,
5. angled serifs on lower case ascenders,

Griffo made his lowercase ascenders taller than the capitals to correct what he thought was an optical color problem that plagued earlier roman texts. HE WAS RIGHT! there's a tendency of capitals to appear too large and heavy in a page of text. 

Griffo's typeface became the model for the french type designers who perfected these letter forms during the following century.

Critic Robert Bringhurst observes that bembo has a serene quality. It calls attention to itself by refusing to call attention to itself, and yet it is elegant without being fancy. 

The obscure "roman of Nicolas Jenson"

 

Nicholas (or Nicolas) Jenson (c. 1420–1480) was a French engraver, pioneer, printer and type designer who carried out most of his work in Venice, Italy. Jenson acted as Master of the French Royal Mint at Tours and is credited with being the creator of one of the finest early Roman typefaces. Nicholas Jenson has been something of an iconic figure among students of early printing since the nineteenth century when the artist William Morris praised the beauty and perfection of his roman font. Jenson is an essential figure in the early history of printing and a pivotal force in the emergence of Venice as one of the first great centers of the printing press. (WIKIPEDIA)

heeeere is the Claude Garamond (influenced by Griffo but a genius nonetheless)

Samples of woodblock for the type used by Garamond. 

his first romans and his grecs du roi were cut for the firm of Robert Estienne. In 1545 he began to publish books; apparently he was not successful in business, for he died in poverty. 

Garamond was one of the first punch cutters to work independently of printers. His roman fonts, cut from 1531 onward, surpassed the best existing romans in grace and clarity and influenced European punch cutters for 150 years. His Greek type set the pattern for Greek printing until the early 19th century.

See what he does with latin scripts:

 

Garamond also has his famous Grecs du Roi, ordered by Francis I of France.

now ask yourself the following question: how come a non-greek can make the best greek typeface?

can a printer change a language? Geoffroy Tory and the comeback of the Roman typeface!

Geoffroy Tory was a publisher, printer, author, orthographic reformer, and prolific engraver who was mainly responsible for the French Renaissance style of book decoration and who played a leading part in popularizing in France the Roman letter as against the prevailing Gothic. 

Tory put forward the idea of accents, the apostrophe, the cedilla, and simple punctuation marks in the French language. 

He was appointed imprimeur du roi ("printer to the king") by Francis I in about 1530. For those of you proficient in French, check this website with Tory's works and fascinating biography. (Above, Tory's Hours of Our Excellent Virgin Mary, 1541).

"O" and "K" as bodily movement (did he know about Leonardo's man?)

 

 

 

Why does "Roman" come back with Tory's Roman? 

A mix of self-advertising through excellent design, french pride & state (the king himself) sponsorship.

Look at his lettres fantastiques: all taken from the tools of labor in the country.

Plantin's Biblia Polyglotta, a first of its kind

For many the best printer of the Sixteenth Century, Christophe Plantin learned bookbinding at Caen, Normandy, and settled in 1549 as a bookbinder in Antwerp. A bad arm wound seems to have led him (about 1555) to turn to typography. 

This bible exhibits the following wonders: 1- excellent typography, 

2- impeccable layout of the different language characters IN SYNC!, 

3- elegance, 

4- legibility. 

The Biblia Polyglotta was supported & financed by Philip II of Spain (in spite of clerical opposition). It appeared in eight volumes during 1569-72. 1100 copies were printed.

Tyndale's Bible + Tyndale's influence in the english language

Tyndale Bible refers to the body of biblical translations by William Tyndale, the first English translation to work directly from Hebrew and Greek texts & the first mass produced English biblical translation. 

However, the term Tyndale's Bible is not strictly correct, because Tyndale never published a complete Bible.

Gospel of John

Prior to his execution Tyndale had only finished translating the entire New Testament and roughly half of the Old Testament.

Tyndale at the stake in Brussels, 1563

not many people know the amount of phrases coined by Tyndale that are part and parcel of the common-folk-English-language:

*a moment in time
*fashion not yourselves to the world
*seek and ye shall find
*ask and it shall be given you
*judge not that ye be not judged
*let there be light
*the powers that be
*the salt of the earth
*a law unto themselves
*it came to pass
*the signs of the times

The Astronomicum Cesareum (1540)

 

Artist: Michael Ostendorfer (German 1490–1549, Regensburg) 

Author: Petrus Apianus (German, active 1526–40)

Printer: Georg and Petrus Apianus (German)

This most sumptuous of all Renaissance instructive manuals explained the use of the astrolabe (for calculating the altitude of stars) and other instruments used for computing planetary positions. The author, Petrus Apianus, was court astronomer to Emperor Charles V, also provided new observations on the comet of 1531 (Halley's Comet). Only about forty copies of this work survive; very few still have the seed pearls that were originally attached to the string markers on each of the eighteen disks.

Click here for MET.ORG for a virtual book browsing.

Erhard Ratdolt, graphic designer genius

see how the woodcut border and gothic floral interlaced-initials are used by Erhard Ratdolt as a design element 

Ratdolt was an early German printer, active printing in Venice, where he worked from 1476 to 1486. There he produced a Kalendario (1476) for Regiomontanus, 

Ratdolt's design brings forth a German taste for excellence and a novel sense of experimentation, look at the floral "H" printed (above) in red and white, and the complicated greek & roman lace motifs in white over black.  

Or below, the novelty of presenting lunar cycles as moving concentrically on the page (a novel invention).  

Ratdolt also has Euclid's Elements (1482), where he solves the problem of reproducing mathematical diagrams. 

Another important work by Ratdolt are his Poeticon astronomicon (1482). Ratdolt commissioned a series of woodcuts depicting the constellations to accompany Hyginus' text. As with many other star atlases that would follow it, the positions of various stars are indicated overlaid on the mythological image of each constellation. 

Ratdolt's innovations of layout and typography, mixing type and woodcuts are unique in his balance of dazzling technique and imagination.

(as his representation of lunar eclipse),

or his take on alchemy:

See the pictographic narrative of Ratdolt in the upper half of the page. The title, "Haly /Albohazen filii Abennagel" refers to a Rosicrucian text published by Ratdolt in Venice, 1485 (Albohazen, who we see on a throne with an astrolobium, is flanked by naked "Astronomia" and "Urania"). 

dance of death

The above woodcut is part of Hans Holbein's Imagines Morti (The Dance of Death). A procession in which skeletons or corpses escort the living to thir graves was a major theme in the visual arts as well as drama, music, and poetry. His designs ranged from the humorous (peasants chasing a fox) to genre (dancing peasants and playing children) to the macabre. 

Pretty effective, since we have our modern Dance of Death.

The dramatic design: The four horsemen of the apocalypse

The Four Horseman of the Apocalypse exhibits Dürer at his printing best. Works like this one, established his reputation across Europe when he was still in his twenties. 

The woodcuts reflects the apocalyptic spirit of Northern Europe at a time when famine, plague, and social and religious upheaval were common (it's known that Dürer was sympathetic to Luther's reform).

How is it done?

Basically the artist carves an image into the surface of a block of wood—typically with gouges—leaving the printing parts level with the surface while removing the non-printing parts (left side of the photo). 

The areas cut-away (hollow spaces) carry no ink, while characters or images at surface level carry the ink to produce the print. The surface is covered with ink by rolling over the surface with an ink-covered roller (brayer), leaving ink upon the flat surface but not in the non-printing areas.

You can call this "xylography", but this is rarely used in English for images alone. Woodcut  became a popular term in Europe during the latter half of the 15th century. 

What do we get a mark level?

1. drama 

2. moral instruction (the equivalent today is your pet social campaigns) 

3. memento mori, life is short, make the best of it! (this is the end of the middle ages)

Aldus Manutius' genius (how the renaissance rediscovers classical antiquity)

 

Edition of Hypnerotomachia poliphili (1499), printed by Aldus Manutius in Venice, is considered the first "modern book", composed of Roman characters (and Greek), illustrated in black and white.

Hypnerotomachia is regarded by some as one of the most beautiful books ever published. There are 168 exquisite woodcuts showing the scenery, architectural settings, and some of the characters Poliphilo encounters in his dreams (pursuing Polia's love). They depict scenes from Poliphilo's adventures. these images are interesting because they shed light on what people in the Renaissance fancied about the alleged æsthetic qualities of Greek and Roman antiquities. what do we have here?  

1.Cinematic visual logic!

2. Decorated initials (an excellent florid and leafy detail job by Manutius)

3. So-called Technopaegnia: besides displaying a remarkable level of visual culture and clarity, the Hypnerotomachia must also be seen as an extraordinary visual-typographical-textual "assemblage" of a type not repeated until the avant-garde books of the 1920s and 1930s.

4. Among its feats of typographical ingenuity, the form of goblets and drinking vessels is reproduced in the layout of the text on the page.

4. then there is the marvel of Bembo lower typeface:

Click here for this excellent MET.ORG summary. 

The Catholicon (1460)

 

A combination Latin dictionary and encyclopedia completed in 1286, the Catholicon (compiled by  Giovanni Balbus of Genoa) was the first non-religious book of substantial size to be printed. The 1460 edition is the first of many 15th-century editions and contains the first detailed printed reference to the introduction of printing with moveable type in its colophon. This is also the first instance in which a book named its place of printing. 

Note: Although the printer's name is not given, the particular nature of the work and other evidence have led people to believe that this edition must have been printed by Johann Gutenberg. Not long after Gutenberg’s death, in about 1469, a second impression was printed by reassembling the stored two-line strips into type pages. The work must have been done in the shop of Peter Schoeffer, who included the Catholicon in his broadside publisher’s list datable to about 1470. 

(Here is a Library of Congress access to 740 pages of the book)