John Baskerville Research Paper

The world and the people in it have always been influenced by words. In particular, the ability to record and share words in a written format has changed the world. Today, type is all around us. Some fonts like Helvetica are familiar and comforting. Others, like Comic Sans, should never be seen unless you are a five-year-old girl writing a story about rainbows and unicorns.
As one of the great Classic typographers, John Baskerville had a great impact on typography and printing. At the young age of 20, John Baskerville started a writing-school in Birmingham and a business of cutting the letters on tombstones and memorials (Bigmore and Wyman p. 36). He made is fortune in japanning due to its wide success. Japanning is the popular 18th century
As Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia states, “[It] introduced the modern, pseudoclassical style, with level serifs and with emphasis on the contrast of light and heavy lines”. His style went on to influence fonts such as Didot in French and Bodoni in Italy (Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia). In this way, Baskerville and other classic typefaces continue to inspire modern typographers
Baskerville is characterized as a serif font with high contrast of thick and thin stems. On the other hand, while Trajan is also a serif font, its stems have less contrast than Baskerville. When it comes to serifs, Baskerville features a more vertical and straight-edged serif. In contrast, Trajan’s bottom serifs are shorter and the ends are more rounded compared to Baskerville. Its top serifs are slightly angled out while Baskerville has vertical serifs. Trajan also uses small capitals to capture the essence of Roman letters. Due to this, it cannot have any finials on “e” or true descenders, although the “j” does go slightly below the baseline. The “j”s” descender is also less curved than the “j” in Baskerville font. Although both “Bs” have a similar bowl compared to each other, some differences can be found. In contrast with Baskerville’s even bowls, the top bowl of Trajan is slightly smaller than its bottom bowl. Overall, Baskerville is also more condensed than Trajan due to its slightly shorter cap height and typically tighter leading than Trajan. Although these fonts share some similarities, they have very different uses. Baskerville can be used for anything from titles to footnotes. On the other hand, Trajan can only be used for titles and headers due to its various afore mentioned