A Type Designer's Journal

Musings and resources related to type design

The Blackletter Typeface: A Long And Colored History

Media_httpwwwsitepointcomblogswpcontentuploads200911gutenburgpng_dxzbimzuzigfyev
via sitepoint.com

The blackletter style of lettering, used famously in the Gutenburg Bible, has always been one of my favorites. During my "medieval period", I studied calligraphy and attempted to reproduce the beautiful look of Medieval manuscripts, mostly using early versions of the blackletter style. But, I wish I had had this excellent article by Jennifer Farley to better understand the varous types of blackletter styles, such as Textur, Rotunda, Schwabacher, and Fraktur. Learn about the history and unfortunate controversy about using these beautiful fonts. The article has many helpful illustrations and also links to some free examples of blackletter fonts. Also, you might be interested in two blackletter (Textur) fonts in the CastleType collection: Goudy Text (my very first attempt at creating a digital font) and Cloister Black.

Another great article, Blackletter: A history of the beautiful script has even more information and illustrations, with more of the history of blackletter, and more terminology, such as Old English and Gothic.

Praxis: Medieval-style initials

Praxis

Here are a couple quick sketches for my "real" (private) journal. Reminds me of my "medieval period" in my twenties when I was performing Medieval music and doing blackletter calligraphy with illuminated initials. Lots of fun, but messy (compared to digital "calligraphy"). I still like this style very much, and have often thought I would eventually design a font that would make it easy to create initials like these in two or more colors. Lots of decisions to make, though: whether to replicate the early Medieval look as closely as possible, or do a "modern" interpretation, or something in between, etc. And, of course, then I'd need to design a Medieval-style text font to go with the initials, and so on. Let me know what you think. There's no point in putting hundreds of hours into a font if nobody is interested in using it. Well, I admit I usually design fonts just for the fun of it. But, it's still nice when people buy the finished product.

By the way, speaking of journals, if you want to see how beautiful and creative a journal can be, check out Carl Jung's "Red Book", his private journal which has finally been published after being locked away in a safe deposit box for decades: Amazon.com: The Red Book (9780393065671): C. G. Jung, Sonu Shamdasani, Mark Kyburz, John Peck: Books http://bit.ly/Tacv7