After the Special Collections experience, I wandered through the King James Bible Exhibit in the library.
It was cool.
The oldest books had a style of script called fractura, which we had just learned about. The vertical strokes are very thick, while horizontal connections are thin and even ephemeral at times. This makes it rather hard to read, Bro. Skousen, and boy was he right! Contrasting this with the Roman fonts--even with the old long 's' characters--was very informative. I finally have a handle on why I dislike old script so much, and the oddly-named "Times New Roman" now makes sense!
For the record, I'm excited now any time I see various fonts and title pages, as I'm reminded of that lecture and the lecture reminds me of the large quantities of information quietly sitting in the text and design of a book.
Seeing the extremely find handiwork that went into some of the less typographically-oriented texts reminds me of something we have today: coffee table books, often from National Geographic or the World Wildlife Foundation. These massive tomes contain a moderate amount of information nestled between massive swaths of gorgeous photography all layered on thick, glossy paper. (Ink chemistry--why such paper is used--is a set of books unto itself.)
It was cool.
The oldest books had a style of script called fractura, which we had just learned about. The vertical strokes are very thick, while horizontal connections are thin and even ephemeral at times. This makes it rather hard to read, Bro. Skousen, and boy was he right! Contrasting this with the Roman fonts--even with the old long 's' characters--was very informative. I finally have a handle on why I dislike old script so much, and the oddly-named "Times New Roman" now makes sense!
For the record, I'm excited now any time I see various fonts and title pages, as I'm reminded of that lecture and the lecture reminds me of the large quantities of information quietly sitting in the text and design of a book.
Seeing the extremely find handiwork that went into some of the less typographically-oriented texts reminds me of something we have today: coffee table books, often from National Geographic or the World Wildlife Foundation. These massive tomes contain a moderate amount of information nestled between massive swaths of gorgeous photography all layered on thick, glossy paper. (Ink chemistry--why such paper is used--is a set of books unto itself.)
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