Book Printing As Art Form
For years, book printing was considered a true art form. Typesetting, or the placement of the characters on the page, including the use of ligatures, was passed down from master to apprentice. In Germany, the art of typesetting was termed the "black art," in allusion to the ink-covered printers. It has largely been replaced by computer typesetting programs, which make it easy to get similar results more quickly and with less physical labor. Some practitioners continue to print books the way Gutenberg did. For example, there is a yearly convention of traditional book printers in Mainz, Germany.
Some theorists, such as McLuhan, Eisenstein, Kittler, and Giesecke, see an "alphabetic monopoly" as having developed from printing, removing the role of the image from society. Other authors stress that printed works themselves are a visual medium. Certainly, modern developments in printing have revitalized the role of illustrations.
Read more about this topic: Printing Press
Famous quotes containing the words book, printing, art and/or form:
“Heav’n from all creatures, hides the book of Fate,
All but the page prescrib’d, their present state:”
—Alexander Pope (1688–1744)
“Before printing was discovered, a century was equal to a thousand years.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted
within me? hope thou in God: for I shall yet praise him, who is the
health of my countenance, and my God.”
—Bible: Hebrew Psalm XLII (l. XLII, 11)
“There is a sort of veteran women of condition, who, having lived always in the grand mode, and having possibly had some gallantries, together with the experience of five and twenty or thirty years, form a young fellow better than all the rules that can be given him.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)