Visionaries & Fanatics

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The late 19th and early 20th centuries saw a great flowering of typographic activity, resulting in a corpus of typographic literature that continues to hold sway over contemporary type design and practices. But are the precepts and motivations of late-Industrial typography still relevant in the digital era, or are they the product of the time and technological landscape in which they were written? If we assume the latter, what does the technology of our time suggest as a forward pathway for the private press? The essays in Visionaries & Fanatics explore these ideas by examining a number of interlocking themes: the differences in motivation between the “Fine Press” and the “Private Press”; the impact and legacy of late-Industrial type production on contemporary type design; the reappraisal of the typographic canon; and potential uses of digital technology in 21st century private-press books.

Contents include:

• Visionaries & Fanatics: Type Design and the Private Press

• Smashing the Crystal Goblet

• Time, Technology, and the Shapes of Letters

• Hungry Dutch: A Typographical Adventure

• A Flexible Matrix: An Analysis of the Typeface Used in the Theuerdank, 1517

• Character Traits; or, Can the 20th Century Please End?

• The Non-Aldine Book

• Color in Private-Press Books

• The Post-Typographic Private Press?