Obituary of an Impresario of Fonts

choi

This posting (divided into two) is lengthy. If you are not interested in fonts, do not read it.


Obituary: Mike Parker, typographer, died on February 23rd, aged 84. Economist, Mar 8, 2014.
www.economist.com/news/obituary/ ... aged-84-mike-parker

Note:
(1) typography (n): "the style, arrangement, or appearance of typeset matter"
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/typography

(2) "WHAT is the basis of civilisation? Some would say wheat; others, the taming of fire. Mike Parker would say, type. That little 15th-century typefounder’s mould ["mold" in American English], made of brass, ready to take the hot lead that would cool into the letter-shape punched in the matrix, had helped people to read, and so had changed the way they thought and acted. The Bible printed by Gutenberg around 1455, in that wonderful blackletter whose spacing of exquisitely
planed type had never been bettered, had broken the hold of the church and opened the way to modern commerce. What could be more world-changing than that?"
(a)
(i) type (n):
"3a (1) :  a rectangular block usually of metal bearing a relief character from which an inked print can be made
(2) :  a collection of such blocks <a font of type>"
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/type
(ii) type
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type
(may refer to Typeface [qv])
(b)
(i) matrix (n; Latin, female animal used for breeding, parent plant, from matr-, mater):
"a mold from which a relief surface (as a piece of type) is made"
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/matrix
(ii) matrix (printing)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matrix_(printing)
(photos)
(c) Gutenberg Bible
(the first major book printed in the West using movable type; written in Latin; printed by Johannes Gutenberg, in Mainz, Germany; Forty-eight copies, or substantial portions of copies, survive)  Wikipedia
(d) blackletter
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackletter
("used throughout Western Europe from approximately 1150 to well into the 17th century. It continued to be used for the German language until the 20th century"/ section 5 National forms, Section 5.4 Italy, section 5.4.1 Rotunda)


(3) "The little mould was one of the treasures he had found when he was tasked in 1958 to sort out the typefounders’ artefacts at the Plantin-Moretus museum in Antwerp. Hooked on the subject already, with a master’s from Yale on the types of Garamond, he now fell in love. From the dusty printing house he unearthed the unsurpassed 16th-century romans of Hendrik van den Keere, the ancestors of modern newspaper typeface and Poynter Oldstyle; the dancing baroque types of Robert Granjon, especially his Galliard, from which Mr Parker and his designer-colleague, Matthew Carter, developed a fresh version; and, tight-wrapped, still brand-new bright, the large Rotunda types cut for a never-printed antiphonary for Philip II of Spain.”
(a) typefounder (n): "one engaged in the design and production of metal printing type for hand composition"
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/typefounder
(b) “the Plantin-Moretus museum in Antwerp”
(i) Plantin-Moretus Museumen.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plantin-Moretus_Museum
(honouring the famous printers Christophe Plantin [a French who fled from Paris where at least one printer had recently been burned at the stake for heresy] and [his son-in-law] Jan Moretus. It is located in their former residence and printing establishment, Plantin Press [founded in 1555])
(ii) Antwerp
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antwerp
(population is 512,000 (as of Jan 1, 2013), making it the second most populous city in Belgium, after the metropolis Brussels, which has around 1.2 million inhabitants)
(c) Garamond
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garamond
(named after the punch-cutter [see next] Claude Garamont (also spelled as Garamond, Latinised as garamondus) (c 1480–1561[; French])

See next: (iv)(A).
(d) "16th-century romans of Hendrik van den Keere, the ancestors of modern newspaper typeface"
(i) roman type
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_type
(In Latin-script typography, roman is one of the three main kinds of historical type, alongside blackletter and italic; based on pairing Roman square capitals used in ancient Rome with [another]; Popular roman typefaces include [among others] Times New Roman and Garamond)
(ii) Hendrik van den Keere
www.myfonts.com/person/Hendrik_van_den_Keere/
(A) punchcutting
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punchcutting
(In traditional typography, punchcutting is the craft of cutting letter punches in steel from which matrices were made in copper for type founding in the letterpress era; an illustration of both punch and type)
(B) punch (n): "a steel die faced with a letter in relief that is forced into a softer metal to form an intaglio matrix from which foundry type is cast"
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/punch
(C) Ghent
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghent
(Most historians believe that the older name for Ghent, 'Ganda', is derived from the Celtic word 'ganda' which means confluence [of two rivers: Scheldt and Lys]

(e) “Poynter Oldstyle”
(i) Tobias Frere-Jones
(1970- ; born Tobias Edgar Mallory Jones, son of Robin Carpenter Jones and his wife, the former Elizabeth Frerel; "joined Font Bureau, Inc in Boston. Over seven years as a Senior Designer [with Bureau], he created a number of the typefaces that are Font Bureau's best known, among them * * * Poynter Oldstyle [1996-1997, which was based on roman type])   Wikipedia
(ii) The English surnames Poynter/Pointer denotes a maker of “points.”
(A) Poynter
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poynter
(a point is a “cord that fastened doublet with hose (clothing); may refer to Poynter Institute [a non-profit school for journalism located in St Petersburg, Florida; formed in 1975 by Nelson Poynter])
(B) Mike Parker’s Story of Type: Van den Keere. The Font Bureau, Inc, Jan 24, 2011 (blog)
www.fontbureau.com/blog/parker-type-history-7/
("Tobias Frere-Jones has commented on the development of Poynter Oldstyle: 'The Poynter Institute for Newspaper Studies sponsored the project'")
(C) Old Style (disambiguation)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Style_(disambiguation)
(can refer to "Old Style, colloquial name for Antiqua typeface class")
(iii) What is a “point”?
(A) doublet (clothing)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doublet_(clothing)
("By the 17th century, doublets were short-waisted. * * * Decorative ribbon points were pulled through eyelets on the breeches and the waist of the doublet to keep the breeches in place, and were tied in elaborate bows")
(B) For visual aid, view
The Armed Man (name of blogger), Doublets, July 3, 2013
armedman.blogspot.com/2013/07/doublets.html
(legend of painting 2: “Detail from a Hans Memling altarpiece showing St John; the foreground figure shows the tight fit of the doublet; note points holding hose up, the back one of which is unlaced to allow bending over with greater freedom”)

(f) “the dancing baroque types of Robert Granjon, especially his Galliard, from which Mr Parker and his designer-colleague, Matthew Carter, developed a fresh version”
(i) Robert Granjon
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Granjon
(1513-1589/1590; French)
(ii) Galliard (typeface)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galliard_(typeface)
("The name Galliard stems from Granjon's own term for an 8-point font he cut about 1570. It undoubtedly refers to the style of the face, for the galliard was a lively dance of the period")

Go to section 7 External links, to see what the typeface looks like.

(g) “and, tight-wrapped, still brand-new bright, the large Rotunda types cut for a never-printed antiphonary for Philip II of Spain”
(i)
(A) rotunda (script)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotunda_(script)
(a specific medieval blackletter script)
(B) Why was it called rotunda?  
(C) rotunda (n; Italian rotonda, from Latin rotunda, feminine of [adjective masculine] rotundus [“round, circular”])
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/rotunda
(D) See also (b)(iv) above for section 5.4.1.
(ii) antiphonary (n): “a book containing a collection of antiphons [qv]”
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/antiphonary
(iii) Philip II of Spain
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_II_of_Spain
(1527-1598; King of Spain 1556-1598; King of Naples 1554-1998)

choi

(continued)

(4) “In his early years as director of type development at the Linotype typesetting company, where he stayed from 1959 until 1981, he walked around, a vigorous, booming figure * * *"
(a) Mergenthaler Linotype Company
(founded in 1886; "The invention of a machine to replace the labor-intensive task of setting type by hand was one that many inventors had tackled during the 19th Century. The difficulty was not in creating the text, but in returning the characters to a proper position for future use")   Wikipedia
(b)
(i) Ottmar Mergenthaler
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottmar_Mergenthaler
(1854-1899 (aged 45); born in Hachtel, Württemberg, Germany; emigrated to US; died of tuberculosis in Baltimore; called a second Gutenberg because of his invention of the Linotype machine)

Please read the entire page to understand how he got the concept.
(ii) The German surname Mergenthaler denotes “someone from a place called Mergenthal, probably named with a pet form of the [Latin] personal name Maria + Middle High German tal ‘valley.’”
(c)
(i) springerle
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Springerle
(ii) How to make it:

Dick Palke, Christmas Springerle Cookies. YouTube.com, January, 2014.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1m1K_HjtfA
(iii) springerle (n; German dialect Springerle, literally 'little jumping horses')
Oxford dictionaries, undated
www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/springerle
(d) Linotype machine (Before Mergenthaler's invention of the linotype in 1884, no daily newspaper in the world had more than eight pages)  Wikipedia
(i) The trademark “linotype” is short for “line of type” or “line o’ type.”
(ii) Maggie Koerth-Baker, Linotype Machines Are Awesome. Boing Boing, Aug 29, 2013
boingboing.net/2013/08/29/linotype-machines-are-awesome.html
(“a linotype machine, a semi-automated, mechanical printing system that was used by newspapers and magazines (and basically everything else) from the end of the 19th century through the 1970s. It's a completely mesmerizing piece of equipment. An operator types out a line of text and the machine responds by collecting molds that match each letter and fitting them together. Then, it fills the mold with molten metal and dumps out the freshly minted block, ready for the printer ... before automatically re-racking all the letter molds so they're ready for the next line of text”)

I do not think watching this video is helpful.
(iii) John Hendel, Celebrating Linotype, 125 Years Since Its Debut. The Atlantic, May , 2011
www.theatlantic.com/technology/a ... e-its-debut/238968/
(“The Linotype's power involved transferring a line of text (typed with meticulous care by a Linotypist onto a special 90-key keyboard) to a sheet, creating a ‘line o' type’ that could be rapidly printed onto many subsequent pages, thanks to the genius of matrices and hot metal”)
(e) contrast:

John H Lienhard, Engines of Our Ingenuity: No 1372: The Paige Compositor. College of Engineering, University of Houston, undated
www.uh.edu/engines/epi1372.htm
("Today, meet the man [James Paige, who competed against Mergenthaler and lost his shirt] who bankrupted Mark Twain")

(5) “Mr Parker could be a rascal with the rest: softening up Mr Carter, for example, and stealing him away from a rival company to become his chief designer. He also stirred up controversy about Times New Roman, insisting that the original designs for it, by Starling Burgess, had been stolen from him in the 1920s. In 2009 he launched a type called Starling, based on those designs, to make his point; it was Times New Roman to the life, but better.”

Times New Roman
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Times_New_Roman
(a serif typeface commissioned by the British newspaper The Times in 1931)
(6) "Of the more than 1,000 types he developed, his greatest success was Helvetica. It was he who adjusted it, or corralled it, to the needs of the obdurate, cranky, noisy Linotype machines which then printed almost everything in America. Originally it was the brainchild of a Swiss designer, Max Miedinger, who devised it in 1956. In contrast to the delicate exuberance of 16th-century types, Helvetica was plain, rigidly horizontal—and eminently readable. It became, in Mr Parker’s hands, the public typeface of the modern world: of the New York subway, of federal income-tax forms, of the logos of McDonald’s, Microsoft, Apple, Lufthansa and countless others. It was also, for its clarity, the default type on Macs, and so leapt smoothly into the desktop age."

Helvetica
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helvetica
(section 1 History: Helvetica ([feminine form Helveticus] meaning [adjective] Swiss in Latin))

(7) "as he roared around Brooklyn or Boston, opera pumping out at full volume from his car, he would constantly spot Helvetica being abused in some way * * * As type historian for the Font Bureau in
his later years, he liked to muse that typesetting had moved at a Procrustean pace between Gutenberg and the late 19th-century Linotype machine. But—cue for a broad, twinkling smile—he had been lucky enough to live and work in the latter half of the 20th century, an age of light-swift revolution generated, once again, by type.
(a) roar (vi)
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/roar

The context here is loud music from his car.
(b) Font Bureau
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Font_Bureau
(The Font Bureau, Inc. or Font Bureau is a digital type foundry based in Boston, Massachusetts; founded in 1989 by Roger Black and David Berlow)
(c)
(i) Procrustean (adj):
"1:  of, relating to, or typical of Procrustes
2:  marked by arbitrary often ruthless disregard of individual differences or special circumstances"
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/procrustean
(ii) Procrustes
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Procrustes