Blackletter
ブラックレター / 12th century– / Style / Letterform History
The manuscript hand condensed into black vertical letters, filling the page with even, woven darkness — also the first typeface of printing.
Dense vertical strokes / Curves replaced by breaks / Heavy blackness / Ornamental capitals
Dictionary entry
- Best used for
- Comparing primary sources and canonical works · Extracting principles that transfer to other media
- Type
- Observe the letters, signs and scale of reference works
- Composition
- Extract the one structure that governs gaze and information
- Material
- Verify the materials and behaviors specific to era, region and process
- Caution
- Not a sign for 'old' or 'menacing.' Remember its history of religious, national and political use.
- Further study
- The Gutenberg 42-line Bible / Textura, Fraktur and Rotunda / the 20th-century German Fraktur dispute