Week 11 The German Illustrated Book - A History of Graphic Design

A HISTORY OF
GRAPHIC DESIGN
guage book. Upon returning to England, he established
the first press on English soil and printed the first book
in England. In France, Philippe Pigouchet introduced
criblé, a technique in which the black areas of a woodblock
are punched with white dots, and three German
printers—Michael Freiburger, Ulrich Gehring, and Martin
Kranz—were brought to the Sorbonne to establish a
press. Spain also received three German printers. A
particular masterpiece of Spanish typographic design
is Arñao Guillen de Brocar’s Polyglot Bible, which was
designed to accommodate text in five languages and
resulted in five simultaneous typographic presentations.
Typography played a pivotal role in the social, economic,
and religious upheavals that occurred during the
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Typography radically
altered education as learning became an increasingly
private, rather than communal, process. Typography led
people toward linear thought, logic, and empirical scientific
inquiry, and fostered individualism.
KEY TERMS (IN ORDER OF APPEARANCE; THE FIRST PAGE NUMBER OF THEIR APPEARANCE IS LISTED)
Incunabula, page 80, (“cradle” or “baby linen”): Its connotations of birth and beginnings caused seventeenth-century
writers to adopt it as a name for books printed from Gutenberg’s invention of typography until the end of the fifteenth
century.
Broadsides, page 80, single-leaf pages printed on one side, which eventually evolved into printed posters, advertisements,
and newspapers.
Incipit, page 81, “here begins,” usually placed at the beginning of manuscripts.
Ex libris, page 80, a bookplate pasted into the front of a book to identify its owner (Fig. 6-1).
Nuremburg, page 83, Central Europe’s prosperous center of commerce and distribution, which also became the center
for printing by the end of the fifteenth century.
Exemplars, page 84, handmade model layouts and manuscript texts used as guides for the woodcut illustrations, typesetting,
page design, and makeup of books (Figs. 6-14 and 6-15).
Broadsheet, page 90, single-leaf pages printed on both sides, which eventually evolved into printed posters, advertisements,
and newspapers.
Criblé, page 95, a technique in which the black areas of a woodblock are punched with white dots, giving the page a
lively tonality (Fig. 6-34).
Polyglot, page 97, written in several languages (Fig. 6-36).
KEY PEOPLE (IN ORDER OF APPEARANCE; THE FIRST PAGE NUMBER OF THEIR APPEARANCE IS LISTED)
Martin Luther (c. 1483–1546), page 81, After he posted his Ninety-five Theses on the door of Castle Church in Wittenberg,
Saxony on October 31, 1517, his friends passed copies on to printers. By December, his proclamation had spread
throughout central Europe and within a few months, thousands of people all over Europe knew his views.
Albrecht Pfister, page 81, a Bamberg printer who began to illustrate his books with woodblock prints. He used five
woodblocks and the types from Gutenberg’s thirty-six-line Bible to print his first edition of Johannes von Tepl’s Der
Ackerman aus Böhmen (Death and the Plowman) (Fig. 6-2).
Günther Zainer, page 81, a scribe and illuminator who had learned printing in Strasbourg and who established a press
in Augsburg. An agreement allowed Zainer to use woodblock illustrations as long as he commissioned them from
members of the woodcutter’s guild. He introduced a greater tonal range to page design by using woodcuts with textured
areas and some solid blacks (Figs. 6-3 and 6-4).