Word: roman
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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What little volcanologists have learned over the centuries has come at a fearsome price. Beginning in A.D. 79, when the Roman scientist Pliny the Elder was killed while observing an eruption of Mount Vesuvius, volcanology has been one of the world's more dangerous fields of study. Over the past 11 years, sudden eruptions -- including major blasts in Colombia, Mexico and the Philippines -- have killed an estimated 26,000 people; since 1979 at least 12 scientists have perished while seeking to plumb the fiery mysteries...
...exhibit gives evidence of the gradual idealization of the printed, rather than the handwriting, letterform. One 1570 piece exemplifies the increasing dominance of the roman types, Giovan france Cresci, a calligrapher, tried to invigorate his own fading business by putting together a book whose lettering suggested that hand should imitate machine...
Cresci's dilemma suggests a trend, by the 1700s type designers were spending most of their efforts on refining roman letterforms and adapting them to new papers, inks and presses. A Perotist critique of the period would identify a small group of type designers--a power elite --who created a letter-form gridlock. some change occurred in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Newspapers demanded coarse new faces suitable for use in poor printing conditions, Mergenthaler "Corons" resulted from such demands. And while new type-faces once took years to develop, photographic type equipment made reasonable some corporation requests...
...other hand, sometimes newly empowered amateur typographers make "uneducated choices" and stick to them. The now-ubiquitous "Times Roman," originally designed for a London newspaper. Replaces such older faces as"Bodoni," "Bembo," and "Baskeryille." The people wield power in the new technology-driven typography, but most people are simultaneously intrigued by novelties and resistant to change...
Consequently, Adobe sells many copies of Robert Slimbach's recent "Minion" (the face in which this text is set), a neo-classical type to the mass market, but alternative type foundries such as Emigre and fontshop International survive as well. Experimental typographers, having given up on the traditional, roman letterform, base new on photographs and Dizzy Gillespie's handwriting. The 1980s and '90s have produced a dazzling number of new types...