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Medium & production · Hand & relief

Letterpress

Metal and wood type printed in relief.

A design choice in Stylogeny’s vocabulary, under medium & production: what technology shaped it?

styles make it: 61
as a defining choice: 18
as a usual one: 31
now and then: 12
avoid it: 1

Styles defined by it 18

For these styles it is one of the choices that make the style.

Gothic Blackletter & Fraktur Traditionc. 1180–present · Central Europe, Western Europe, Northern Europe, Southern Europe, North America, Global / networkedThe broken scripts of the Latin West.
Renaissance Book Typographyc. 1460–1600 · Southern Europe, Western Europe, Central EuropeThe printed book as shaped by humanist Italy and France: roman and italic types modelled on humanist handwriting, a single justified text block set in harmonious proportions within generous margins, and woodcut initials, borders and printer's devices as the only ornament.
Emblem Book (Motto, Picture & Epigram)1531–1724 · Southern Europe, Central Europe, Western EuropeA European book genre in which, from Chrestien Wechel's Paris edition of 1534 on, every page or opening repeats one fixed unit: a short motto, an allegorical picture and an explanatory verse, which only together yield a moral, amorous or religious meaning.
Neoclassical Book Typography1757–1830 · Western Europe, Southern Europe, Central EuropeThe Enlightenment book stripped of Renaissance woodcut decoration.
Victorian Letterpress & Wood Type1810–1900 · Western Europe, North AmericaThe commercial jobbing print of the industrial century: posters, playbills, auction notices and ephemera built from a flood of new display types (fat faces, Egyptians, grotesques, Tuscans and condensed wood type).
Bulaq (Amiriyya) Naskh Book Printing1822–1956 · Middle East & North AfricaThe page of the Arabic printed book as Egypt's state press at Bulaq shaped it from 1822: justified blocks of black Naskh type on pale paper, often boxed in a ruled frame, with an ornamental headpiece on the opening page, headings set larger or in a second script such as Nastaʿlīq, and almost no pictures.
Arts & Crafts Movement1860–1920 · Western Europe, North AmericaA British-led reform movement that answered industrial shoddiness with honest handcraft, medieval models and the ideal of joy in labour.
Nirnaya Sagar Devanagari Typography (Bombay Metal Type)1864–present · South AsiaDevanagari as Javaji Dadaji's Bombay type foundry (1864) and Nirnaya Sagar Press (1869) cut and printed it: upright metal type with a strong headline, cut with the punch-cutter Ranoji Aru, and enough conjunct and 'Akhand' sorts to set Sanskrit, Vedic accents and Marathi whole.
Mexican Popular Graphics (Posada)1880–1917 · Latin America & CaribbeanCheap broadsheets, chapbooks and gazettes sold on the streets of Porfirian Mexico City by the publisher Antonio Vanegas Arroyo and illustrated by Manuel Manilla and José Guadalupe Posada.
German Book Art Movement (Buchkunstbewegung)1895–1933 · Central EuropeThe German reform of the book, from the magazine Pan (1895) to the private presses that ended around 1933.
Vorticism & BLAST Typography1914–1920 · Western EuropeLondon's short-lived rival to Futurism, launched by Wyndham Lewis with BLAST (dated 20 June 1914; War Number, July 1915).
Wendingen & Amsterdam School Typography1918–1932 · Western EuropeThe graphic language of Wendingen (1918–1932), monthly of the Amsterdam architects' society Architectura et Amicitia, and its editor H.
Brazilian Modernismo Graphics (Klaxon and the Semana de 22)1922–1929 · Latin America & CaribbeanThe print side of São Paulo's Modernismo (1922-29), set in jobbing print shops.
Czech Poetist Book Design (Devětsil)1922–1938 · Central EuropeThe book and magazine design of the Czech Devětsil circle, where Karel Teige and his colleagues turned constructivist tools (asymmetry, sans and slab capitals, heavy bars, photomontage) toward Poetism's lyrical celebration of travel, cinema, jazz and the circus.
Mavo1923–1925 · East AsiaTokyo's anarchist avant-garde, founded in July 1923 by Murayama Tomoyoshi, back from a year in Berlin, with four former Futurists, and its magazine MAVO (seven issues, July 1924 to August 1925).
American Four-Colour Comic Book (Golden to Bronze Age)1934–1993 · North AmericaThe American newsstand comic book from Famous Funnies (1934) and Action Comics #1 (1938) through the Golden, Silver and Bronze Ages, and past the Bronze Age's end in 1985 until computer colour replaced hand separations in the early 1990s.
Machine-Age Simplified Arabic Type1947–present · Middle East & North AfricaArabic redrawn for the machine rather than the reed pen.
Onitsha Market Pamphlets1947–1980 · Sub-Saharan AfricaCheap, stapled pamphlets of romance, advice, drama and political biography, written by students, clerks, journalists and traders and printed by jobbing letterpress shops around Onitsha Main Market in eastern Nigeria from the late 1940s.

Styles that often use it 31

A characteristic choice: usual in these styles, though not essential.

Styles that use it now and then 12

An occasional choice in these styles.

It often goes with

Choices that the styles making it make more often than the atlas as a whole.

Paper & letterpress bitein 45 of 61
Monochromein 47 of 61
Carved linein 28 of 61
Rules & barsin 32 of 61
Line illustrationin 45 of 61
Typography onlyin 36 of 61

Styles that avoid it

Styles that deliberately leave it out.

Phototype Expressive Typography (Lubalin & U&lc)1962–1985

Other choices in medium & production