Designing the Designer

John Baskerville is an English type designer and printer. He was one of the greatest type designers of the 18th century, in England. In 1757 he began work as a printer and publisher; he became printer to the University of Cambridge in 1758. He was a member of the Royal society of Arts, and a fellow member, Benjamin Franklin admired his work. Franklin took the designs back to the newly created United States, where they were used for most federal government printing. With the appearance of more modern typefaces like Bodoni, Baskerville’s typefaces fell out of use. Around 1920, the modern renewal of Baskerville’s designs began, by Bruce Rogers, which were generally called ‘Baskerville’.
Baskerville is a transitional typeface; it has the qualities of old typeface styles of William Caslon, and more modern styles of Giambattista Bodoni and Firmin Didot. John Baskerville’s intentions were to improve on the typefaces of William Caslon. So what makes Baskerville so unique? Some of the noteable Bakersville improvements are the line weight, the more vertical characters, and the serifs are more pronounced and angled, all these changes makes Bakersville the more admirable typeface. Perhaps the most famous use of the typeface its use in the Canadian government's corporate identity program specifically, in the 'Canada' word mark. In addition Baskerville was used as the inspiration behind the Mrs. Eaves typeface in the 1990’s.