Page 122 - Expanded Media & the MediaPlex

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William Morris:Pages from The Earthly Paradise1868 (Kelmscott Press 1896)
The design innovations of Morris play a formidably impressive role in the emergence of what
eventually became known as graphic design. Morris founded his own Press in 1891, while he was renting Kelmscott Manor in Oxfordshire. His Kelmscott Press set new standards in readability, Morris designed his own typefaces, based on those used by very early printers (like Gutenberg’s Textura Quadrata and Caxton’s Black Letter and Textura) - called incunabula fonts. Morris had individual letterforms photographed and greatly enlarged so he could study their construction and precise form. His first typeface design he called Golden. It was inspired by early Venetian fonts such as those designed and used by Erhard Ratdolt (c1480). These are Roman faces that are both more legible and importantly more readable that of Gothic ‘black letter’. - but they retain a ‘warmer’, less incised, ‘friendlier’ look. In his book design, Morris was greatly influenced by the work of Emery Walker, who evangelised a ‘totality’ of page design - integrating all the matter of a book - the body text, printer’s rules, ornament, margin, illustration, colour (etc, etc) - into a whole design. You can see from the examples above, the results of Walker’s teaching. Contemporary (21st century) graphic design owes much to Morris and Emery Walker, whose lessons and examples of total design also informed the design practice of the Bauhaus. What is really interesting is the continuity - well mapped by Philip Meggs in ‘Megg’s History of graphic Design’ - from illuminated manuscript to Gutenberg, Caxton, Manutius etc to William Blake and to Morris.
Not many commentators on book design get rave reviews from the likes of Oscar Wilde, but Emery Walker - a printer, photographer and engraver - and an early lecturer on book design, received a fulsome, enthusiastic, review - in the prestigious Pall Mall Gazette no less, from the celebrated Mr Wilde (Wilde: Printing and Printers, Pall Mall Gazette, November 1888). In his review Wilde gives us a glimpse of a state-of-the-art design lecture - Emery Walker illustrating his talk with projected images of samples of book and manuscript design: “A series of most interesting specimens of old printed books and manuscripts was displayed on the screen by means of the magic-lantern, and Mr. Walker’s explanations were as clear and simple as his suggestions were admirable.” Walker talks about the evolving practise of type-design, its relationship with hand-writing and calligraphy, the evolution of type-design from Black Letter to the Roman faces designed by Baskerville and used by Aldus Manutious, and significantly, the importance of the integration of type (text) and image. With his experience as an engraver, photographer and printer (Walker co-founded the Dove private press in 1900 with T.J. Cobden-Sanderson, the famous bookbinder), Walker brings practical experience and acquired heuristics on aspects of design practice together with a broad historical perspective - and the latest projection technology - in a talk that impressed William Morris as much as it did Oscar Wilde (an interesting scope!). Morris based much of his Kelmscott Press (1891) practice on Walker’s ideas.