The New Medium of Print


Book Description

Print is so familiar that it remains invisible to the average person. Frank Cost, associate dean of the College of Imaging Arts and Sciences at Rochester Institute of Technology and co-director of the RIT Printing Industry Center, has often wished for a small, fun-to-read book to give to people who were thinking about the world of print for the first time. Most of the available introductory books concentrate heavily on the technology, but say little about how people actually use print, let alone why. The New Medium of Print is a new kind of book: it provides an introduction to the underlying systems for the creation and distribution of print, as well as an exploration of its many and varied contemporary uses. This book is the first in the Printing Industry Center Series: a co-publication of RIT Cary Graphic Arts Press and RIT Printing Industry Center.




The Gutenberg Galaxy


Book Description

Since its first appearance in 1962, the impact of The Gutenberg Galaxy has been felt around the world. It gave us the concept of the global village; that phrase has now been translated, along with the rest of the book, into twelve languages, from Japanese to Serbo-Croat. It helped establish Marshall McLuhan as the original 'media guru.' More than 200,000 copies are in print. The reissue of this landmark book reflects the continuing importance of McLuhan's work for contemporary readers.




The Printing Press as an Agent of Change


Book Description

A full-scale historical treatment of the advent of printing and its importance as an agent of change, first published in 1980.




Print and Power in Early Modern Europe (1500-1800)


Book Description

Introduction: The Printing Press as an Agent of Power / Helmer Helmers, Nina Lamal and Jamie Cumby -- Part 1: Governing through Print -- Policing in Print: Social Control in Spanish and Borromean Milan (1535-1584) / Rachel Midura -- On Printing and Decision-Making: The Management of Information by the City Powers of Lyon (ca. 1550-ca. 1580) / Gautier Mingous -- Printing for Central Authorities in the Early Modern Low Countries (15th-17th Centuries) / Renaud Adam -- Rural Officials Discover the Printing Press in the Eighteenth-Century Habsburg Monarchy / Andreas Golob -- Part 2: Printing for Government -- Printing for the Reformation: The Canonical Documents of the Edwardian Church of England, 1547-1553 / Celyn Richards -- Newspapers and Authorities in Seventeenth-Century Germany / Jan Hillgärtner -- The Politics of Print in the Dutch Golden Age: The Ommelander Troubles (c. 1630-1680) / Arthur der Weduwen -- Part 3: Patronage and Prestige -- The Rise of the Stampatore Camerale: Printers and Power in Early Sixteenth-Century Rome / Paolo Sachet -- State and Church Sponsored Printing by Jan Januszowski and His Drukarnia Łazarzowa (Officina Lazari) in Krakow / Justyna Kiliańczyk-Zięba -- Ferdinando de'Medici and the Typographia Medicea / Caren Reimann -- Royal Patronage of Illicit Print: Catherine of Braganza and Catholic Books in Late Seventeenth-Century London / Chelsea Reutcke -- Part 4: Power of Persuasion -- The Papacy, Power, and Print: The Publication of Papal Decrees in the First Fifty Years of Printing / Margaret Meserve -- The Power of the Image: The Visual Prints of Frans Hogenberg / Ramon Voges -- Collecting 'Toute l'Angleterre': English Books, Soft Power and Spanish Diplomacy at the Casa del Sol (1613-1622) / Ernesto Oyarbide -- Prohibition as Propaganda Technique: The Case of the Pamphlet Lacouronne usurpee et le prince supposé (1688) / Rindert Jagersma -- Part 5: Relgious Authority -- Illustrating Authority: The Creation and Reception of an English Protestant Iconography / Nora Epstein -- Between Ego Documents and Anti-Catholic Propaganda: Printed Revocation Sermons in Seventeenth-Century Lutheran Germany / Martin Christ -- Learned Servants: Dutch Ministers, Their Books and the Struggle for a Reformed Republic in the Dutch Golden Age / Forrest C. Strickland.




Prints & People


Book Description

Discusses the significance and history of printmaking and evaluates 700 prints.




Architecture in the Age of Printing


Book Description

A history of the influence of communication technologies on Western architectural theory. The discipline of architecture depends on the transmission in space and time of accumulated experiences, concepts, rules, and models. From the invention of the alphabet to the development of ASCII code for electronic communication, the process of recording and transmitting this body of knowledge has reflected the dominant information technologies of each period. In this book Mario Carpo discusses the communications media used by Western architects, from classical antiquity to modern classicism, showing how each medium related to specific forms of architectural thinking. Carpo highlights the significance of the invention of movable type and mechanically reproduced images. He argues that Renaissance architectural theory, particularly the system of the five architectural orders, was consciously developed in response to the formats and potential of the new printed media. Carpo contrasts architecture in the age of printing with what preceded it: Vitruvian theory and the manuscript format, oral transmission in the Middle Ages, and the fifteenth-century transition from script to print. He also suggests that the basic principles of "typographic" architecture thrived in the Western world as long as print remained our main information technology. The shift from printed to digital representations, he points out, will again alter the course of architecture.




How the Printing Press Changed the World


Book Description

Upon its invention in the mid-1400s, the printing press instantly became a revolutionary device. It introduced literacy to the masses and led Europe out of the Middle Ages. This book explores the press' exciting history, the social and political conditions in place at the time Johannes Gutenberg invented it, and the changes the invention wrought afterward. It traces the evolution of moveable type and information dissemination up to modern electronic communications technology, examining the positive and negative effects of these developments, both in the past and on democracy and humankind today. This book will give readers a new appreciation for the written word, whether it is printed on paper or displayed on a screen.




Image, Knife, and Gluepot: Early Assemblage in Manuscript and Print


Book Description

In this ingenious study, Kathryn Rudy takes the reader on a journey to trace the birth, life and afterlife of a Netherlandish book of hours made in 1500. Image, Knife, and Gluepot painstakingly reconstructs the process by which this manuscript was created and discusses its significance as a text at the forefront of fifteenth-century book production, when the invention of mechanically-produced images led to the creation of new multimedia objects. Rudy then travels to the nineteenth century to examine the phenomenon of manuscript books being pillaged for their prints and drawings: she has diligently tracked down the dismembered parts of this book of hours for the first time. Image, Knife, and Gluepot also documents Rudy’s twenty-first-century research process, as she hunts through archives while grappling with the logistics and occasionally the limits of academic research. This is a timely volume, focusing on questions of materiality at the forefront of medieval and literary studies. Beautifully illustrated throughout, its use of original material and its striking interdisciplinary approach, combining book and art history, make it a significant academic achievement. Image, Knife, and Gluepot is a valuable text for any scholar in the fields of medieval studies, the history of early books and publishing, cultural history or material culture. Written in Rudy’s inimitable style, it will also be rewarding for any student enrolled in a course on manuscript production, as well as non-specialists interested in the afterlives of manuscripts and prints. The Royal Society of Edinburgh has generously contributed to this Open Access publication. Due to the number and quality of the images in this book, we have provided the option of a more expensive hardback edition, printed on the best quality paper available, in order to present the images as clearly and beautifully as possible. We hope this range of options — the freely available PDF, HTML and XML editions; the economically priced EPUB, MOBI and paperback editions; and the more expensively printed hardback — will satisfy everyone. Furthermore the HTML edition allows readers to magnify the images of the manuscripts displayed in the book.




Between Manuscript and Print


Book Description

A cross-cultural, comparative view on the transition from a predominant 'culture of handwriting' to a predominant 'culture of print' in the late medieval and early modern periods is provided here, combining research on Christian and Jewish European book culture with findings on East Asian manuscript and print culture. This approach highlights interactions and interdependencies instead of retracing a linear process from the manuscript book to its printed successor. While each chapter is written as a disciplinary study focused on one specific case from the respective field, the volume as a whole allows for transcultural perspectives. It thereby not only focusses on change, but also on simultaneities of manuscript and printing practices as well as on shifts in the perception of media, writing surfaces, and materials: Which values did writers, printers, and readers attribute to the handwritten and printed materials? For which types of texts was handwriting preferred or perceived as suitable? How and under which circumstances could handwritten and printed texts coexist, even within the same document, and which epistemic dynamics emerged from such textual assemblages?




Modern Printmaking


Book Description

A fully illustrated instructional printmaking book presenting step-by-step examples alongside representative works from thirty top contemporary printmaking artists. Printmaking is flourishing in the modern era, appealing to both traditional artists as well as those interested in graphic design and digital techniques. This all-in-one guide is both technical and inspirational, examining the history and contemporary processes of relief, intaglio, lithography, serigraphy, mixed media, digital transfers, and post-digital graphics. Featuring step-by-step examples alongside representative works and profiles of top printmaking artists, this colorful resource provides a truly fresh look at printmaking today, in all its forms.