Was Johannes Gutenberg the Steve Jobs of his day?

Johannes Gutenberg and his invention has intrigued me for just about as long as I have been in this business. There is however not much historically know about arguably one of the most important inventors of our times. There was a great fictional book though, which used all historic facts know and filled in the rest with ideology and other common ways of things back in those days called, “The Justification of Johann Gutenberg” by Blake Morrison and it is a book I recommend for anyone in desktop publishing and certainly printing and prepress.

Thus, it was with great interest I clicked through to this article on WIRED.com (via a Tweet I believe):

Feb. 3, 1468: Closing the Book on Gutenberg

“1468: Johannes Gutenberg dies in Mainz, Germany. His name lives on.

Gutenberg made one contribution to technology in particular and to civilization in general, but it was a doozy. The printing press made the mass production of printed material possible and revolutionized human communication.”
Read More http://www.wired.com/thisdayintech/2010/02/0203gutenberg-dies#ixzz0eYsw6Y53  Read more... (750 words, 1 image, estimated 3:00 mins reading time)

A little Thanksgiving preparation fun – In honor of Johannes Gutenberg, the founder of movable type and the modern printing press:

Gutenburgers–The Newest Hottest Fast Food Restaurant in Town – (Video)

Save FreeHand! They call themselves FREE FreeHand, but let’s face it, when you are up against such factors as ex Macromedia and the mighty Adobe, a miraculous “save” (I guess they would settle for an effective “import”) comes to mind…
http://www.freefreehand.org/

Yes, you read it correctly. I guess there are a lot of Spaniards on their list, for last I heard, Spain was one place that would not give up their favorite vector drawing app that easily.

FlightCheck supports preflighting FreeHand 11.0 (MX) down to version 7. Although not on our short-list for other file formats to add to our new indexing, search and text extraction technology, PageZephyr, it would also make sense to be added here in the future.

Free Freehand aims actually state this VERY PROBLEM that legacy files pose and Markzware, with it’s file format conversion knowledge, often helps solve:

“We want FreeHand to have a future. Not only because we love to work with it, but also because we have thousands of files from the past we may need access to on any given occasion (well, they open in AI, but are converted into chaos).” SOURCE: http://www.freefreehand.org/index.shtml  Read more... (572 words, 1 image, estimated 2:17 mins reading time)

While reading, “Symbols: the alphabet of human thought” I came across an interesting one regarding printers and publishers from hundreds of years ago. The orb and cross was the symbol most used by them to leave their mark (aka a “printers mark”* or logotype*; as in the colophon), in the days just after Johannes Gutenberg founded moving type and the modern printing press:

This semester we will be looking at printer’s devices (symbols) used to identify the printer or publisher of a book. Many early printers use the orb and the cross which signified the earth and Christianity, shown above left. This particular version is the mark of Joannes de Colonia of Venice, 1481. Image source orb

On the right is a contemporary printer’s mark by Paul Moxon for his Fameorshame press. He explains, “A related sign the orb and cross, ‹literally the earth surmounted by the cross› is also the alchemical symbol for antimony an ingredient in type metal. Long before the development of printing, the 4 had been a mark of merchants to identify their wares. … 20th century master bookmen who have adapted the orb and four include: Warren Chappell and Fritz Kredel, Koch, & Giovanni Mardersteig, among others, chose the orb and cross. Moxon quote and image source
Source: http://www.designhistory.org/symbols.html  Read more... (415 words, 1 image, estimated 1:40 mins reading time)

The age-old art and process of Letterpress printing. It is not just for show, for although it carves a far superior mark and ink distribution on paper than any modern printing press, it is also a functional way to reproduce words on paper for distribution.

Watch this neat movie on the art of Letterpress printing here:

“.. puts a bite into paper like no other digital press…” History of printing – the letterpress:

http://elsa.photo.net/video/firefly.mov

Did you notice the “damaged characters” issue? let’s call that “preflight!”

And, check this out, there is an entire Letterpress movement going on. Very interesting:  Read more... (427 words, 1 image, estimated 1:42 mins reading time)

Codex Sinaiticus is a 1,600 year old form of the Bible or manuscript (Non-canonized; a minority text, not a Textus Receptus based Bible translation.) that is now available online. As their web site says about it’s history:

Codex Sinaiticus is named after the Monastery of Saint Catherine, Mount Sinai, where it was preserved for many centuries. It is generally dated to the middle of the fourth century.

View it here if you like, which is pretty interesting:
http://www.codex-sinaiticus.net/en/manuscript.aspx

Codex Sinaiticus

You say your not Christian, so what does it matter? Think of the workflow to create this masterpiece. Then think of exactly why Johannes Gutenberg set forth to create the printing press and more importantly movable type; to automate the publishing process. We read on the web page that hosts the Codex this about how such a manuscript was produced. The production workflow; amazing how some elements remain the same:

Production

Codex Sinaiticus was copied by more than one scribe. Constantine Tischendorf identified four in the nineteenth century. Subsequent research decided that there were three, but it is possible that a fourth (different from Tischendorf’s fourth scribe) can be identified. Each of the three undisputed scribes has a distinctive way of writing which can be identified with practice. Each also had a distinctive way of spelling many sounds, particularly vowels which scribes often wrote phonetically. One of them may have been a senior copyist.  Read more... (530 words, 1 image, estimated 2:07 mins reading time)

There is a new article online over at it-enquirer.com, which goes into some interesting details about why, how and which preflight tool should or could be used within your workflow and where. In part, it says,

“Markzware has been developing FlightCheck for years, in several formats –including a highly efficient and successful online service– to accommodate for printed output, checking for trapping errors and compliance with standards such as PDF/X, for example. FlightCheck can be deployed early in the publishing process, which theoretically saves money as errors are discovered earlier and can be corrected before they cause trouble at the printing press.”
SOURCE: http://www.it-enquirer.com/main/ite/more/preflighting/

You can read the entire article here. It is simple; like any process, the earlier you can catch a problem and correct it, the less costly it will be…

A few years ago, I visited Dalim Software in Strasburg with my colleague, David Dilling. This is the home of Johannes Gutenberg, the founder of the movable type printing press. (Check it out as we wondered allowed Would Gutenberg have use FlightCheck?)