John Baskerville

Film tratto dal sito
The Baskerville Project

This Movie celebrates John Baskerville, the man, the typeface and his future legacy. This short film explores the technological impact and cultural achievements of John Baskerville's life and work.

The work of Baskerville is synonymous to innovation, ambition, creativity and enterprise. John Baskerville is a local figure, who lived and worked out of Birmingham, inspiring the birth of the Lunar Society and contributing through financial and intellectual investment to the Industrial revolution. Baskerville the Animated Movie acknowledges the achievements of the past and aims to inspire the generations of the future.

Baskerville is a leading transitional/neo-classical serif typeface widely used in publishing and print today. Typography is an integral component in the education of a graphic communicator. Type forms the building blocks of visual language, carrying complex messages through carefully chosen and arranged letterforms. In Birmingham during the 18th century, John Baskerville advanced global printing technology and typographic design, represented through the design of his neo-classical (transitional) typeface Baskerville.

Baskerville the Animated Movie celebrates John Baskerville, the man, the typeface and his future legacy. The film will be complemented by through the development of a site-specific installation.

A dynamic web presence is being developed to support the content generation for the film. Both public and professional audiences are invited to engage and take an active voice in the current conversation about Baskerville. Additional public content will be incorporated into the narrative structure of the film. This web-based content will provide an opportunity to literally incorporate the voice of the community directly into the film, regionally, nationally and internationally.

The public project is being developed for diverse audiences and participants. Typography is being recognised as a sophisticated visual language and communication tool within the city, popular with both design communities and non-designers. It is the intention of the project to be part of the international dialogue about typography and design, to contribute and inform in the wider conversation of Global Visual Culture.