94
votes
Accepted
Who first discovered CMYK?
According to Joe Scout the first company to use CMYK in printing was Eagle Printing Ink Company and the year was 1906. It was not until 1956 that it became a standard as a result of Pantone trying to ...
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44
votes
Who first discovered CMYK?
CMYK is an improvement over CMY which itself is improvement over RYB model, which has been used for centuries (if not millennia).
It's really hard to tell where one ends and the other begins, ...
- 541
34
votes
Why is the effect called Dodge?
Darkroom manipulation
The term originates in the photographers dark-room, and sadly I am old enough to have literally "dodged and burned" photos under the enlarger!
An "enlarger" is simply ...
- 8,552
31
votes
Who first discovered CMYK?
There is no single definable point when the CMYK Process Colour printing was discovered. High fidelity process colour reproduction printing has been a gradual series of technical refinements.
The ...
- 5,061
27
votes
Accepted
What is this "circled G" glyph alongside Greek text in an English book from 1765?
It appears to be an omicron-sigma ligature that was used in early Greek printing. I have no idea if it is still in use.
This image is from the Wikipedia page on Greek ligatures
Another example here ...
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25
votes
How could letters overlap in manual typesetting?
Not all typesetting before the digital era was done using moveable metal type. In 1986, phototypesetting was already available, and had been since the 1950s.
Phototypesetting involved projecting ...
- 86.3k
20
votes
How could letters overlap in manual typesetting?
Even when talking about metal type, letters were not all square. Take a look at this "f" for example, and you can see a bit that's protruding, and would make it overlap with the next character.
- 7,361
20
votes
What is the name for these serif-like features of stereotypical "Old West" lettering?
Spurs
A small projection off of a main stroke.
See #15 here.
Although most explanations will use an uppercase G to show a sample, they are still spurs when protruding from a primary stroke of any ...
- 209k
18
votes
Who first discovered CMYK?
In 1906, the Eagle Printing Ink Company incorporated the four-colour
wet process inks for the first time. These four colours were cyan,
magenta, yellow, and black (also known as key), hence the ...
- 189
16
votes
Accepted
How could letters overlap in manual typesetting?
I agree with @BillyKerr -- 1986 was at a minimum movable type and Photo Mechanical Transfers (PMT). In other words, absolutely hot type and not cold type. Also realize it was the early 80s when ...
- 209k
12
votes
Accepted
Why do most of the well known currency symbols have strikeouts in their symbols?
Imitation of an older convention
It's clear that the designers of more recent currency symbols have their own rationale for including the slashes or 'strikeouts' in the symbol. It's also clear that ...
- 40.6k
8
votes
Accepted
Where did the Mountain + Sun Image Iconography Originate?
This is a guess off the top of my head, since I don't know for sure. It probably has its origins in old film camera dials, specifically the "landscape" mode in fully automated/computerized ...
- 86.3k
7
votes
What are the origins of terms "em" and "en" as typographic units?
The em quad is a unit of spacing being the (hot metal) square body of the typesize eg. 12pt em quad. The capital M took up most of the body size. The en quad would be 6pts wide using 12pt type.
So ...
- 71
7
votes
Accepted
What resource to learn about the psychological effects of typography?
I don't think Psychology is the proper search term to associate what you're looking for in relation to your line(s) of questioning here in graphicdesign.stackexchange.
Rather than Psychology of ...
- 5,061
6
votes
Who first discovered CMYK?
The three- and four-color process was invented by Jacob Le Blon around 1725. His original color model used RYB (red, yellow, blue) and RYBK (red, yellow, blue, and black). He wrote a book called The ...
- 111
6
votes
Why do most of the well known currency symbols have strikeouts in their symbols?
Designer Udaya Kumar author of the in INR (Indian Rupee) ₹ symbol explains:
The parallel lines at the top (with white space between them) are said
to make an allusion to the tricolor Indian ...
- 165
6
votes
Why do most of the well known currency symbols have strikeouts in their symbols?
The lines across currency symbols make them easier to identify clearly in handwritten documents. An error in the identification of even one alphanumeric character or symbol in a handwritten document ...
- 808
6
votes
Accepted
What's the origin of "Kern, Baby, Kern."?
For sure it's a pun, though Suzanne Brockman's "Home Fire Inferno - Burn Baby Burn" is itself 'borrowed' from the 1977 song by The Trammps - Disco Inferno; the main chorus line of which is "Burn Baby ...
- 5,006
6
votes
Accepted
What does “Pica” mean in the name of a typeface?
The term "pica" refers to the size of the font.
Long before type fonts had sizes in standardized (more or less) units, the sizes had names.
Pica is roughly equivalent to 12 pt expressed in today's ...
- 5,061
6
votes
Why is Courier the preferred font in the legal industry?
It is a monospaced font, and these are preferred because it is easier to see if something is added or not to a document.
For example, imagine that this document involves a number 1000 if space is not ...
- 37.2k
6
votes
Accepted
Is there a name for this form of 19th-century (?) table of contents design?
According to my wife - who has been a book editor for a number of years I'm not allowed to say - has told me that there is no particular name for this style. The only part she pointed out is that it's ...
- 773
5
votes
How were printing plates produced from multicolour drawings before the digital era?
A color separation is produced by taking a photograph of the original art using a specific-color filter on the lens and black and white transparency film in the camera. Further, for printing purposes, ...
- 4,704
5
votes
Delete only one step in the middle of history (Photoshop)
Despite the answers here saying otherwise, yes you can delete one step in your history.
You do this by selecting the fly-out menu button in the history panel then doing History Options > Allow Non-...
- 506
5
votes
Examples of expensive color related printing mistakes?
I don't know about historical. I'll just post own experience.
Nike magazine
We were making a magazine for Nike about some runners. There was a photo of one, which previously used Adidas...
...
- 37.2k
5
votes
Who first discovered CMYK?
It likely depends on what you qualify as 'CMYK'. Other answers have already established that the K is superfluous -- it's there to make printing easy, not because it's required for color.
So that ...
- 234
5
votes
Who first discovered CMYK?
I don't think it is accurate to say that CMYK was "discovered". I am anything except an artist or an historian, so take what I have with a huge grain of salt. But, think about it. Ink is just paint ...
- 59
5
votes
Accepted
Why is the numpad on a keyboard not designed to print typographically correct symbols?
Historical reasons only – plus a side dish of "backward compatibility".
The original PC keyboards were very much 'typewriter-like'. Also, in the original ASCII set there were no 'fullwidth plus', '...
- 4,238
4
votes
When and why did spaces around an em dash originally appear?
Here is one reasoning I have read for the use of open em dashes (with spaces) instead of closed ones (without spaces). Some fonts have a very narrow em dash. The em dash was supposed to be used closed ...
- 8,146
4
votes
Type Research: »Die Rettung des Abendlandes« by Ernst Otto Montanus
It looks like an attempt to stylise Latin characters as though they were runes - like a kind of faux-runic typeface. That's all I can think of, if it's any help. Perhaps you could google that?
Also, ...
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Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible