Change & Decay In All Around I See

Thursday 20 November 2008, 11:44PM

John Baskerville, the movie

I warned you that my blog entries would be about anything I want. This one celebrates the most interesting news that John Baskerville, the gentleman pictured above who designed the 18th century neoclassical typeface of the same name, is to be the subject of a short movie, and is to have a new riverside development in his native Birmingham named in his honour, Baskerville Wharf. I am still recovering from the excitement of the feature length Helvetica: and now this. Details are available on the very fine Baskerville Project website.

The filmmakers have even put together a Baskerville iMix, allowing you to contemplate fine neoclassical lettering while listening to Baskerville contemporaries such as Haydn and Mozart. That sounds like an exceptionally civilised way to spend an evening.

Baskerville continues to be one of the world’s most widely used typefaces more than two centuries on, but is perhaps more ubiquitous in the US than in Britain. Benjamin Franklin was an admirer of the face, its elegant, sharp outlines chiming with the Founding Fathers’ Enlightenment principles. Franklin helped popularise the use of Baskerville in federalist publications, and it’s still widely used by the US government. Although if you walk down any high street in Britain you’ll see examples of it in use today.

I will stop there. Suffice to say, an important and exciting development.