The Printing Revolution

Gutenberg's movable type turned the book from a handmade treasure into a product. Printers like Aldus Manutius and Claude Garamond invented the grammar of the printed page — typefaces, title pages, page numbers, italics — much of which has never been improved upon.

Print created the first mass visual culture. Broadsides, pamphlets, and newspapers put designed words in the hands of ordinary people, and with them came the first arguments about legibility, taste, and who design was for.