And then there was the difficulty of securing signatures from school officials-after the fact. The scribe was a practiced professional whose services cost money. The sheepskin parchment was expensive because preparing it was difficult and labor-intensive. Early handwritten diplomas, traditionally on sheepskin, were official documents that were intentionally difficult to make. Preprinted certificates, with names later added by scribes, happened soon after printing was introduced to Europe (and before moveable type, in the form of carved woodblock prints)-think papal indulgences like those printed by Gutenberg in the 1450s. ![]() You weren’t going to involve the printing process unless the number of copies-or the circumstance-warranted it. Even after printing from movable type was introduced in the West, single or double copies of official documents were written by hand. Official documents were written by scribes from the earliest times. When did that association begin?The association began before printing. Gothic and Old English typefaces are so ubiquitous with higher learning. (And for posterity, we feel it’s important to note that Nix sent us his responses in Lucida Blackletter, before switching to Modern No. It begins not when diplomas emerged as a regular practice in the second half of the 17th century, but long before. If you could separate diplomas from blackletter, what would you find?Ĭharles Nix, Monotype’s Creative Type Director, is here to take us on a guided journey into the annals of type history. ![]() Graduation season has us wondering about the perpetual bond between blackletter faces and such documents. If you’ve ever received a diploma or certificate of achievement, it probably looked something like this (complements of Shutterstock):
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