You learn what made it possible in the 1450s for printing to become a medium of mass reproduction, its stagnation until the 1800s, and the abrupt 20th century shift into flat offset printing and photographic, then digital typesetting and reproduction.

The 64-page book, hardbound in green cloth with brass-colored foil stamping, uses modern printing techniques — digital type and offset lithography — to tell a historic story. I created this book from hard-earned personal experience in printing and graphic design since the 1980s, coupled with decades of research.

I've distilled this knowledge into a book that aims for you, as a general reader or typophile, to breathe in the scope of printing and type history without having to work through the hundreds of books and thousands of hours I've spent to get here. It's an engaging tale, full of remarkable achievements that spans an epoch.

You can order one or more copies of this beautiful hardcover edition and also receive the ebook edition, which contains end notes, a bibliography, and full index.

The print edition can be ordered with an inscription and signature. You can also have it gift-wrapped in custom wrapping paper. You can add the audiobook edition for a small fee. The ebook and audiobook can be purchased separately.

The hardcover volume is bound in green cloth with a debossed, foil-stamped title and spine. The interior paper is a creamy textured stock with black text and illustrations in a second color. The endpapers are printed in black on a sharp, bright red.

"Histories of printing are often boring and inscrutable — or fast and shallow. This is neither. Six Centuries is at the perfect cruising altitude for an informative and non-exhausting history of printing for anyone even tangentially curious, written by someone who knows how to weave the big picture and the fascinating details." — Marcin Wichary, author, Shift Happens

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The letterpress edition is sold out. A 2nd edition, printed by offset press, is available as of early 2025. Order your copy here!

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If you ever wondered how the craft of printing was invented and how it evolved, this book answers that question and many others. Starting even before Gutenberg, Six Centuries of Type &amp; Printing traces the development of type design, type manufacture, presses, and printing through the present digital era with many stops along the way. The book explains how many aspects of printing and type remain the same, despite a shift from metal to photography to bits, across almost six centuries of constant improvement. Printed in a single edition of about 425. Read an excerpt.

The book was set in hot-metal Monotype Bembo in the north of England, illustrations etched onto zinc plates, and text and illustrations printed by letterpress in London. It is a clothbound hardcover book with its title foil-stamped on the cover and spine, and it comes in a slip case, bound in the same material. Binding was performed in Germany near the Black Forest.

The book is 5 by 8 inches, and 64 pages long, printed in two colors, with custom-designed endpapers. The ebook edition, included with this purchase, has three additional pages containing a bibliography and references. You will receive a link via email shortly after your order for the ebook download.