The eighth ITAP Lecture took us through the process of Production. It defined production as the last stage of the design process, in which the found solution to a problem is put into practice.
As a first task, we were asked to find out how the first book in Europe got printed.
JOHANNES GUTENBERG
The Gutenberg Bible was the first ever boom to be printed in Europe, or anywhere in the world for that matter. Named after Johannes Gutenberg , a German printer and the one to introduce modern printing, the Bible was the first book to be printed with movable type. It is also called The-42-line Bible because of the 42 lines of text present in each page, a first at that time. However, the first 9 pages and pages 256 to 265 of the Bible have only 40 lines of text each, presumably because they were the first to be printed, before Gutenberg’s change of heart. It is unknown how many copies were sold, probably somewhere between 160 and 185.
Another innovation that the book carried was a new type of ink.
GUTENBERG BIBLE IN NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY
Gutenberg used an oil-based ink, instead of the usual watercolor, containing metals such as copper, lead and even titanium. The major improvement of this new ink was in it’s much better adherence to the pages.
The Bible sold out quickly to buyers as far as Hungary. Nowadays, only 21 copies remain complete in museums and libraries around the world in cities such as Vienna, Copenhagen, Munich and Berlin.
NOVICE-TO-EXPERT SCALE
The second task consisted of a self-assesment regarding our level as visual communicators. The Novice-to-Expert scale allowed me to rate myself as Competent.
In developing the Birmingham-based magazine for the first project, I showed some good knowledge regarding my area of expertise by studying some important historical practitioners, also photographs that fitted the purpose of the magazine, though they did lack some refinement. I was able to work without supervision most of the time.
I planned ahead my part of the project by making notes in the RVJ about what could work and what remained possible but not plausible. Many of these ideas were materialized only on paper and some even in the form of images, but were saved as a later project that I might attend to.
