On 7th-8th of May Vilnius Academy of Arts, Art Reserach Institute organising International Conference Online "The Material Body of the Book: Between Tradition and Innovation". On the 450th anniversary of Vilnius University Library.
The conference is dedicated to the printed book and book design with a focus on book’s material nature. The speakers are going to present their research on the history of book design, layout peculiarities, image and text relations, typography, binding, cover, and print materials.
The conference will discuss the material body of the book: what it communicates, and what dialogues it encourages between illustrations and the layout, how it reflects art historical styles as well as patrons’ or clients’ requests?
The main topics of the conference:
- The dawn of print: printers; the development of fonts; written and printed word correlation; book-binding workshops and schools; book canons and formats; the impact of functional development on the book form and décor.
- The book in the Renaissance and Baroque: new visual structure with the emergence and proliferation of the emblem genre; the invention of copper engraving; new possibilities of science and knowledge communication.
- The book in the 19th century: from machine printing brought about by the Industrial Revolution, and fast publishing, to the return of hand-made book under the influence of the Arts and Crafts movement and its core figure William Morris.
- The book in the 20th century: different theories behind typography; compositional principles; communicative and artistic unity in the book; idiosyncrasies of publishing under various political regimes and war conditions.
- The book in the 21st century: new design solutions, forms, and strategies of visual communication; cutting-edge technology; copyright fonts; layout; concepts of typography.
