How did type go from Garamond to Baskerville to Bodoni?

Type moved from the pen-like letters of Garamond to the sharper contrast of Baskerville and then the extreme contrast of Bodoni, as printers learned to make and print finer and finer details. Garamond's types, from 16th-century Paris, followed an old-style model with a relatively organic structure resembling handwriting with a pen, but a more upright design. Baskerville, in Birmingham in 1757, increased the contrast between thick and thin strokes and made the serifs sharper. Bodoni followed Baskerville's ideas but took them to a more extreme conclusion, with very thin hairlines beside heavy stems.

This was not just taste. Baskerville wanted higher-quality printing than any before, using carefully made, level presses, a high quality of ink and very smooth paper pressed to a glazed, gleaming finish. Bodoni's hairline serifs reflected a high quality of casting, since on poor equipment serifs had to be large to avoid wear snapping them. Better metal, ink and paper made delicate letters possible.

There is a twist about Garamond. Many early twentieth-century Garamond revivals are actually based on the work of a later punchcutter, Jean Jannon, whose different work was misattributed to Garamond for some years. The most common digital font called Garamond is Monotype Garamond.

New styles also met resistance. The crispness of Baskerville's work unsettled his contemporaries, and some claimed the stark contrasts damaged the eyes. Bodoni's style can cause an effect known as dazzle, where the thick verticals pull attention away from the thin strokes that tell letters apart.