{"id":633,"date":"2012-11-15T14:27:36","date_gmt":"2012-11-15T19:27:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/library.brown.edu\/dps\/curio\/?p=633"},"modified":"2012-12-11T14:36:31","modified_gmt":"2012-12-11T19:36:31","slug":"from-caesar-monuments-to-movie-posters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/library.brown.edu\/dps\/curio\/from-caesar-monuments-to-movie-posters\/","title":{"rendered":"From Caesar Monuments to Movie Posters"},"content":{"rendered":"

In 2007, the Library digitized two original, loaned rubbings of the inscription from Trajan’s Column<\/a> (c. AD 113), to facilitate a reproduction request of the Rare Book School’s<\/a> then Program Director Ryan L. Roth. The rubbings had been made by Edward Catich<\/a> in 1970, and are now owned by Sheila Waters<\/a>. Because of their size (two ~9-foot-wide thin-paper sheets), these were digitized in three overlapping shots per sheet, atop a white background, and then digitally merged together to create the final images.<\/p>\n

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Catich’s rubbing of Trajan’s Column’s inscription.<\/p><\/div>\n

Catich’s research and speculation on Trajan’s Column’s lettering<\/a> in turn influenced the creation of the now-popular digital font\u00a0Trajan<\/a>, first released as a PostScript font in 1989 (designed by Carol Twombly for Adobe Systems).<\/p>\n

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Top row: detail from Catich’s\u00a0rubbing; bottom row: matching letters from the digital typeface.<\/p><\/div>\n

Ever since, starting in the early 1990s, and often as an affront to\u00a0many graphic designers’\u00a0sensibilities<\/a>, the Trajan font has been featured on an inordinately high percentage of American movie posters<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 even to the extent that the Roman lettering style is now associated with both Japanese Samurais and Egyptian mummies.<\/p>\n

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Trajan in The Last Samurai<\/p><\/div>\n

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Trajan in The Mummy<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In 2007, the Library digitized two original, loaned rubbings of the inscription from Trajan’s Column (c. AD 113), to facilitate a reproduction request of the Rare Book School’s then Program Director Ryan L. Roth. The rubbings had been made by … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"image","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[45,46],"class_list":["post-633","post","type-post","status-publish","format-image","hentry","category-image-processing","tag-stone-rubbings","tag-trajan","post_format-post-format-image"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/library.brown.edu\/dps\/curio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/633","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/library.brown.edu\/dps\/curio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/library.brown.edu\/dps\/curio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/library.brown.edu\/dps\/curio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/library.brown.edu\/dps\/curio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=633"}],"version-history":[{"count":83,"href":"https:\/\/library.brown.edu\/dps\/curio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/633\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":994,"href":"https:\/\/library.brown.edu\/dps\/curio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/633\/revisions\/994"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/library.brown.edu\/dps\/curio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=633"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/library.brown.edu\/dps\/curio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=633"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/library.brown.edu\/dps\/curio\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=633"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}