#printing

• Aquatypia — A rare artistic or technical printing process for reproducing graphic images using special water-based inks applied onto treated plates; also, it designates the print or final artwork obtained through this structural method. The technique ensures visual effects of remarkable transparency, similar to watercolors, while eliminating toxic solvent-based chemical pigments.
• Additive — A chemical substance added in small quantities to a product (such as fuels, lubricants, foods, cement, or polymers) to improve its properties, prolong its preservation, or impart new structural characteristics; as an adjective, it describes a process based on accumulation, summation, or progressive addition (e.g., additive manufacturing). This structural element is indispensable in modern industrial processes for material performance optimization.
• Bold — A typeface or font style characterized by thick, pronounced, and heavy strokes, used in typography and computer desktop publishing to emphasize headings, keywords, or important passages within a text; colloquially known as 'bold'. As an adjective, it describes a text or character printed with this heavy type.
• Bold — The feminine form of the adjective aldin, describing a letter, font, or text block printed with thick, heavy strokes for emphasis; as a noun, it designates a rare book edition or manuscript printed in the workshop of the famous Renaissance publisher Aldo Manuzio in Venice between the 15th and 16th centuries.
• Bold characters — The plural form for feminine nouns and adjectives in the typographic field; it refers either to bold characters (aldine letters) or to the entirety of the rare and precious books issued from Aldo Manuzio's printing house in Venice, prized by collectors for outstanding paper quality, font clarity, and philological rigor.
• Algraphy — A planographic printing process analogous to lithography, in which the traditional lithographic stone is replaced by a chemically prepared flexible aluminum plate. In graphic arts, the term describes a technique enabling faithful reproduction of drawings, acting as a precursor to modern offset printing.
• Rotogravure — A high-quality printing process or engraving technique (rotogravure / photogravure) in which the printing elements are incised or etched below the surface of a copper plate or cylinder; an artistic or typographic work obtained through this process.
• Fingerprinting — The act of imprinting and its result; the technical and judicial operation of taking capillary fingerprints from a person or the industrial process of marking a texture on a material support through pressing. In a criminal procedural sense, it represents a mandatory structural biometric identification stage included in the dactyloscopic file.
• Anastatic — Relating to anastasis or obtained through anastatic processes; describing an archaic method of printing or faithfully reproducing texts and engraved drawings by chemically transferring ink from an old document onto a relief metal plate, without requiring resetting. Extended or figuratively, the term may describe a process of revival, complete restoration, or bringing back a damaged graphic support to its initial state.
• Anopistograph — A manuscript, ancient document, or papyrus that is written, printed, or engraved on one side only, leaving the reverse side completely blank for technical, economic, or ritualistic aesthetic reasons. As an adjective, the term qualifies any material support (parchment, paper, tablet) featuring text or graphic elements exclusively on one side, typical of the earliest stages in the development of book volumes and structures in antiquity.
• Antip — A rare technical term used in old typography or paleography to designate a correction mark, an inverse marginal notation, or a conventional academic abbreviation; in the jargon of vintage prints, it could also indicate an opposite page or a symmetrical structure inverted relative to the main text.
• Antiqua — A style of round typographic typefaces, inspired by monumental Roman inscriptions and Renaissance humanist script, characterized by the presence of serifs and a harmonious contrast between thick and thin strokes. This structural model laid the foundation for modern alphabetic fonts used in Western European book printing, contrasting with the Gothic or fractured style (Fraktur) through clarity, high legibility, and geometric elegance.
• Etching — An engraving process on copper or zinc plates through the corrosive action of nitric acid; also, the term designates the artistic work created by this structural technique, characterized by fine lines and velvety tones obtained by printing the etched plate onto paper.
• Etcher — A fine artist, engraver, or technician specialized in creating artworks, prints, and illustrations through the aquaforte etching technique; as an adjective, it describes the graphic style, the precision of lines, or the specific features of works executed via chemical corrosion on metal plates.
• Harlequin — The Romanized form for the character Arlecchino; a jester or clown dressed in multicolored clothes who entertains the audience through jokes and gestures. As an adjective, it describes an object, animal, or surface decorated in a mosaic of bright colors or irregular patches (e.g., a dog's fur or a bird's plumage). In a technical and typographic sense (as a neuter noun), it represents a movable frame made of metal or wooden pieces used in old print shops to fix pages.
• Asteronym — A type of hidden pseudonym or a masking of an author's identity by using a cluster of three or more asterisks (***) in place of the real name; a cryptonymic device historically used in literature and journalism to sign anonymous articles or literary works, protecting the writer's identity within a magazine.
• Duplicator — An old apparatus for multiplying written documents or drawings, based on transferring ink from a special matrix; (rarely) a person who multiplies texts using such a device or automated copying systems. As an adjective, it describes an archaic system or method of semi-automated graphic reproduction.
• To reproduce by autography — To reproduce a text, musical score, drawing, or map using autography, a traditional lithographic replication technique involving the transfer of writing from a specially prepared paper directly onto the printing stone. In a secondary modern sense, the term can also describe the act of signing or leaving a handwritten dedication on an object or document.
• Autolithography — A technial planographic printing process in which the artist draws or transfers the work directly onto the lithographic stone or onto a special autographic transfer paper (later transferred to stone), without resorting to the services of an intermediate engraver or technician. This graphic method ensures the faithful and unaltered preservation of the original stroke spontaneity, texture, and primary artistic vision of the creator within multiplied editions.
• Autotype — A photomechanical printing process used to reproduce continuous-tone images (photographs, paintings) by means of a screen (halftone screen) that breaks the image down into a dense layout of fine dots of varying sizes. The term also denotes the metallic printing plate (autotype) obtained through this method, historically used for illustration printing in books and newspapers.