Late Quattrocento scholar-printer Aldus Manutius constructed a critical typographic method and material narrative that exemplified a humanist agenda and cultivated a practice of theoretical transparency. Aldine editions, particularly between 1495-1515, shaped changes in reading practices with form as a significant mediator. By examining Aldus' formative education and intellectual circles, his ambition toward democratizing learning and unique positioning as a humanist scholar-printer may be understood. A broad view of manuscript to print culture will explain a coexistence, with connotations of each medium and differentiated author-reader experience. In this context, Aldus' critique is made manifest by his formal typeface characteristics, specifically Greek, roman, and italic. Inquiry into familiar signifiers and Quattrocento theory regarding visual authority demonstrates Aldus' informed and calculated typographic methodology. Moreover, analyzing the sum of these parts within page composition and editorial practice will demonstrate typographic "framing"---newly active silent marks and space which mobilized humanist ideas of accessibility and prioritized the reader.

By examining the construction of Aldus' method---the making of the transparent interface---his process becomes clear. He at once reflected Quattrocento cognitive style and cultivated reader experience. His design choices can be seen as critical yet nuanced, catalyzing ideas of authorship, and projecting typography as independent knowledge. His typographic methodology has endured and automatic reception of a text finds its foundation in Aldus. An alternative reading of Aldine visual grammar---its production, implications, and use---sheds light on its role in the construction of meaning, then and now.