Compared to earlier designs, Baskerville increased the contrast between thick and thin strokes, making the serifs sharper and more tapered, and shifted the axis of rounded letters to a more vertical position. The curved strokes are more circular in shape, and the characters became more regular. These changes created a greater consistency in size and form.

Baskerville’s typeface was the culmination of a large series of experiments. Baskerville, a wealthy industrialist who had begun his career as a writing-master, sought to develop new and higher-quality methods of printing, developing also finely pressed, smooth paper and a high quality of ink.

The crispness of his work seems to have unsettled his contemporaries, and some claimed the stark contrasts in his printing damaged the eyes. Baskerville was never particularly successful as a printer, being a printer of specialist and elite editions. Abroad, however, he was much admired, notably by Pierre Simon Fournier, Giambattista Bodoni (who intended at one point to come to England to meet him), and Benjamin Franklin.