Emblematic designs or devices of a printer or publisher. The printer's mark as an identifying device was used in typographic books with the invention of printing in the 15th century; printers gradually added a blank piece of paper at the front of a book to protect the first page from soiling. The identifying device, monogram, or emblem was applied to this page or with a brief sentence at the rear of the book; when the printer's mark was incorporated into the colophon, it is sometimes itself known as a "colophon."
