A Brief History of Type
Typography - The style arrangement, or appearance of typeset matter. The art and process of working
with or printing of type.
Type - A distinctive mark or sign. Printed letters. Rectangular block of wood or metal bearing a relief character from which an inked print can be made: A collection of alpha-numeric characters of such block for printing.
Stone age man began visually communicating with pictures as far back as twenty thousand years ago. Cro-magnon man painted pictures on cave walls of animals using charcoal and colored mud as paint and used sticks, feathers or fingers as brushes. It was believed to bring him luck during the hunt or maybe to tell a story or a means of recording and event.
Sumerians and Pictographs
The Sumerians who thrived some five thousand, five hundred years ago, were successful farmers and raised domesticated animals such as the goat and oxen. As their technology grew, so did their need to develop an efficient way to communicate and keep records. They wrote in wedge-shaped strokes (cuneiform), by scratching pictographs on a wet clay tablet with hard reeds.The pictograph were simplified drawings of familiar everyday objects such as animals, people, tools and such.
Egyptians and Hieroglyphics
The Egyptians, who’s civilization began over four thousand years ago, had a system of writing using a set of pictorial characters and symbols called hieroglyphics.
Ideographs
Man progressed and developed, so did the need to communicate more abstract thoughts and ideas. By combining, altering and/or simplifying pictographs evolved as well. The symbols now represented ideas as well as just objects.For instance, by combining a pictograph of a man and a spear to mean hunt. The pictographs now represent more than just objects, but abstract meanings, thoughts and ideas. These a symbols are known as ideographs. An example of an ideograph used today is the skull and crossbones used as a symbol for poison, though the picture itself represents death.
Phoenician Alphabet
The Phoenicians who thrived some three thousand, five hundred years ago (1600 BC), developed, changed and simplified the symbols to their liking. As their technology and impatience grew, they developed a more efficient way to communicate and keep records. They used the symbols to represent sounds rather than object or ideas.
The Greek Alphabet
As the Greeks flourished, they adopted the Phoenician alphabet. They of course modified to their liking and culture. They took the names of the letters and made them Greek. For example the aleph became alpha, beth become beta and so on. From these two words we derive the word alphabet. They added five vowels and formalized the letterforms and in 403 B.C. the revised alphabet was officially adopted.
Roman Alphabet
The Roman in turn adopted and modified the Greek alphabet. They accepted thirteen, revised eight and added two, giving them a total count of twenty-three letters. They changed the Greek designation from alpha, beta gamma to today’s A, B C’s. The letters U and W were added about a thousand years ago and the J was added about five hundred years ago.
Fall of Roman Empire
Dark ages- Illiteracy, poverty, superstition
- Knowledge and learning of classical world almost lost
- Christian religious writing primary source for books and illuminated manuscripts
- Extremely costly, time consuming
- Not for mass consumption
Middle Ages
Towards the end of the Roman empire to the Middle Ages we see development and use of small letters (miniscules), which grew from the impatience by the scribes, till then only capital letters (majuscules) were used.There were two popular schools of writing in Western Europe: the round humanistic hand used in Italy and the pointed looking Gothic or Black Letter used in Germany. The humanistic hand is the basis for what we now call italics, used for emphasis today. The Gothic or Black Letter hand was the model for the original typeface designed and used by Johann Gutenberg over five hundred years ago.
Renaissance & Printing from Movable Type
Gutenberg developed the printing press, using movable type and handsetting of type. This revolution helped bridge the Middle Ages to the Renaissance (the awakening). It caused a major world change by enabling large numbers of books and other information to be easy printed and distributed. It helped spread new ideas and fostered education.
Punctuation and other symbols
Early Greek and Roman writing had no punctuation as we use today. Words were separated with a dot, slash or simply run together. It wasn’t until the advent of printing in the fifteenth century that it became specific.
Other symbols have been added over the last five hundred years as needed. A form of shorthand to speed up efficiency and communications.
Modern Type Influences
John Baskerville 1706-75
- Designed, cast new typefaces- Improved the printing press
- Designed, published books
- Baskerville a famous “transitional” typeface.
Thomas Paine One of the Founding Fathers
- Used the press and written word to turn a rebellion into a war of independence.
Giambattista Bodoni 1740–1813
- Leader in evolving, creating new typefaces.
- Revised Roman letter
- Bodoni typeface example of modern serif type
Wood Type - 1827
- Metal type too heavy for large display type.- Wood type was developed by American Darius Wells.
Handsetting type
Handsetting was used from the Mid-15th century until the late 19th century.
Industrial revolution
- Ottmar Merganthaler, inventor of the linotype machine in 1886.- Mechanically sets whole line of type.
- Monotype (1907) further automates typesetting
- Increased speed creates demand for print beyond book production
Bauhaus 1919-33
- Major influence on all aspects of modern design.
- Innovative uses of type played important role in production
of posters and publications
- Simple, asymmetric layouts
- Dominance of San Serif type
- Innovative use of white space
1960’s Phototypesetting
1980’s Computer Typesetting
1984 Apple Computers "1984" Simple Easy icon based interface, easy to use.
Late 80’s Postscript Type
Late 80's to Present - Desktop Publishing and Graphic Design
Adobe Software - Font and Page Layout, Illustration and Image Manipulation and Design
Adobe Software - Font and Page Layout, Illustration and Image Manipulation and Design
1990’s Internet to Present - Constantly evolving the advancement of typography.
- Speed, availability of faces- No size constraints
- Just because you can distort type, doesn't mean you should.
2010+ - Social Media, Mobile and Responsive Design for digital devices; desktops, laptops, iPads, mobile devices and phones.
