History of Typography
Typography is the art and technique of arranging type to make language readable and appealing when displayed. The arrangement of type involves typefaces, point size, line length, line-spacing, leading, tracking and kerning.
Typography was implemented in the phaistas disc, an enigmatic Minoan printed item from Crete, which dates between 1850 and 1600 B.C. Supposely Roman lead pipe inscriptions were created with moveable type printing. Typography with moveable type was invented during the eleventh century song dynasty in China by Bi Sheng (990-1051). This moveable type system was manufactured from ceramic materials , and clay type printing was practiced in China until the Qing Dynasty. Wang Zhen was one of the pioneers
…show more content…
Initially, this typeface was difficult to read beacuse each letter was set in place individually and had to fit tightly in an allocated space. The art of manuscript writing,whose origin was during Hellenistic and Roman bookmaking, reached its Zenith in the illuminated manuscript of the middle ages. Metal typefaces changed the style, making it crisp and uncompromising and with …show more content…
During the Renaissance period in France, Claude Garamond was partially responsible for the adoption of Roman typeface that eventually took over the more commonly used Gothic (blackletter). Roman typeface was also based on hand-lettering styles.
The development of Roman typeface may be traced back to the Greeklapidary letters.
Greek lapidry letters were carved into stone and after that, Roman lapidry lettersforms evolved into the monumental capitals, which laid the foundation for Western typographical design, espically serif typefaces. There are two styles of Roman typefaces: the old style and the modern. The former is characterized by its similarly-weighted lines, while the latter is distinguished by its contrast of light and heavy lines. Often these styles are combined together. Between the twentieth century, computers turned typeface design into a much easier process which has allowed the number of typefaces and styles to proliferate exponentially, as there is now thousands available. Unfortunately, confusion between typeface and font occurred in 1984 when Steve Jons mislabeled typefaces as fonts for Apple computers and his error has been perpetuated throughout the computer indusrty leading to common misuse by the public of the term “font” when typeface is the proper
The press standardized grammar, spelling and punctuation in works. At the time, books would be copied by monks from the original work. Not only it was very expensive and long to do so, but books would not be identical from one monk to another. Each monk had his way of spelling and using grammar, which could lead to differences in interpretation. Every monk had his own spacing between words and lines, and, often, would not be the same from page to page of the same book. With Gutenberg’s printing press, spelling and grammatical rules soon were recognized and followed. Spacing between words was now the same and lines where evenly spaced on every page. This standardization could be seen in Gutenberg’s 42-line bible. Every page except for the first 10 had 42 lines and used the same font; there were 290 master characters to complete the bible. The printing press also allowed the number of letters on every page to increase by 50%. Those new found regulations of printing allowed readers to interpret authors’ intentions more accurately and made reading a more pleasant activity. Since the movable type press spread all around Europe, those rules soon became common everywhere on the
Figure 8: documents the creation of my own typeface. conventional design. Here are some images of it. Figure 8 shows one key aspect of it, which is the use of creativity as I created my own typeface. The creation of my own font has the ability to empower other designers experiment with typeface design. Figure 9 shows another key aspect of it, which is the idea of breaking down
By being educated at a young age in literacy, I included it in my pottery and also working for newspaper companies strengthened my form of expression. Working in the South Carolina Republican and then later on The Edgefield Hive as a typesetter, it was a good experience helping my literacy skills but I didn’t feel fully indulged. I did it because I had to but also to learn. By understand typography, I was able to understand the science of the anatomy of type. They taught me the use of size, spacing, and placement of typography in order to show hierarchy, direction and attraction. I became to understanding that type is a collective of shapes and strokes. Master Abner 's newspaper did not get a lot of publicity and hit a crisis, which led him to cease publication of the newspapers. Master Abner then moved to Columbia, South Carolina, in 1832. He decided to leave me back in Edgefield and...
In 1967, a man named Jan Tschichold designed the typeface Sabon. This typeface was born out of the German printers' desire to have a unified font for their print publications. Today, Sabon is known as “the book font” and is used to set the body copy of many publications. It is also sometimes used in other items such as logos and street signs. Through several evaluations such as glyph comparisons, skeletal deconstructions, and ligature constructions, it is possible to discover the many distinguishing features of the individual letterforms that make up the typeface Sabon.
Throughout history, the primary focus in life has been to supply oneself with necessities to survive and pass on your legacy through offspring. Now modern life in America has transformed into overloading our brains with advertisements, flashing lights, and constant entertainment regardless if we want it or not. Through considering the history of typography and the transition into the age of entertainment, the switch from typography to television will adversely affect public discourse and through the development of media metaphors, and along with the rise of the internet and its convince has shaped contemporary American thought, sending a wave of ignorance from one generation to the next. This new way of mechanized life is the way of the future,
In the 18th and 19th century, Typography is used to be the dominant in media. Typography is the process of printing like pamphlets and newspapers. Postman states what Typography is: “ The printed page revealed the world, line by line,
...Jerry Kuyper and Emily Murphy. The outline process he utilized was misleadingly basic: learners were initially asked to think about the proper size, weight and style of the letters they needed to utilize. They set the sort by picking the lead letters exclusively from the sort case and setting them side-by-side in a creating stick, deliberately deciding the best possible letterspacing, end-of-line separating and heading. The completed the process of forming was printed in a letterpress sealing press and dried with infant powder. People then slice it separated and started to plan. With a specific end goal to kill the shadows of the cut paper and see their creations as one plane, a bit of glass was cautiously brought down over the surface. In the event that anything didn't feel right—sort size, weight, style—the entire creating and printing procedure must be rehashed.
Many were once against typography when it first emerged. One prime example was Plato, who Ong and Postman both mention at some point in their work. In fact, Ong states that “Writing, Plato has Socrates say in the Phaedrus, is inhuman, pretending to establish outside the mind what in reality can only be in the mind. Writing is simply a thing, something to be manipulated, something inhuman, artificial, a manufactured product” (Ong 27). He then goes on to say that many have made the same argument about computers today. However, the essential message from this quote is that many believed that these technologies would have a negative effect on the way we think. Ong goes on to disprove Plato’s rationale by explaining that “…his philosophically analytic thought, including his analysis of the effects of writing, was only possible because of the effects that writing was having on mental processes” (Ong 29). Due to the fact that he was even able to analyze typography meant that he was subsuming to typography’s nature. Postman would agree that Plato would not have been able to formulate his analytic views if it were not for writing. Postman wrote that literacy is highly rational. He iterated that discourse in a culture dominated by print tend to have a coherent arrangement of an idea, a fact, or a claim. Postman would explain to Ong that the cause of this is similar to some of the reasons Plato
Korean artists made advances in printing and experimented with movable type. Experiments came to China and led to the improvement to metal or porcelain type.
82).” According to Walter Ong, the act of communication through writing heightens ones consciousness and begins to change the way in which the writer thinks. This in turn facilitates the development of increasingly sophisticated technological advancements. Early pictographs were typically monotone and very simplistic in nature. However, as the technology evolved, humankind developed multi-hued writing media that improved the visual accuracy of the images created and subsequently improved the complexity of the message delivered. Essentially more visual detail equals a more complex symbology and abstraction. Some major milestones in the evolution of communication technology include the simplification of earlier literal depictions in the late Paleolithic era, the development of the first “alphabets” as quasi-abstract symbols representing the basic sounds of spoken language. These early alphabets were extremely complex and cumbersome until the Phoenicians developed a “totally abstract and alphabetical system of twenty-two simple phonetic signs, replacing the formidable complexity of cuneiform and hieroglyphs (Higgins, 2003).” The inhabitants of Greece and Rome adopted this system of writing which was in effect by 1500 B.C. and later developed what we know as the
...echnology permitted these demands to be met at an unprecedented rate. As a result, the 19th century was an inventive and prolific period for new typeface designs, ranging from new categories such as Egyptians and sans serif to fanciful and outrageous novelty styles.
Claude Garamond is an interesting type designer not only because he was a leading designer, but also because he is credited with bringing both the accent and apostrophe into the French alphabet. (“Prominent Type Designers”) Garamond’s Old Style type designs are considered to be the “typographical highlight of the 16th Century”, and are still used as a basis for current typefaces. (“Type Design in the French Renaissance”) The designs were less calligraphic in nature than previous type styles, and continued to be developed after his death by Jean Jannon, leading them to be confused with Garamond’s original designs due to similarity. (“Early Typographers”)
An example that was created after Times New Roman is Georgia created by Matthew Carter. Carter’s font is very similar with the stroke shapes to Times New Roman, but has wider serifs and is intended for viewing on a screen. Nonetheless Times New Roman was an incredible design that made many differences in the world of typography. Morisons had goals to create a specific typeface that was readable, functional, businesslike, and overall a good design. All of these characteristics made Times New Roman appear on a wide range of applications all over the world and used by many in everyday life.
McLuhan, M. The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1962.
o Modern crisp fonts have been used in the main body of the text so