A History of Type // 11th January 2012
A History of Type // 11th January 2012
- Visual Communication <> Writing <> Verbal Communication
- Typography structures how a variable is delivered.
- Typography = Meta-communication, Paralinguistics, Kinesics
- Typography is communication through visual language and is not presented verbally.
- Slab Serif = CAPITAL LETTERS. Very powerful representation using typography to express the tone.
This is a clip from the film american psycho which demonstrates how much typography can impact on people's lives and control the impression it gives people depending on it's characteristics.
Type Classifications
- Humanist, Old style, Transitional, Modern slab serif (egyptian), san serif
Late age of print...
- The term 'late age of print' comes from the media theorist Marshall Mcluhan
- The age of print is thought to have begun around 1450
- Pior to the late age of print came the 'dark ages' where nobody read or wrote: 'Late age of print' allowed this to be introduced
- The age of print brought with in Gutenberg's printing press, this allowed for 'moveable type' to be introduced and created dramatic changed and development in the world.
- Moveable type then brought with it the period of the renaissance which eventually saved the culture from the 'dark ages'.
- Roman Culture: Trajan's Column 113AD
The modern day alphabet is taken from these original forms, and mainly inspired what we know refer to today as 'uppercase' letterforms.
- Where uppercase letterforms came from Roman culture, lowercase stemmed more from monks.
- Guttenberg gothic script 1450
- Goth script is considered very difficult to read because of the spacing in between letters etc.
- Black letter or gothic typefaces were quickly superseded by Humanist type forms created by Nicolas Jenson.
- Characteristics of humanist typefaces; there is little difference between the main stroke and secondary stroke and a classic feature is the upturned cross stroke of the letter 'e'.
- Geofroy Tory, painter and designer, believed that the proportions of the alphabet should reflect the ideal human form. He wrote, "the cross-stroke covers the man's organ of generation, to signify that Modesty and Chastity are required, before all else, in those who seek acquaintance with ell-shaped letters".
- Humanist was the first family of type.
- Centaur (humanist) now became Garamond (old style).
- Old style stemmed from Venice and along with this style came the first forms of italic fonts as well as different spacing of letters.
- At this point in history there is a shift within typography and type now becomes a form of art.
- New (old style fonts) = palatino, garamond, perpetua, goudy old style
- 17th-18th century: period of enlightenment
- At the point the ideal letterform was created alongside quasi-scientific lines, these engravings by Louis Simonneau are from an alphabet commissioned by Louis XIV in 1693. The engravings were the basis of a royal typeface (romain du roi) designed by Philippe Grandjean. These letterforms were very tradition for the time.
- The typeface of an 18th century English printer William Caslon are characterised by crisp, upright characters that recall the fluid strokes of the flexible steel pen and the pointed quill.
- These modern fonts of the time were adopted by America and used for the United Stated of America Declaration as a modern font represent a modern country.
- In the late 18th century, English printer John Baskerville created a type with such contrast between thick and think elements that his contemporaries are said to have accused him of "blinding all the readers of the nation; for the strokes of (his) letters, being too think and narrow, hurt the Eye".
- A stressful time
- The transitional stroke became so acute at the time that it was said to have blinded you if you were to read it.
- Modern typeface - often known as Didone typefaces which were designed by Giambattista Bodoni. It was most influential and attributed to firmin didot, 1784.
- Fashion designers are artists commonly use Didone. Didone represents elegance, style and class. Vogue magazine use Didone as their main typeface.
- Slab serif / Egyptian 1800's: product of industrialisation, screams for attention, no class or sophistication, breaks the rules of heirarchies.
- Fat face fonts echo slab serif and is used for print
- Typewriter fonts are slab serif
- Fat face is an inflated, hyper-bold type style developed in the early nineteenth century.
- San serif typeface <> moderist era
- Berthold type foundry in 1896
- no fuss: form follows function (communication)
- San serif typeface <> Bayer 1925
- The Bauhaus typeface was all lowercase with no need for uppercase; unicameral type
- Gill Sans was designed by Eric Gill 1926: wave of modernism
- Regressive: reintroducing historic fonts, times new roman 1932, Stanley Morrison
- Johann Christian Bauer 1850
- Cooper Black 1921
- Swiss style <> san serif <> helvetica 1957
- massive movement in typography
- Max Miedinger
- Seen as the font of corporate communication
- Used widely in the business industry
- Jonathan Barnbrook 1990
- 80's & 90's postmodernist return to black font
- David Carson: gets rid of legibility, response to ubiquitous typefaces
- Barry Deck 1990: postmodernist font
