A history of TYPE

Typography is a very powerful thing, i knew this before the lecture from college but having another lecture on it refreshed my memory and told me more about it. Typography as a whole fascinates me so much can be put across visually from a simple piece of typography such as making the reader think that your whispering simply by changing the font size and italic style of the writting. OR I MAY JUST BE SHOUTING AT YOU INSTEAD. It's as simple as that really.  

Here's another example i like from an article i found on the internet

'Romantic letters can be extraordinarily beautiful, but they lack the flowing and steady rhythm of the Renaissance forms. It is that rhythm which invites the reader to enter the text and read. The statuesque forms of Romantic letters invite the reader to stand outside and look at the letters instead.'

-The Elements of Typographic Style, page 130.

It's very true, a romantic letter can be wrote but it won't have the same effect as a romantic letter written in a better font with italic, it creates a different feel and makes you want to read the romantic letter or more, same goes for poetry. It's like music in games, everything works together and comes together to set the atmosphere and feel of the piece, without these things things would just be pretty plain and less intriguing. 


Typography has been around for century's evolving and growing as everything does, it's the art and technique of arranging type in order to make language visible. The arrangement of type involves the selection of typefaces, point size, line length, line spacing, tracking (adjusting the spaces between groups of letters) and kerning (adjusting the space between pairs of letters.) In modern times it's been used in everything from advertising, graphic design, title sequences, graffiti art, comic books, loads. I found this quote from the internet that 'Until the Digital Age, typography was a specialized occupation. Digitization opened up typography to new generations of visual designers and lay users, and it has been said that "typography is now something everybody does." 
I agree with this fully now you don't need a huge machine with metal plates with letters on them to print text onto a book or magazine or anything. Now you can whack out your laptop bring up photoshop and illustrator and just create whatever typography you want from your head in 5 minutes. Here's a picture of an old school printing press machine and the metal letters used from around the 1450's 

Typography is used everywhere and people walk past it blind everyday, a lot of people won't know that the font Helvetica is pretty much the most used font. It's on pretty much every road sign you will ever see. The aim of Helvetica was to create a neutral typeface that had great clarity, no intrinsic meaning in it's form and could be used on a wide variety of signage, I think they got exactly what they wanted. 

Here's a picture of Helvetica below next time you see a road sign or anything that points you in the right direction think of the fact that that's everywhere in the word and your not just looking at some text on a sign, your looking at one of the most famous typefaces in the history of typography.  

Here's another famous one - Oswald Bruce, Cooper Black, 1921

Maybe the most famous? - Times New Roman, Stanley Morrison, 1932

Here's a handout we got of information on type and what certain words mean and what things are. It was interesting to have a read over, there's so much about typography is unreal. 

These days we have ALOT of typography artists what i've noticed is that they mainly focus on trying to make typography even more than it is, they sort of use metaphors in words, such as writing the word wires and then constructing the word wires with wires graphically on the computer or some typographers take a more physical arty style and make the word wires out of wires physically and take a picture of it. Typography has evolved into it's own art, it's not just used for reading books and signs anymore.  

- Theo Aartsma

Below are some inspirational images of typography used in the fine arts

Viewers can only decipher the words “Avante Garde” when viewing Damien Roach’s wood and steel sculpture head on. From all other angles, it looks like a strange jumble of wood.

Exhibited by Richard J. Evans at the Free Range Graduate Art & Design Show.

This sculpture is called “Sometimes I Think Sometimes I Don’t”, by Stefan Bruggemmann. It’s made from black vinyl lettering and white neon.

Overall I learned a lot from the lecture the main types, the famous types, the function, the history and the art behind it. Looking into it more just shows how something can evolve from a simple font. Like the one i'm writing write now i could make s p a c e s, ConFUSe my reader, make it unreadable. I'll never look at type the same ever again :)