Tag: typography history

  • History of the Alphabet

    Source edited from: Wikipedia History of the Alphabet

    Most or nearly all alphabetic scripts used throughout the world today ultimately go back to the proto-alphabet consonantal writing system used for Semitic languages in the Levant in the 2nd millennium BCE. Mainly through Phoenician and Aramaic, two closely related members of the Semitic family of scripts used during the early first millennium BCE, the Semitic alphabet became the ancestor of multiple writing systems across the Middle East, Europe, northern Africa and South Asia.

    Some modern authors distinguish between:

    • consonantal scripts of the Semitic type, called “abjads“, where each symbol usually stands for a consonant.
    •  “true alphabets” consistently assign letters to both consonants and vowels on an equal basis.

    In this sense, the first true alphabet was the Greek alphabet, which was adapted from the Phoenician. Latin, the most widely used alphabet today, in turn derives from Greek (by way of Cumae and the Etruscans).

    Egyptian hieroglyphs

    Hieroglyphs were employed in three ways in Ancient Egyptian texts: as logograms (ideograms) that represent a word denoting an object pictorially depicted by the hieroglyph; more commonly as phonograms writing a sound or sequence of sounds; and as determinatives (which provide clues to meaning without directly writing sounds). Since vowels were mostly unwritten, the hieroglyphs which indicated a single consonant could have been used as a consonantal alphabet (or “abjad”). This was not done when writing the Egyptian language, but seems to have been significant influence on the creation of the first alphabet (used to write a Semitic language).

    Mesopotamian cuneiform

    Proto-Sinaitic

    Developed in Ancient Egypt to represent the language of Semitic-speaking workers in Egypt. This script was partly influenced by the older Egyptian hieratic, a cursive script related to Egyptian hieroglyphs. It has yet to be fully deciphered. However, it may be alphabetic and probably records the Canaanite language. The oldest examples are found as graffiti in the Wadi el Hol and date to perhaps 1850 BCE. The table below shows hypothetical prototypes of the Phoenician alphabet in Egyptian hieroglyphs. Several correspondences have been proposed with Proto-Sinaitic letters.

    Possible Egyptian prototypeF1O1T14O31A28T3 O6F35D42D46
    Phoenician
    Possible acrophonyʾalp oxbet housegaml throwstick/cameldigg fish/doorhaw, hillul jubilationwaw hookzen, ziqq handcuffḥet courtyard/fenceṭēt wheelyad armkap hand
    Possible Egyptian prototypeS39N35I10R11D4  V24D1F18 
    Phoenician
    Possible acrophonylamd goadmem waternun large fish/snakesamek fishʿen eyepiʾt bendṣad plantqup monkey/cord of woolraʾs headšananuma bowtaw signature

    This Semitic script adapted Egyptian hieroglyphs to write consonantal values based on the first sound of the Semitic name for the object depicted by the hieroglyph (the “acrophonic principle”). So, for example, the hieroglyph per (“house” in Egyptian) was used to write the sound [b] in Semitic, because [b] was the first sound in the Semitic word for “house”, bayt. The script was used only sporadically, and retained its pictographic nature, for half a millennium, until adopted for governmental use in Canaan.

    Chart showing details of four alphabets' descent from Phoenician abjad, from left to right Latin, Greek, original Phoenician, Hebrew, Arabic.
    Chart showing details of four alphabets’ descent from Phoenician abjad, from left to right Latin, Greek, original Phoenician, Hebrew, Arabic.

    Phoenician

    The first Canaanite states to make extensive use of the alphabet were the Phoenician city-states and so later stages of the Canaanite script are called Phoenician. The Phoenician cities were maritime states at the center of a vast trade network and soon the Phoenician alphabet spread throughout the Mediterranean. Two variants of the Phoenician alphabet had major impacts on the history of writing: the Aramaic alphabet and the Greek alphabet.

     Aramaic

    The Aramaic alphabet, which evolved from the Phoenician in the 7th century BCE as the official script of the Persian Empire, appears to be the ancestor of nearly all the modern alphabets of Asia:

    Greek alphabet

    By at least the 8th century BCE the Greeks borrowed the Phoenician alphabet and adapted it to their own language, creating in the process the first “true” alphabet, in which vowels were accorded equal status with consonants.

    The letters of the Greek alphabet are the same as those of the Phoenician alphabet, and both alphabets are arranged in the same order.

    However, whereas separate letters for vowels would have actually hindered the legibility of Egyptian, Phoenician, or Hebrew, their absence was problematic for Greek, where vowels played a much more important role. The Greeks used for vowels some of the Phoenician letters representing consonants which weren’t used in Greek speech. All of the names of the letters of the Phoenician alphabet started with consonants, and these consonants were what the letters represented, something called the acrophonic principle However, several Phoenician consonants were absent in Greek, and thus several letter names came to be pronounced with initial vowels. Since the start of the name of a letter was expected to be the sound of the letter (the acrophonic principle), in Greek these letters came to be used for vowels. For example, the Greeks had no glottal stop or voiced phuaryngeal sounds, so the Phoenician letters ’alep  and `ayin  became Greek alpha and ‘ ‘ (later renamed o micron , and stood for the vowels /a/ and /o/ rather than the consonants /ʔ/ and /ʕ/. As this fortunate development only provided for five or six (depending on dialect) of the twelve Greek vowels, the Greeks eventually created digraphs and other modifications, such as ei,
    ou, and which became omega), or in some cases simply ignored the deficiency, as in long a, i, u.

    Several varieties of the Greek alphabet developed. One, known as Western Greek or Chalcidian, was used west of Athens and in southern Italy. The other variation, known as Eastern Greek, was used in Asia Minor (also called Asian Greece i.e. present-day aegean Turkey). The Athenians (c. 400 BCE) adopted that latter variation and eventually the rest of the Greek-speaking world followed. After first writing right to left, the Greeks eventually chose to write from left to right, unlike the Phoenicians who wrote from right to left. Many Greek letters are similar to Phoenician, except the letter direction is reversed or changed, which can be the result of historical changes from right-to-left writing to boustrophedon to left-to-right writing.

    Greek is in turn the source for all the modern scripts of Europe. The alphabet of the early western Greek dialects, where the letter eta remained an h, gave rise to the Old Italic and from these Old Roman alphabet derived. In the eastern Greek dialects, which did not have an /h/, eta stood for a vowel, and remains a vowel in modern Greek and all other alphabets derived from the eastern variants: Glagolitic, Cyrillic, Armenian, Gothic (which used both Greek and Roman letters), and perhaps Georgian.

    Latin alphabet

    Main article: History of the Latin alphabet

    A tribe known as the Latins, who became known as the Romans, also lived in the Italian peninsula like the Western Greeks. From the Etruscans, a tribe living in the first millennium BCE in central Italy, and the Western Greeks, the Latins adopted writing in about the seventh century. In adopted writing from these two groups, the Latins dropped four characters from the Western Greek alphabet. They also adapted the Etruscan letter F, pronounced ‘w,’ giving it the ‘f’ sound, and the Etruscan S, which had three zigzag lines, was curved to make the modern S. To represent the G sound in Greek and the K sound in Etruscan, the Gamma was used. These changes produced the modern alphabet without the letters G, J, U, W, Y, and Z, as well as some other differences.

    C, K, and Q in the Roman alphabet could all be used to write both the /k/ and /ɡ/ sounds; the Romans soon modified the letter C to make G, inserted it in seventh place, where Z had been, to maintain the gematria (the numerical sequence of the alphabet). Over the few centuries after Alexander the Great conquered the Eastern Mediterranean and other areas in the third century BCE, the Romans began to borrow Greek words, so they had to adapt their alphabet again in order to write these words. From the Eastern Greek alphabet, they borrowed Y and Z, which were added to the end of the alphabet because the only time they were used was to write Greek words.

    The Anglo-Saxons began using Roman letters to write Old English as they converted to Christianity, following Augustine of Canterbury’s mission to Britain in the sixth century. Because the Runic wen, which was first used to represent the sound ‘w’ and looked like a p that is narrow and triangular, was easy to confuse with an actual p, the ‘w’ sound began to be written using a double u. Because the u at the time looked like a v, the double u looked like two v’s, W was placed in the alphabet by V. U developed when people began to use the rounded U when they meant the vowel u and the pointed V when the meant the consonant V. J began as a variation of I, in which a long tail was added to the final I when there were several in a row. People began to use the J for the consonant and the I for the vowel by the fifteenth century, and it was fully accepted in the mid-seventeenth century.

    Table above shows simplified relationship between various scripts leading to the development of modern lower case of standard Latin alphabet and that of the modern variants:

    Letter names and order

    The order of the letters of the alphabet is attested from the fourteenth century BCE in the town of Ugarit on Syria’s northern coast.Tablets found there bear over one thousand cuneiform signs, but these signs are not Babylonian and there are only thirty distinct characters. About twelve of the tablets have the signs set out in alphabetic order. There are two orders found, one of which is nearly identical to the order used for Hebrew, Greek and Latin, and a second order very similar to that used for Ethiopian.

    It is not known how many letters the Proto-Sinaitic alphabet had nor what their alphabetic order was. Among its descendants, the Ugaritic alphabet had 27 consonants, the South Arabian alphabets had 29, and the Phoenician alphabet 22. These scripts were arranged in two orders, an ABGDE order in Phoenician and an HMĦLQ order in the south; Ugaritic preserved both orders. Both sequences proved remarkably stable among the descendants of these scripts.

    The letter names proved stable among the many descendants of Phoenician, including Samaritan, Aramaic, Syriac, Arabic, Hebrew, and Greek alphabet. However, they were largely abandoned in Tifinagh, Latin and Cyrillic. The letter sequence continued more or less intact into Latin, Armenian, Gothic, and Cyrillic, but was abandoned in Brahmi, Runic, and Arabic, although a traditional abjadi order remains or was re-introduced as an alternative in the latter.

    The table is a schematic of the Phoenician alphabet and its descendants.

    nr.ReconstructionIPAvalueUgariticPhoenicianHebrewArabicGreekLatinCyrillicRunic
    1ʾalpu “ox”/ʔ/1  ʾālepא‎ ʾālef‎ ʾalifΑ alphaAА azŭ *ansuz
    2baytu “house”/b/2  bētב‎ bēṯﺏ‎ bāʾΒ bētaBВ vĕdĕ, Б buky *berkanan
    3gamlu “throwstick”/ɡ/3  gīmelג‎ gīmelﺝ‎ jīmΓ gammaC, GГ glagoli *kaunan
    4daltu “door” / diggu “fish”/d/, /ð/4  dāletד‎ dāleṯﺩ‎ dāl, ذ‎ ḏālΔ deltaDД dobro 
    5haw “window” / hallu “jubilation/h/5 ה‎ hēﻫ‎ hāʾΕ epsilonEЕ ye, Є estĭ 
    6wāwu “hook”/β/ or /w/6  wāwו‎ vāvو‎ wāwϜ digamma, Υ upsilonF, V, YѸ / ukŭ → У *ûruz / *ûram
    7zaynu “weapon” / ziqqu “manacle”/z/7  zayinז‎ zayinز‎ zayn or zāyΖ zētaZ / З zemlya 
    8ḥaytu “thread” / “fence”?/ħ/, /x/8  ḥētח‎ ḥēṯح‎ ḥāʾ, خ‎ ḫāʾΗ ētaHИ iže *haglaz
    9ṭaytu “wheel”/tˤ/, /θˤ/9  ṭētט‎ ṭēṯط‎ ṭāʾ, ظ‎ ẓāʾΘ thēta Ѳ fita 
    10yadu “arm”/j/10  yōdי‎ yōḏي‎ yāʾΙ iotaIІ ižei *isaz
    11kapu “hand”/k/20  kapכ ך‎ kāfك‎ kāfΚ kappaKК kako 
    12lamdu “goad”/l/30  lāmedל‎ lāmeḏل‎ lāmΛ lambdaLЛ lyudiye *laguz / *laukaz
    13mayim “waters”/m/40  mēmמ ם‎ mēmم‎ mīmΜ muMМ myslite 
    14naḥšu “snake” / nunu “fish”/n/50  nunנ ן‎ nunن‎ nūnΝ nuNН našĭ 
    15samku “support” / “fish” ?/s/60  sāmekס‎ sāmeḵ Ξ ksi, (Χ ksi)(X)Ѯ ksi, (Х xĕrŭ) 
    16ʿaynu “eye”/ʕ/, /ɣ/70  ʿayinע‎ ʿayinع‎ ʿayn, غ‎ ġaynΟ omikronOО onŭ 
    17pu “mouth” / piʾtu “corner”/p/80 פ ף‎ pēف‎ fāʾΠ piPП pokoi 
    18ṣadu “plant”/sˤ/, /ɬˤ/90  ṣādēצ ץ‎ ṣāḏiص‎ ṣād, ض‎ ḍādϺ san, (Ϡ sampi) Ц tsi, Ч črvĭ 
    19qupu “Copper”?/kˤ/ or /q/100  qōpק‎ qōfق‎ qāfϘ koppaQҀ koppa 
    20raʾsu “head”/r/ or /ɾ/200  rēšר‎ rēšر‎ rāʾΡ rhoRР rĭtsi *raidô
    21šinnu “tooth” / šimš “sun/ʃ/, /ɬ/300  šinש‎ šin/śinس‎ sīn, ش‎ šīnΣ sigma, ϛ stigmaSС slovo, Ш ša, Щ šta, / Ѕ dzĕlo *sowilô
    22tawu “mark”/t/, /θ/400  tāwת‎ tāvت‎ tāʾ, ث‎ ṯāʾΤ tauTТ tvrdo *tîwaz

    These 22 consonants account for the phonology of Northwest Semitic. Of the 29 consonant phonemes commonly reconstructed for Proto-Semitic, seven are missing: the interdental fricatives ḏ, ṯ, ṱ, the voiceless lateral fricatives ś, ṣ́, the voiced uvular fricative ġ, and the distinction between uvular and pharyngeal voiceless fricatives ḫ, ḥ, in Canaanite merged in ḥet. The six variant letters added in the Arabic alphabet include these (except for ś, which survives as a separate phoneme in Ge’ez ): ḏ → ḏāl; ṯ → ṯāʾ; ṱ → ḍād; ġ → ġayn; ṣ́ → ẓāʾ; ḫ → ḫāʾ

    Complex derivations and independent alphabets

    Although this description presents the evolution of scripts in a linear fashion, this is a simplification. For example, the Manchu alphabet, descended from the abjads of West Asia, was also influenced by Korean hangul, which was either independent (the traditional view) or derived from the abugidas of South Asia. Georgian apparently derives from the Aramaic family, but was strongly influenced in its conception by Greek. A modified version of the Greek alphabet, using an additional half dozen demotic hieroglyphs, was used to write Coptic Egyptian. Then there is Cree syllabics (an abugida), which is a fusion of Devanagari and Pitman shorthand developed by the missionary James Evans.

    Possible independently invented alphabets are:

    •  Meroitic alphabet, a 3rd-century BCE adaptation of hieroglyphs in Nubia to the south of Egypt
    •  Rongorongo script of Easter Island.
    • Maldivian script, which is unique in that, although it is clearly modeled after Arabic and perhaps other existing alphabets, it derives its letter forms from numerals.
    • Korean Hangul, which was created independently in 1443.
    • Osmanya alphabet was devised for Somali in the 1920s by Osman Yusuf Kenadid, and the forms of its consonants appear to be complete innovations.
    • Zhuyin phonetic alphabet derives from Chinese characters.
    • Santali alphabet of eastern India appears to be based on traditional symbols such as “danger” and “meeting place”, as well as pictographs invented by its creator. (The names of the Santali letters are related to the sound they represent through the acrophonic principle, as in the original alphabet, but it is the final consonant or vowel of the name that the letter represents: le “swelling” represents e, while en “thresh grain” represents n.)
    • In early medieval Ireland, Ogham consisted of tally marks
    • monumental inscriptions of the Old Persian Empire were written in an essentially alphabetic cuneiform script whose letter forms seem to have been created for the occasion.
  • Western Typeface Classifications

    Typeface classification is not easy because typographic tradition is self-referential – type designers often use older forms as a basis for experimentation and innovation.

    Typeface design is also related to technology. From early Roman to 15th Century Western type was drawn by hand, either with a brush, a flat reed pen or a chisel. From mid-1500s casting letters in lead allowed new precision in form. In the 20th century use of cheap mass produced paper stock for eg newspapers and telephone directories meant that legibility had to allow for some bleeding of ink. Digital technology and type design software in the last decade has led to a rapid proliferation of typefaces by individual designers and artists.

    The impossibility of a truly complete classification system has led many people to dismiss any attempt to classify typefaces — there are simply too many variables to make anything close to a practical, comprehensive system.

    Essentially, classification describes typefaces; it does not define them. It’s not inflexible, and is more of an aid than a rule.

    Source: edited from Wikipedia Typeface 2016

    20th Century classification systems

    Over the past century, quite a few classification systems have been proposed. Most are generally believed to be subjective and incomplete, and many of them use the same terms for similar but slightly different classes.

    An early system by French typographer Francis Thibaudeau, which provided the base for Vox’s later more thorough classification, includes four broad categories: Antiques (sans serifs), Égyptiennes (slab serifs), Didots and Elzévirs (faces with triangular serifs).

    Bringhurst, in his Elements of Typographic Style — perhaps the standard in typographic textbooks today — categorizes typefaces loosely after periods of art history; for example, Baroque, Rococo, Romantic, etc. A book designer himself, Bringhurst focuses on text typefaces and practically ignores display type.

    Currently the primary “official” classification system  is the Vox-ATypI system originally put together in 1954 by Maxmilien Vox.  Originally a ten-part classification, Vox revised his original proposal within months to a more compact nine-part scheme. These were subsequently expanded to 11 general categories, including non-Western type, with some subdivision. This classification tends to group typefaces according to their main characteristics, often typical of a particular century (15th, 16th, 17th, 18th, 19th, 20th century), based on a number of formal criteria: downstroke and upstroke, forms of serifs, stroke axis, x-height,  etc ???. Although the Vox-ATypI classification defines archetypes of typefaces, many typefaces can exhibit the characteristics of more than one class.

    The Vox-ATypI system  was adopted in 1962 by the Association Typographique Internationale (ATypI), and in 1967 as the basis for British Standards Classification of Typefaces (BS 2961:1967).  But at the 2010 ATypI general meeting, the association stated that the Vox-ATypI system was seriously flawed, and to create a new working group on typeface classification.

    Adobe, Wikipedia and the growing numbers of font websites also have their own classifications.

    Serif fonts: Classical or old style 

    characterized by triangular serifs, oblique axis and low stroke contrast

    Centaur, a humanist typeface

    Examples:
    Centaur, Adobe Jenson, Berkeley Old Style and Cloister.

    Humanist or Venetian

    Humanist, humanistic, or humanes include the first Roman typefaces created during the 14th and 15th century by Venetian printers, such as Nicolas Jenson. These typefaces sought to imitate the formal hands found in the humanistic (renaissance) manuscripts of the time. These typefaces, rather round in opposition to the gothics of the Middle Ages, are inspired in particular by the Carolingian minuscule imposed on his empire by Charlemagne.

    Key characteristics:

    • short and thick bracketed serifs, ascenders with slanted serifs
    • stress that approximates that of a broad-nibbed pen held at an angle to the page
    • a slanted cross stroke on the lowercase ‘e’,
    • low contrast between horizontals and verticals and thick and thin strokes.
    Garamond, a Garalde typeface

    Examples:
    Bembo, and Garamond, Minion.

    Garalde

     Garalde typefaces represent the late Renaissance evolution from the earlier Venetian style, and include some of the most common typefaces of today. Also called Aldine, this group is named in homage to Claude Garamond and Aldus Manutius. In France, under King Francis I, the garaldes were the tool which supported the official fixing of grammar and orthography.

    Key characteristics

    • finer proportions than the humanists
    • horizontal cross-stroke on the lower case e
    •  stronger contrast between downstroke and upstroke, thick and thin strokes.
    • stress is inclined on an oblique axis to the left
    • bracketed serifs.
    Bulmer, a transitional typeface

    Examples: 
    Baskerville, Times Roman, Perpetua, Stone Serif.

    Transitional

    The transitional, realist or réales represent a transition between Garalde and Didone typefaces, embodying the rational spirit of the Enlightenment. They were the first typefaces to be drawn as shapes in their own right. Louis XIV wanted to invent new typographical forms to find a successor of the Garamond and at the same time compete in quality with the different printers of Europe. The term realist derives from the Spanish for “royal”, because of a typeface cast by Christophe Plantin for King Philip II of Spain.

    Key characteristics:

    • vertical, or near vertical, stress
    • marked contrast between main and connecting hairline strokes
    • serifs are thin, flat and bracketed

    Serif Fonts: Moderns

    The moderns can be broken down into Didone, mechanistic and linear categories, and are characterized by a simple, functional feel that gained momentum during the industrial period.

    Bodoni, a Didone typeface

    Examples: 
    Bodoni, Didot, Fenice and Walbaum.

    Didone or Modern

    The Didones or modern typefaces from the end of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th century draw their name from the typefounders Didot (1764-1836) and Bodoni (1740-1813). They were a response to improvements in late 18th-century paper production, composition, printing and binding, which made it possible to use typefaces with strong vertical emphasis and fine hairlines.They correspond to the Didot of theThibaudeau classification. The didones in particular made it possible for the First French Empire to employ typefaces very different from the typefaces used by the kings from the Ancien Régime.

    Key characteristics:

    •  very strong contrast between full and connecting strokes (the connecting strokes being extremely fine
    • vertical stress
    • unbracketed hairline serifs
    • constructed rather than drawn.
    Rockwell, a mechanistic typeface

     Examples:
    Clarendon, Egyptienne, Chaparral Pro, Ionic No. 5, Rockwell.

    Mechanistic,  slab or Egyptian 

     Also called mechanical, slab serif, or mécanes, the name of this group evokes the mechanical aspect of these typefaces. Until the late 18th century, type was used primarily for books. But with the Industrial Revolution at the beginning of the 19th century came an increased use of billboards and other forms of advertising. These required bolder typefaces that stood out from the competition. They correspond to the Egyptiennes of Thibaudeau classification, reflecting the public’s enthusiasm for the archaeological discoveries of the time.

    Key characteristics:

    • sturdy
    • very low contrast in stroke weight
    • includes both typefaces with bracketed serifs (clarendons or ionics) and typefaces with heavy square/rectangular or unbracketed serifs (egyptians).

    Sans Serif or Lineal

    Lineals, or linéales, combine all typefaces without serifs (called sans-serif, gothic, or grotesque), all of which correspond to the Antiques of the Thibaudeau classification. But they were not widely adopted until the end of the 19th Century. The British Standard 2961 broke this group into 4 subcategories: Grotesque, Neo-Grotesque, Geometric, and Humanist.

    Monotype Grotesque, a grotesque lineal typeface

    Examples:
    Franklin Gothic, Bell Gothic and Bell Centennial, Frutiger, Headline, Monotype 215,  and Grot no. 6.

    Grotesque

    Grotesque typefaces are sans serif typefaces that originate in the nineteenth century.

    Key characteristics:

    • some contrast between thick and thin strokes
    • terminals of curves are usually horizontal
    • frequently has a spurred “G” and an “R” with a curled leg.
    Univers, a neo-grotesque lineal typeface

    Examples: 
    Helvetica and Univers.

    Neo-grotesque or realist

     Neo-grotesque typefaces are derived from the earlier grotesque faces, but generally have less stroke contrast and a more regular design. “Realist sans-serif” is a commonly encountered synonym for neo-grotesque.

    Key characteristics:

    • they generally do not have a spurred “G”
    • terminals of curves are usually slanted
    • often have a large degree of subtlety and variation of widths and weights to accommodate different means of production (Hot type, foundry type, phototypesetting, see History of typography, 20th century).
    Futura, a geometric lineal typeface

    Examples:
    Eurostile and Futura.

    Geometric

    Geometric typefaces are sans serif faces constructed from simple geometric shapes, circles and/or rectangles.

    Key characteristics:

    • The same curves and lines are often repeated throughout the letters, resulting in minimal differentiation between letters.
    Gill Sans, a humanist lineal typeface

    Examples:  
    Gill Sans and Optima.

    Humanist

    Humanist sans serif typefaces relate to the earlier, classical handwritten monumental Roman capitals and have a lowercase similar in form to the Carolingian script.

    Calligraphics

    The Calligraphics can be broken down into glyphic, script, graphic, blackletter, and Gaelic categories, and are characterized by a suggestion of being hand-crafted.

    Examples: 
    Albertus, Copperplate Gothic, and Trajan.

    Glyphic

     The glyphic, incised, or incise are typefaces which evoke the engraving or chiseling of characters in stone or metal, as opposed to calligraphic handwriting.

    Key characteristics:

    • small, triangular serifs or tapering downstrokes.
    • greater emphasis on the capital letters in glyphic typefaces, with some faces not containing a lowercase.
    Mistral, a script typeface

    Examples:
    Bickham Script Pro, Champion Script Pro, Raniscript, Shelley, Mistral and Francesca.

    Script

    The scripts or scriptes include typefaces which evoke the formal penmanship or cursive writing. Typefaces imitating copperplate script form part of this family. Scripts are distinct from italic type.

    Key characteristics:

    • seem to be written with a quill, and have a strong slope.
    •  letters can often be connected to each other.
    Banco, a graphic typeface

    Examples: 
    Banco and Klang.

    Graphic

    The graphic, manual, or manuaires, are based on hand-drawn originals which are slowly written with either a brush, pen, pencil, or other writing instrument.

    Key characteristics:

    • generally do not represent writing
    • are intended for display or headlines.
    Fette Fraktur, a blackletter typeface

    Example:
    Fraktur.

    Blackletter

    The blackletters or fractures (oftenincluded in the graphics)

    Key characteristics:

    • pointed and angular forms
    • modelled on late medieval hands written with a broad-nibbed pen.
    Duibhlinn, a Gaelic typeface

    Gaelic

    Gaelic type was added to the classification at the AGM of the Dublin meeting of ATypI, on 12 September 2010.

    Non-Latin or ‘exotics’

    Gathers (without distinction of style) all writing systems not based on the Latin alphabet: Greek, Cyrillic, Hebrew, Arabic, Chinese, etc. English printers traditionally called these exotics.

  • History of typefaces

    Sources: Wikipedia: History of Western typographyMovable type Type Design History
    See also Typeface Classifications

    Typesetting systems and technology

    Earliest developments

    Typography traces its origins to the first punches and dies used to make seals and currency in ancient times. The uneven spacing of the impressions on brick stamps found in the Mesopotamian cities of Uruk and Larsa, dating from the 2nd millennium BC, may have been evidence of type where the reuse of identical characters were applied to create cuneiform text. Babylonian cylinder seals were used to create an impression on a surface by rolling the seal on wet clay. Typography was also realized in the Phaistos Disc, an enigmatic Minoan print item from Crete, Greece, which dates between 1850 and 1600 BC.

    The essential criterion of type identity was met by medieval print artifacts such as the Latin Pruefening Abbey inscription of 1119 that was created by the same technique as the Phaistos disc.The silver altarpiece of patriarch Pellegrinus II (1195−1204) in the cathedral of Cividale was printed with individual letter punches.The same printing technique can apparently be found in 10th to 12th century Byzantine reliquariesIndividual letter tiles where the words are formed by assembling single letter tiles in the desired order were reasonably widespread in medieval Northern Europe.

    Movable type

    Typography with movable type was invented in 11th-century China by Bi Sheng (990–1051) during the Song Dynasty. His movable type system was manufactured from ceramic materials, and clay type printing continued to be practiced in China until the Qing Dynasty. Wang Zhen was one of the pioneers of wooden movable type. Although the wooden type was more durable under the mechanical rigors of handling, repeated printing wore the character faces down, and the types could only be replaced by carving new pieces. Metal type was first invented in Korea during the Goryeo Dynasty around 1230. Hua Sui introduced bronze type printing to China in 1490 AD. The Korean form of metal movable type was described by the French scholar Henri-Jean Martin as “extremely similar to Gutenberg’s”. Eastern metal movable type was spread to Europe between late 14th century and early 15th century.

    Modern movable type, along with the mechanical printing press, is most often attributed to the goldsmith Johannes Gutenberg. His type pieces from a lead-based alloy suited printing purposes so well that the alloy is still used today. Gutenberg developed specialized techniques for casting and combining cheap copies of letterpunches in the vast quantities required to print multiple copies of texts. This technical breakthrough was instrumental in starting the Printing Revolution and printing the world’s first book (with movable type) the Gutenberg Bible.

    Johannes Gutenberg employed the scribe Peter Schöffer to help design and cut the letterpunches for the first typeface—the D-K type of 202 characters used to print the first books in Europe. A second typeface of about 300 characters designed for the 42-line Bible c. 1455 was probably cut by the goldsmith Hans Dunne with the help of two others—Götz von Shlettstadt and Hans von Speyer.

    Lithography

    Above all the 19th century was innovative regarding technical aspects. Automatic manufacturing processes changed the print as well as the graphical illustrations. The illustration of printed matters could be considerably standardised due to the lithography technique invented by Alois Senefelder. Finally, another invention was photography, whose establishment at the end of the 19th century led to the first halftoning and reproduction procedures. The step-by-step development of a modern mass society provided a growing demand of printed matters. Besides the traditional letterpress beginnings of a newspaper landscape as well as a broad market for publications, advertisements, and posters of all kinds appeared. The challenges had changed: since printing and typography had been a straightforward craft for centuries, it now had to face the challenges of an industry-ruled mass society.

    Hot type and phototypesetting in the 20th century

    Monotype machine


    Exlibris, 1921

    The fabrication and application of typefaces more and more were affected by industrial manufacturing processes. Significant incidents were

    The result: Compilation and typographical design of the text could be more and more controlled by keyboards in contrast to manual typesetting.

    Digital technology

    Computer technology revolutionized typography in the 20th century. Personal computers in the 1980s like the Macintosh allowed type designers to create types digitally using commercial graphic design software. Digital technology also enabled designers to create more experimental typefaces, alongside the practical fonts of traditional typography. Designs for typefaces could be created faster with the new technology, and for more specific functions.The cost for developing typefaces was drastically lowered, becoming widely available to the masses. The change has been called the “democratization of type” and has given new designers more opportunities to enter the field.

    Evolution of typography

    The design of typography has developed alongside the development of typesetting systems. Although typography has evolved significantly from its origins, it is a largely conservative art that tends to cleave closely to tradition. This is because legibility is paramount, and so the types that are the most readable are often retained. In addition, the evolution of typography is inextricably intertwined with lettering by hand and related art forms, especially formal styles, which thrived for centuries preceding typography.

    Handwritten letterforms of the mid-15th century embodied 3000 years of evolved letter design, and were the natural models for letterforms in systematized typography.

    Blackletter or gothic

    In the nascent stages of European printing, the type (blackletter, or Gothic) was designed in imitation of the popular hand-lettering styles of scribes. The scribal letter known as textur or textualis, produced by the strong gothic spirit of blackletter from the hands of German area scribes, served as the model for the first text types. Initially, this type was difficult to read, because each letter was set in place individually and made to fit tightly into the allocated space. The art of manuscript writing, whose origin was in Hellenistic and Roman bookmaking, reached its zenith in the illuminated manuscripts of the Middle Ages. Metal types notably altered the style, making it “crisp and uncompromising”, and also brought about “new standards of composition”. 

    Cultural tradition ensured that German typography and type design remained true to the gothic/blackletter spirit; but the parallel influence of the humanist and neo-classical typography in Italy catalyzed textur into four additional sub-styles that were distinct, structurally rich and highly disciplined: Bastarda, fraktur, rotunda, and Schwabacher.

    The rapid spread of movable type printing across Europe produced additional Gothic, half-Gothic and Gothic-to-roman transitional types. Johann Bämler‘s Schwabacher, Augsburg appeared in 1474. The half-Gothic Rotunda type of Erhard Ratdolt c. 1486 was cut to suit Venetian taste. In 1476 William Caxton printed the first books in England with a so-called Bâtarde type (an early Schwabacher design), but soon abandoned it.

    Humanist antica

    The best-known example of Roman inscriptional capitals exists on the base of Trajan’s Column, inscribed c. 113.

    In Italy the heavy gothic styles were soon displaced by Venetian or “old style” Latin types, also called antiqua. The inscriptional capitals on Roman buildings and monuments were structured on a euclidean geometric scheme and the discrete component-based model of classical architecture. Their structurally perfect design, near-perfect execution in stone, balanced angled stressing, contrasting thick and thin strokes, and incised serifs became the typographic ideal for western civilization.

    Sample of Carolingian writing from the Carolingian Gospel Book produced between 820 and 830 AD

    In their enthusiastic revival of classical culture, Italian scribes and humanist scholars of the early 15th century searched for ancient minuscules to match the Roman inscriptional capitals. Practically all of the available manuscripts of classical writers had been rewritten during the Carolingian Renaissance, and with a lapse of three hundred years since the widespread use of this style, the humanist scribes mistook Carolingian minuscule as the authentic writing style of the ancients. Dubbing it lettera antica, they began by copying the minuscule hand almost exactly, combining it with Roman capitals in the same manner as the manuscripts they were copying.

    Upon noticing the stylistic mismatch between these two very different letters, the scribes redesigned the small Carolingian letter, lengthening ascenders and descenders, and adding incised serifs and finishing strokes to integrate them with the Roman capitals. By the time moveable type reached Italy several decades later, the humanistic writing had evolved into a consistent model known as humanistic minuscule, which served as the basis for type style we know today as Venetian.

    Transition from humanistic minuscule to roman type

    The classically endowed city of Rome attracted the first printers known to have set up shop outside Germany, Arnold Pannartz and Konrad Sweynheim, closely followed by the brothers Johann and Wendelin of Speyer (de Spira), and the Frenchman Nicolas Jenson. The sequence of appearance and production dates for types used by these printers have yet to be established with certainty; all four are known to have printed with types ranging from textur Gothic to fully developed romans inspired by the earlier humanistic writing, and within a few years the center of printing in Italy shifted from Rome to Venice.

    Some time before 1472 in Venice, Johann and Wendelin issued material printed with a half-Gothic-half-roman type known as “Gotico-antiqua”. This design paired simplified Gothic capitals with a rationalized humanistic minuscule letter set, itself combining Gothic minuscule forms with elements of Carolingian, in a one step forward, half step back blending of styles.

    Around the same time (1468) in Rome, Pannartz and Sweynheim were using another typeface that closely mimicked humanistic minuscule, known as “Lactantius”. Unlike the rigid fractured forms of Speyer’s half-Gothic, the Lactantius is characterized by smoothly rendered letters with a restrained organic finish. The Lactantius a departed from both the Carolingian and Gothic models; a vertical backstem and right-angled top replaced the diagonal Carolingian structure, and a continuous curved stroke replaced the fractured Gothic bowl element.

    For details on the evolution of lower case letterforms from Latin capitals, see Latin alphabet.

    Roman serif typefaces

    The name “roman” is customarily applied uncapitalized to distinguish early Jenson and Aldine-derived types from classical Roman letters of antiquity. Some parts of Europe call roman “antiqua” from its connection with the humanistic “lettera antica”; “medieval” and “old-style” are also employed to indicate roman types dating from the late 15th century, especially those used by Aldus Manutius (Italian: Manuzio). Roman faces based on those of Speyer and Jenson are also called Venetian.

    Nicolas Jenson’s roman type used in Venice c. 1470. Later “old style” or Venetian book romans such as Aldines, and much later Bembo, were closely based on Jenson.

    There are two styles of Roman typography:

    • old style characterized by its similarly-weighted lines
    • modern distinguished by its contrast of light and heavy lines.

    These styles are often combined.

    The Roman typeface’s development can be traced back to Greek lapidary letters.

    Nicolas Jenson began printing in Venice with his original roman font from 1470. Jenson’s design and the very similar roman types cut by Francesco Griffo c. 1499 and Erhard Ratdolt c. 1486 are acknowledged as the definitive and archetypal roman faces that set the pattern for the majority of western text faces that followed.

    The Jenson roman was an explicitly typographic letter designed on its own terms that declined to imitate the appearance of hand-lettering. Its effect is one of a unified cohesive whole, a seamless fusion of style with structure, and the successful convergence of the long progression of preceding letter styles. Jenson adapted the structural unity and component-based modular integration of Roman capitals to humanistic minuscule forms by masterfu labstract stylization. The carefully modelled serifs follow an artful logic of asymmetry. The ratio of extender lengths to letter bodies and the distance between lines results in balanced, harmonious body of type. Jenson also mirrors the ideal expressed in renaissance painting of carving up space (typographic “white space”) with figures (letters) to articulate the relationship between the two and make the white space dynamic.

    See also: Incunabulum

    Humanist Italic type

    The humanist spirit driving the Renaissance produced its own unique style of formal writing, known as “cursiva humanistica”. This slanted and rapidly written letter evolved from humanistic minuscule and the remaining Gothic current cursive hands in Italy, served as the model for cursive or italic typefaces. As books printed with early roman types forced humanistic minuscule out of use, cursiva humanistica gained favor as a manuscript hand for the purpose of writing. The popularity of cursive writing itself may have created some demand for a type of this style. The more decisive catalyst was probably the printing of pocket editions of Latin classics by Aldus Manutius.

    Italic type designed by Ludovico Arrighi, c. 1527. This elegant design inspired later French italic types.

    The “Aldino” italic type, commissioned by Manutius and cut by Franceso Griffo in 1499, was a closely spaced condensed type. Griffo’s punches are a delicate translation of the Italian cursive hand, featuring letters of irregular slant angle and uneven height and vertical position, with some connected pairs (ligatures), and unslanted small roman capitals the height of the lower case t. The fame of Aldus Manutius and his editions made the Griffo italic widely copied and influential, although it was not the finest of the pioneer italics. The “Aldino” style quickly became known as “italic” from its Italian origin.

    Around 1527 the Vatican chancellery scribe Ludovico Arrighi designed a superior italic type and had the punches cut by Lauticio di Bartolomeo dei Rotelli. The more modular structure of Arrighi’s italic and its few ligatures made it less a copy of the cursive hand than Griffo’s. Its slightly taller roman capitals, a gentler slant angle, taller ascenders and wider separation of lines gave the elegant effect of refined handwriting.

    Surviving examples of 16th-century Italian books indicate the bulk of them were printed with italic types. By mid-century the popularity of italic types for sustained text setting began to decline until they were used only for in-line citations, block quotes, preliminary text, emphasis, and abbreviations. Italic types from the 20th century up to the present are much indebted to Arrighi and his influence on French designers.

    Swiss art historian Jakob Burckhardt described the classically inspired Renaissance modello of dual case roman and cursive italic types as “The model and ideal for the whole western world”. Venetian pre-eminence in type design was brought to an end by the political and economic turmoil that concluded the Renaissance in Italy with the sack of Rome in 1527.

    Renaissance Germany and Switzerland

    Soon after 1500, roman typefaces began to gain popularity north of the Alps for printing of Latin literature. Johann Froben of Basel, Switzerland set up his press in 1491, and by about 1519 (when he printed Erasmus’s famous edition of the Greek New Testament) he had established a set of standards for humanistic printing which were widely copied throughout the German-speaking world and also in Spain and, to a lesser extent in England. His principal type is wholly roman in the shape of the characters but retains an echo of gothic influence in the angled serifs and the way the thick and thin strokes are organized; it was coupled with mated sets of woodcut initials (often designed by distinguished artists) and with two larger sizes of uppercase letters for use in title pages and headings—Froben was the first to use such ‘display faces’ consistently, breaking away from the Italian tradition in which title pages and headings tended to be set in the same size as the main text. By using these large faces, Froben developed the title page as a fully organized artistic whole. Froben’s italic face is based on that of Aldus but more even and uniform in effect. These Swiss books are the first to have been designed in every detail as printed artifacts rather than as adaptations of manuscript technique.

    After about 1550 this Swiss/German tradition was gradually overwhelmed by French influence. Towards the end of the 16th century, the Wechel family of Frankfurt was producing fine books which used French typefaces in conjunction with heavy but resplendent woodcut ornaments to achieve a splendid page effect; but soon after 1600 there was a general, marked decline in the quality of both skill and materials, from which German printing did not recover until the 20th century.

    16th century France

    Typography was introduced to France by the German printers Martin Crantz, Michael Freyburger and Ulrich Gering, who set up a press in Paris in 1470, where they printed with an inferior copy of the Lactantius type. Gothic types dominated in France until the end of the 15th century, when they were gradually supplanted by roman designs. Jodocus Badius Ascensius (Josse Bade) in partnership with Henri Estienne established a press in Paris in 1503. Printing with undeveloped Roman and half-Gothic types, the French pair were too occupied meeting the demand for Humanistic and classical texts to design any original types of their own. French books nonetheless began to follow the format established by Italian printers, and Lyon and Paris became the new centres of activity.

    De Colines, Estienne, and Augereau

    After their 1494 invasion of Italy the French were greatly influenced by Renaissance culture, and later set about converting French culture from Gothic to neo-classical. The required phonetic and orthographic changes to French language hindered the evolution of type design in France until the late 1520s. At the end of this period roman types introduced by Robert Estienne, Simon de Colines and Antoine Augereau began a phase of type design with a distinctly French character. Robert Estienne carried on the establishment of his father Henri Estienne, who had died in 1520. Simon de Colines had been the elder Estienne’s assistant, married his widow, and set up his own press.

    The de Colines roman of 1531 resembled Griffo’s 1499 roman but did not copy it closely. Narrower forms and tighter letter fit; a with low angled bowl; elevated triangular stem serifs on i, j, m, n and r; flattened baseline serifs, delicately modeled ascender serifs and graceful, fluid lines characterize the French style. Robert Estienne’s roman of 1532 was similar to the de Colines face, which Estienne complemented with a fine italic type based on that of Arrighi. The craftsmen who cut the punches for the romans used by Estienne and de Colines remain unidentified. In 1532 Antoine Augereau cut the punches for a roman type very close to Estienne’s. The lower cases of the Estienne and Augereau types became the basis for post-Renaissance old style typography, and were copied by French typographers for the next 150 years.

    Garamond

    Garamond type revival by Robert Slimbach.

    Claude Garamond, during the Renaissance period, was partially responsible for the adoption of Roman typeface in France. The svelte French style reached its fullest refinement in the roman types attributed to the best-known figure of French typography—Claude Garamond (also Garamont). In 1541 Robert Estienne, printer to the king, helped Garamond obtain commissions to cut the sequence of Greek fonts for King Francis I of France, known as the “grecs du roi“. A number of roman faces used in Garamond’s publishing activities can be positively attributed to him as punch-cutter. From the dates of their appearance, and their similarity to romans used by Estienne, Christoffel Plantijn and the printer André Wechel, the types known as “Canon de Garamond” and “Petit Canon de Garamond” shown on a specimen sheet issued by the Egenolff-Berner foundry in 1592 are generally accepted as Claude Garamond’s final roman types.

    Robert Granjon

    Evangelium Sanctum Domini Nostri Jesu Christi in Arabic, 1590, with Arabic types of Robert Grandjon, Typographia Medicea, Rome.

    Robert Granjon worked in the second half of the 16th century, mainly at Lyon, but was also recorded at Paris, Rome and Antwerp. He is still famous because of his Civilité types, imitating French gothic cursive calligraphy. His main contribution was an italic type known as “Parangon de Granjon”. Italic type design had apparently become corrupted since the Arrighi and Aldine models. Granjon’s italic had a greater slant angle, slanted roman capitals, and reduced weight and rigor. These qualities and its contrasting thick and thin strokes gave it a dazzling appearance that made it difficult to read. It was nevertheless the main influence for italic type design until the Arrighi model was revived in 1920.

    In the 16th century, Western printers also developed Oriental types, such as François Savary de Brèves or Robert Granjon, usually with the objective of proselytizing the Catholic faith.[2]

    Transitional  type: 17th and 18th century

    Baroque and rococo aesthetic trends, use of the pointed-pen for writing, and steel engraving techniques effected a gradual shift in typographic style. Contrast between thick and thin strokes increased. Tilted stressing transformed into vertical stressing; full rounds were compressed. Blunt bracketed serifs grew sharp and delicate until they were fine straight lines. Detail became clean and precise.

    Transitional roman types combined the classical features of lettera antiqua with the vertical stressing and higher contrast between thick and thin strokes characteristic of the true modern romans to come.

    The roman types used c. 1618 by the Dutch printing firm of Elzevir in Leyden reiterated the 16th-century French style with higher contrast, less rigor and a lighter page effect. After 1647 most Elziver faces were cut by the highly regarded Christoffel van Dyck, whose precise renditions were regarded by some experts at the time as finer than Garamond’s.

    From mid-16th century until the end of the 17th, interference with printing by the British Crown thwarted the development of type founding in England—most type used by 17th-century English printers was of Dutch origin. The lack of material inspired Bishop of Oxford Doctor John Fell to purchase punches & matrices from Holland c. 1670–1672 for use by the Oxford University Press. The so-named Fell types, presumed to be the work of Dutch punchcutter Dirck Voskens, mark a noticeable jump from previous designs, with considerably shorter extenders, higher stroke contrast, narrowing of round letters, and flattened serifs on the baseline and descenders. The design retained a retrogressive old-style irregularity, smooth modeling from vertical to horizontal, and angled stressing of rounds (except a vertically stressed o). Fell capitals were condensed, even-width, with wide flattened serifs; all characteristics of the definitive modern romans of the late 18th century. Fell italic types were distinguished by high contrast matching the Fell romans; wider ovals; a split-branching stroke from the stems of m n r and u; and long, flat serifs—prefiguring modern. They repeated the non-uniform slant of French models, and the capitals included swash J and Q forms.

    An open-source digitisation of the Fell Types has been released by designer and engineer Igino Marini.

    Caslon

    Caslon English roman, from a sample issued by the Caslon foundry.

    The first major figure in English typography is reckoned by type historians to have ended the monopoly of Dutch type founding almost single-handedly. The gun engraver-turned-punchcutter William Caslon spent 14 years creating the stable of typefaces on the specimen sheet issued in 1734. The complete canon included roman, italic, Greek, Hebrew, Arabic etc. Caslon’s Great Primer roman and English roman were retrogressive designs that very closely followed the Fell types and the roman of Miklós (Nicholas) Kis c. 1685 falsely attributed to Anton Janson. Like the Fells, Caslon’s slightly bracketed serifs and old-style irregularity gave it a homely charm—its precise cut and perpendicularity place it firmly in the 18th century however. Caslon’s italic structures follow the Fell italics, but at a condensed width and with conventional branching from stems.

    William Caslon’s prodigious output was influential worldwide. Caslon type and its imitations were used throughout the expanding British empire. It was the dominant type in the American colonies for the second half of the 18th century. Caslon marks the rise of England as the center of typographic activity.

    Fleischmann

    Johann Michael Fleischmann (1701–1768) was born in Nürnberg where he trained as a punchcutter. He found employment with Dutch type founders in Holland and settled there c. 1728. At the Enschedé foundry in Haarlem he cut punches for a large amount of material. Some time after 1743 he produced a distinguished roman design—related to the preceding transitional types but departing from them. It prefigured modern romans with sparse transaxial modeling joining the vertical stressing to hairline thins, and ball-ends. Fleischmann borrowed from the general mode of Phillipe Grandjean’s and Louis Simonneau’s “Romain du Roi,” commissioned by Louis XIV in 1692 for the Imprimerie Royale, but did not imitate that face. Fleischmann’s capitals were a new variety; an even-width scheme, compressed rounds, all-vertical stressing, and triangular beak ends of E F L T and Z, all characteristics prefiguring the “classical” moderns of Bodoni and Didot. Fleischmann’s italic bore some resemblance to Granjean’s but had longer ascenders and followed the established Dutch structures for h v and w.

    Fleischmann was held in great esteem by his contemporaries, his designs exerting a decisive influence in the last quarter of the 18th century. Renowned French punchcutter Pierre Simon Fournier (1712–1768), confessed to having copied Fleischmann’s design, and was first to dub “contrast” types like the Fells, Caslon and Fleischmann “modern”. Fournier’s rococo-influenced designs—Fournier and Narcissus—and his Modèles des Caractères (1742) continued the romaine du roi style and adapted it for his own modern age. Like Baskerville, his italics were inspired by handwriting and the engraved lettering known as copperplate hand. Fournier also published a two volume Manuel Typographique, in which he recorded much European typographic history, and introduced the first standardized system of type size measurement—the “point”.

    Baskerville

    The roman and italic types of John Baskerville c. 1772 appeared later than Fleischman’s but are considered transitional and partly retrogressive with a return to lower contrast, smooth transaxial modeling, finely modeled bracketed serifs, and long stems. The exquisite design and finish of Baskerville’s roman however, combining elegance and strength, was modern. His roman design, and especially his italic, were rococo-influenced. His designs did not visibly quote any previous types. They were informed by his prior experience as a writing master and the influences of his time. The types of Joseph Fry, Alexander Wilson, and John Bell closely followed Baskerville, and through his correspondence with European type founders Baskerville’s influence penetrated most of western Europe. Baskerville was a meticulous artist who controlled all aspects of his creation, devising more accurate presses, blacker inks and paper sealed with hot rollers to ensure crisp impressions. Of particular note, the lower storey of his lowercase g does not fully close. Derivatives of Baskerville are often identified thus. A modern revival of Baskerville, a font called Mrs Eaves, is named after Baskerville’s wife who was the widow of Richard Eaves.

    Modern romans

    Didot type Revival designed in 1991 by Adrian Frutiger for Linotype foundry.

    True modern romans arrived with the types of the Italian Giambattista Bodoni and the French Didots. Completing trends begun by the Fell types, Fleischman, Fournier and Baskerville, the so-called “classical” modern romans eschewed chirographic and organic influences, their synthetic symmetric geometry answering to a rationalized and reformed classical model driven by the strict cartesian grid philosophy of René Descartes and the predictable clockwork universe of Isaac Newton.

    The “classical” appellation of modern romans stems from their return to long ascenders and descenders set on widely spaced lines, and a corresponding light page effect reminiscent of old-style—occurring at a time of classical revival.

    Bodoni was foremost in progressing from rococo to the new classical style. He produced an italic very close to Baskerville’s, and a French cursive script type falling in between italic type and joined scripts. The roman types of Francois Ambroise Didot and son Firmin Didot closely resemble the work of Bodoni, and opinion is divided over whether the Didots or Bodoni originated the first modern romans. At any rate the Didots’ mathematical precision and vanishing of rococo design reflected the “enlightenment” of post-revolution France under Napoleon. Francois Ambroise also designed “maigre” and “gras” types corresponding to later condensed and expanded font formats.

    The Spanish designer Joaquín Ibarra‘s roman was influenced by Baskerville, Didot and Bodoni, but hewn nearer to old-style and used in the same classical manner, including spaced capitals. In England modern romans resembling Bodoni’s were cut for the printer William Bulmer c. 1786 by the punchcutter William Martin, who had been apprenticed to Baskerville and influenced by him. Martin’s italic mirrored the open-tail g and overall finesse of Baskerville’s.

    In Britain and the United States, modern romans (emerging around 1800 and totally dominant by the 1820s) took a somewhat more rounded, less geometrical form than the designs of Didot and Bodoni; an obvious difference is that in Anglo-American faces the upper-case C has only one serif (at the top) whereas in European designs it has two.

    19th and 20th century typography

    Slab serifs

    The 19th century brought fewer stylistic innovations. The most notable invention was the rise of typefaces with strengthened serifs. Forerunners were the so-called Egyptienne fonts, which were used already at the beginning of the 19th century. Their name likely comes from the enthusiasm of the Napoleonic era for the orient, which in turn was started by Napoleon’s invasion in Egypt. In fact slab-serif fonts (e. g. Clarendon from 1845) were newspaper fonts, whose serifs were strengthened in order to prevent damage during the printing process. Stylistically the serif fonts of the mid-19th century appeared very robust and otherwise had more or less neo-classical design features, which changed during the course of time: By the application of the slab serif design feature and by appending serifs to more and more typefaces, an independent intermediate group of heterogeneous fonts emerged during the 20th century. Meanwhile the slab serifs are listed as an independent group in most typeface classifications–besides both main groups serif and sans serif.

    Slab-serif and sanserif types were rarely used for continuous bodies of text; their realm was that of advertisements, title-pages and other attention-catching pieces of print. By about 1820, most western countries were using modern romans and italics for continuous texts. This remained true until the 1860s, when so-called ‘old style’ faces – a largely English-speaking phenomenon – came into use. These went to the opposite extreme from the modern faces; ‘thick’ strokes were attenuated, and serifs at the end of thin strokes (as in C, E, L and T) were narrow and angled whereas in modern faces they were broad and vertical or nearly so. All the upper-case characters were somewhat ‘condensed’ (narrowed). Old style faces remained popular until about 1910.

    Art nouveau and New Book Art

    Since impressionism the modern art styles were reflected in graphic design and typography too. Since 1890 the Art nouveau became popular. Its floral ornaments, the curved forms, as well as the emphasis on graphical realisation inspired the type designers of the start of the 20th century. A popular art nouveau font was the Eckmann designed by graphic artist Otto Eckmann. Furthermore, the influence of art nouveau was expressed in a lot of book illustrations and exlibris designs.

    Altogether the return to the roots of book art become stronger around the start of the 20th century. It was initiated by British typographer, socialist, and private press publisher William Morris as well as by the Arts and Crafts Movement, which refers to him. Essentially this movement initiated three things: a return to the antiqua-models of the Renaissance, clarity and simplicity of book illustrations, and straightforward technical processes during the production of printed matters. An immediate consequence of the Arts and Crafts Movement was the establishment of the private press movement, which more or less was committed to Morris’ ideals, and whose remains partially are still present today. An established meeting point of these scene in Germany for example is the Mainzer Minipressen-Messe, which actually is held every two years.

    Especially the New Book Art movement, which formed in the decade before World War I, was influenced by the Arts and Crafts Movement. The young type designers of the pre-war era, among them Fritz Helmuth Ehmcke and Friedrich Wilhelm Kleukens, rejected both the late typographical classicism and the ornaments of the popular Art nouveau. The new ideal became a tidy and straightforward book typography, which dedicated itself to the ideas of the Renaissance. Walter Tiemann in Leipzig, Friedrich Hermann Ernst Schneidler in Stuttgart, and Rudolf Koch in Offenbach as instructors were the mentors of this kind of typography. They stayed influential in the field of book typesetting until a long time after the end of World War II

    • A result of the industrialisation process was the unimagined number and distribution of new typefaces. Whether digital variants of Garamond and Bodoni or new contemporary type designs like Futura, Times, and Helvetica: nearly all currently used typefaces have their origin either in the following and ongoing digital typesetting era or are based on designs of this epoch. The basis was the appearance of large type foundries and type manufacturers. The result: Successful typefaces could quickly gain the status of a trademark–and therefore were able to assign a unique “branding” to products or publications.
    • Besides the traditional typography of books graphic design became a more or less independent branch. The tensions between those two branches significantly determined the stylistic development of 20th century’s typography.

    Digital typography

    By the twentieth century, computers turned type design into a rather simplified process. This has allowed the number of type styles to proliferate exponentially, as there are now thousands of fonts available.

    Experimental typography

    Experimental typography is defined as the unconventional and more artistic approach to setting type. Experimental typography places emphasis on communicating emotion, rather than on legibility.

    Francis Picabia was a Dada pioneer in the early 20th Century.

    David Carson is often associated with this movement, particularly for his work in Ray Gun magazine in the 1990s. His work caused an uproar in the design community due to his abandonment of standards in typesetting practices, layout, and design.

  • Experimental Typography

    Experimental Typography

    The medium is the message: Marshall McLuhan

    Do not mistake legibility for communication:

    David Carson

    The Medium is the Message

    Mapping Meaning and Defining Spaces

    Typo-anarchy and the DIY of Design

    Visual Poetry

    Small Screen (Bigger Picture)

    Notes from Teal Triggs The Typographic Experiment: Radical Innovation in Contemporary Type Design

    Experimental means ‘a valid means of rational investigation, of taking risks and viewing those risks as crucial to the development of the overall design process’ p007

    • Identified usually with avant-garde – rejecting existing traditions or canons of style but it may also take forward ideas and develop original positions. But avant-garde moves quickly to mainstream in the search for the next ‘new thing’.
    • Communication with the audience is also constantly renegotiated as they become quickly accustomed to ‘the new’.
    • Expressive – the way language is articulated through the use and arrangement of type to enhance communication. Distinct from emotive or illustrative treatment of letterforms which often eclipses the clear presentation of the message.

    Development

    Concrete Poetry

    Concrete, pattern, or shape poetry is an arrangement of linguistic elements in which the typographical effect is more important in conveying meaning than verbal significance. As such, concrete poetry relates more to the visual than to the verbal arts and there is a considerable overlap in the kind of product to which it refers.
    It is difficult to define:”a printed concrete poem is ambiguously both typographic-poetry and poetic-typography” (Houédard). Works cross artistic boundaries into the areas of music and sculpture, or can alternatively be defined as sound poetry, visual poetry, found poetry and typewriter art.

    Despite blurring of artistic boundaries, however, concrete poetry can be viewed as taking its place in a predominantly visual tradition stretching over more than two millennia that seeks to draw attention to the word in the space of the page, and to the spaces between words, as an aid to emphasising their significance.

    Source: edited from Wikipedia. References to be followed up and expanded as part of my exploration of experimental typography.
    Google images
    You Tube

    History

    Greece

    Shaped poetry was popular in Greek Alexandria during the 3rd and 2nd centuries BCE.
    Simmias of Rhodes poems in the shape of an egg, wings and a hatchet
     Theocritus’ pan-pipes.

    15th and 16th Century church

    Gerechtigkeitsspirale (spiral of justice), a relief carving by Erhart Falckener of a poem at the pilgrimage church of St. Valentin in the German town of Hesse. The text is carved in the form of a spiral on the front of one of the church pews.  
    George Herbert‘s “Easter Wings” (1633), printed sideways on facing pages so that the lines would call to mind angels flying with outstretched wings
    Early religious examples of shaped poems in English include “Easter Wings” and “The Altar” in George Herbert’s The Temple (1633)
    Robert Herrick’s “This cross tree here” (in the shape of a cross) from his Noble Numbers (1647).
    Aldus Manutius pattern poems

    Jewish and Islamic calligraphy

    creation of images of natural objects without directly breaking the prohibition of creating “graven images” that might be interpreted as idolatry.
    Micrography: Hebrew-speaking artists created pictures using tiny arrangements of Biblical texts organized usually on paper in images which illustrate the text used.
    Islamic calligraphy.

    19th and 20th century

    France

    ‘poems’  simplified to a simple arrangement of the letters of the alphabet.

    • Louis Aragon, for example, exhibited the sequence from a to z and titled it “Suicide” (1926)
    • Kurt Schwitters’ “ZA (elementary)” has the alphabet in reverse
    • Catalan writer Josep Maria Junoy (1885-1955) placed just the letters Z and A at the top and bottom of the page under the title “Ars Poetica”
    • Dutch typographer H.N. Werkman in 1920s progressed to using the typewriter to create abstract patterns (which he called tiksels), using not just letters but also purely linear elements.
    • ‘typestracts’ of the concrete poet Dom Sylvester Houédard during the 1960s.

    Post-war concrete poetry

    Brazil

    During the early 1950s two Brazilian artistic groups producing severely abstract and impersonal work were joined by poets linked to the São Paolo magazine Noigrandes who began to treat language in an equally abstract way. Their work was termed “concrete poetry” after they exhibited along with the artists in the National Exhibition of Concrete Art (1956/57). The poets included Augusto de Campos, Haroldo de Campos and Décio Pignatari, who were joined in the exhibition by Ferreira Gullar, Ronaldo Azeredo and Wlademir Dias Pino from Rio de Janeiro. In 1958 a Brazilian concrete poetry manifesto was published and an anthology in 1962.

    Europe

    Houedard: inspired by 1962 publication in The Times Literary Supplement of a letter from the Brazilian E.M. de Melo e Castro. His work was  produced principally on the typewriter but approximates more to painterly and sculptural procedures.
    Ian Hamilton Finlay :Ian Hamilton Finlay’s concrete poetry began on the page but then moved increasingly towards three dimensional figuration and afterwards to site-specific art in the creation of his sculpture garden at Little Sparta.

    Ian Hamilton Finlay sculpture in Stuttgart, 1975; the word schiff (ship) is carved in reverse and can only be decoded when it floats reflected on water (Wikipedia)

    Edwin Morgan Edwin Morgan’s experiments with concrete poetry include elements of found poetry ‘discovered’ by misreading and isolating elements from printed sources. “Most people have probably had the experience of scanning a newspaper page quickly and taking a message from it quite different from the intended one. I began looking deliberately for such hidden messages…preferably with the visual or typographical element part of the point.”

    Eugen Gomringer considered that a poem should be “a reality in itself” rather than a statement about reality, and “as easily understood as signs in airports and traffic signs”.

    Henri Chopin’s work was related to his musical treatment of the word.

    Kenelm Cox (1927-68) was a kinetic artist “interested in the linear, serial aspects of visual experience but particularly in the process of change,” whose revolving machines transcended the static page in being able to express this.

    Bob Cobbing, who was also a sound poet, had been experimenting with typewriter and duplicator since 1942. Of its possibilities in suggesting the physical dimension of the auditory process, he declared that “One can get the measure of a poem with the typewriter’s accurate left/right & up & down movements; but superimposition by means of stencil and duplicator enable one to dance to this measure.”

    American Minimalist artist Carl André, beginning from about 1958 and in parallel with his changing artistic procedures.
    Tom Phillips  visual artist, who uses painterly and decorative procedures to isolate them on the page. In A Humument he explores unintended concordances of meaning.