Lecture 8 - History of Type

• Type can drastically alter the tone of voice a message is being communicated in.
• Gill Sans - it is a classic English sans serif typeface, used for railways and signage all over the country, the message being communicated would be totally different if a serif typeface was used.

• The presentation of a message is just as important as the content
• Typography is the intersection between verbal and visual communication
• Type is a visual tool that adds verbal and visual communication
• Type consists of 3 main areas
• Meta communication -  the visual message a typeface gives off , it is different with each typeface and alter the language and meaning of the message being communicated.
• Paralinguistic - is a language that structures a language which creates speed and pace
• Kinesics - Gestures that are employed with words, resulting in emphasis or change to the message being communicated - for example, having type in capitals often symbolise someone shouting.

• Typefaces were first produced with the invention of the gutenberg press in 1450
• this was the first form of movable type which could be printed on a mass scale
• Before this the only form of written communication were hand written books or scripts
• Before this time was known as the Dark ages - no one was educated some more often than not it was only monks that could read and write.
• typography saved the world from the dark ages

•  The alphabet originated from Roman culture - they are still present in the capital letters that we use today.
• Gothic script was the first typeface produced for the Gutenberg press - modeled on medieval  type but hard to read.
• Black letter was then created specifically for print but was quickly superseded by humanist typeface.
• Humanist typeface was created to reflect human handwriting
• Nicholas Jenson Created the typeface 'Jenson', it was much more modern than any other typeface created at that time as well as being much easier to read.
• Jenson was still based on human handwriting but was trying to modernise the typefaces of the time.
• 50 years after then type became a career and practice of its own
• 'Old style' was the first full font family to be created
• alterations in spacing allowed the type to become more readable once printed
• From this point typeface began to be designed around rules and regulations- these was known as traditional fonts
• Traditional fonts focused more on readability rather than styalised like human handwriting
• In these typefaces, the stoke contrast became more exaggerated, however this was not seen as a positive and received negatively by many people.

• Through the movement of modernity, typefaces became more accurately created these modern typefaces were known as Didones
• Bondoni is one of the most famous of these modern fonts
• Didones represent - elegance, style, and glamour

•  Slab serif typefaces also known as Egyptian typefaces were created around the time of industrialisation, they were designed to stand out of the business of urban lifestyle
• Slab serif fonts were not sophisticated or elegant at all.
• around the early 19th Century 'Fat Face' type was invented to use for print.

• Sans Serif fonts were created around the end of the 19th Century, 
• Even though sans serif would become extremely popular later on, at the time the first sans serif typeface as created, it was not seen as a good development of type
• The first Sans serif typeface was called Akzidenz Grotesk and was created by the Berthold Type Foundry in 1896
• They are typical modernist typefaces, with minimal decoration and focus purely on communication  
• Gill Sans was English typographers answer to the sans serif typeface, created in 1926
• At this point modernism was taking over so more and more modernist typefaces were being produced
• However traditional typefaces were still ebing designed - for example, Times roman was created in1932 by Stanley Morris
• In the second world war Nazis were also looking back to more traditional typefaces, they were mostly inspired by black letter typefaces

• Helvetica is undoubtedly today the worlds most famous font, it was created in 1957 by max Miedinger, it is the most commonly used typeface all over the world and can be recognised everywhere.