TYPOGRAPHY The art of designing Words
The word “typography” is derived from a Greek word and it means “form”, “impression” and “to write”. Typography with movable type was invented during the eleventh century in China by Bi Sheng (990/1051) Wang Zhen was one of the pioneers of wooden movable type. Although the wooden type was more durable. Then, the bronze type was created. And finally, around 1490 the Printing Revolution and the first book printed with lead based movable type was the Gutenberg Bible. Rapidly advancing technology revolutionized typography in the latter twentieth century. During the 1960s some camera-ready type setting could be produced in any office or workshop with stand alone machines. During the mid 1980s personal computers such as the Macintosh allowed type designers to create typefaces digitally using commercial graphic design software. Digital technology also enabled designers to create more experimental typefaces as well as the practical typefaces of traditional typography. The change has been called the “democratization of type” and has given new designers more opportunities to enter the field.
Typography is an art and technique of arranging type to make written language legible, readable and appealing when displayed. The arrangement of type involves selecting typefaces, point sizes, line lengths, line-spacing (leading), and letter-spacing (tracking), and adjusting the space between pairs of letters (kerning).
The term typography is also applied to the style, arrangement, and appearance of the letters, numbers, and symbols created by the process. Type design is a closely related craft, sometimes considered part of typography; most typographers do not design typefaces, and some type designers do not consider themselves typographers. Typography also may be used as a decorative device, unrelated to communication of information.
Different style of typefaces Roman typefaces : - Serif typefaces : old style, transitional, modern -Sans serif typefaces : often detract from readability at the low resolution of displays Blackletter typefaces (gothic script) Gaelic typefaces (Various forms exist, including manuscript, traditional, and modern styles, chiefly distinguished as having angular or uncial features) Monospaced typefaces (particularly legible at small sizes due to all characters being quite wide) CJK typefaces ( mincho, gothic or Garu)
Some exemple of different font type and their names:
Typefaces are all around us. It’s an art to express yourself, an emotion without the power of words. It can be italic, bold ect... with different sizes, different caracters, different weights, fonts... For example, in an advertising or an article it will be used to attract customer’s eyes. If the text have your attention, it will push you to read it and then to buy it. It’s really important in this industry. In an article, you have some words or sentences in bold because it’s the main part, the subject of the text. If you have a message the spread and you want to put some emotion into it, you can use different fonts. A text written with big capitals, in bold with a dark font will spread a strong and important message. A text with an elegant font will be more a happy news or event. Typography have a big impact on your attention, it will be the first thing that attract your eyes.
It’s all around us, on your pack of buiscuit, on the sign on the roads, in shops, in books, magazines, even clothes.... Typography have a massive impact on your life too, when it’s done poorly it can result in death. Companies can exploit a person’s instinctual negative feelings towards bad typography to hide unwanted messages in plain sight. It cites the case of a cigarette billboard which disguised the health warning by making the type upper-case, underlined, compact and surrounded by a thick, black box; so generally, they made the health warning hard and unpleasant to read, under the guise of calling it out and making it more prominent.
You can feel an emotion because of the different ways it’s written. FAT in bold look rude and aggressive but the other one look absolutely normal. Distressed out is in big capitals and a different font so it’s the first one that you will see on the picture.
TYPOGRAPHY IS A POWERFULL ART