KELZA BELLENORE
KELZA BELLENORE Kelsey Bell
I love Great Dane’s, a Jeep Wrangler is my dream car, and St. Louis is my hometown as well as my favorite city on earth. I consume what has to be an unhealthy amount of coffee on a daily basis, but it fuels my ability to have what it takes to be a design student at Ohio University. Franklin gothic is my favorite typeface and Fall Out Boy is my go-to band for design inspiration. No shame.
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evolving leTTeRFoRMs
a history of type
Phoenician influence on the modern alphabet. Symbol Systems before written language
The evolution of written language begins with symbol systems, such as cave paintings. This form of communication was beautiful, but it was nearly impossible to record complex or abstract ideas using cave paintings. When symbol systems were in place, these complex ideas were kept within the head of a ‘memory master’ rather than being recorded for others to interpret.
Writing Systems tHe birtH of written language Ideas needed to be recorded in an accurate and consistent way, this meant coming up with a repetition of agreed simple shapes. This first began to happen in places such as the Middle East, Africa, and China. Pictograms made up the majority of early alphabets, these included Egyptian hieroglyphics.
A pictogram of an ox’s head...
...turned on its side by the Phoenicians...
...rotated by the Greeks...
...and turned upright by the Romans, to form the modern ‘A’.
Phoenician Alphabet tHe baSiS of MoDern letterforMS
Qoph, the monkey, was a sound similar to k but further back in the mouth.
Ψ
Psi (Ψ) appears to have been based on Poseidon’s trident.
in roughly 1500 BCE Ancient Phoenicians living in what is now the Sinai desert. developed a phonetically based alphabet consisting of 22 characters. Nearly all modern alphabets are descended from this alphabet. They used simplified pictures and often rotated them to represent consonant sounds. When the letters are examined closely, one can still make out where most of the 22 letters came from. If you turn the A with the point down, for example, you can see a representation of an ox head.
Greek Alphabet before written language
In the Phoenician alphabet, all the letters were for consonants. This wasn’t a problem for Semitic languages like Phoenician, Hebrew, Arabic, and Egyptian. Greek (along with many other languages) desperately needed vowels to be represented as well. In order to do this they took consonants they didn’t need, and turned them into vowels. Next they added a few symbols of their own to represent extra sounds they needed. Three unused letters were retained in the Greek numbering system. The Phoenicians, like the Hebrews and Arabs today, wrote from right to left. The Greeks also did this originally. Eventually they changed to a system where every line changed direction, and then they adopted the present system of left to right. This has passed down to all the modern European alphabets.
Å Accents are used for many reasons indicating where the stress should fall in a word.
Latin Alphabet tHe introDuCtion of lowerCaSe
The latin alphabet is derived from the Greek alphabet, but the Etruscan version also influenced its creation. As time passed, the need for various changes came about. By varying older ones, extra letters were invented. Greek letters such as K and Y had been dropped off the alphabet but were then reintroduced in later version of the Latin. In the middle ages lowercase letters were invented, and they were usually based on more cursive versions of the capital letters.
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