Evolution of Typography

O n io

the

t y u l h p o a v r g e ypo of

t

en we t e b

ur y

0th

9th

1 the

2 and

t cen

‘‘ ‘‘

Since the time of Gutenberg, the typographic form has evolved with technology, philosophy, and culture. In order to effectively analyze this typographic evolution, the design of type characters over the last five and a half centuries is most often broken down into classifications.

OL DS

rcte ara n h c are wee rifs st bet e s a re r le Sty r cont and a ore d l , m O es ate The by gre k strok ce, and in be e c r s n i a d a th ar erif ise ifs and ppe al ser style s a n i th r in sition Old l’ ’. n rpe sha d. Tra rn and sitiona in and e h n ne refi n Mod e ‘ ‘tra een t nced w u e m t twe the na es be prono ut less c b n e s thu differe e mor style, nts. , r d l a e ess O s if fo Th line are in rn ser ical str k c t i al th ey Mode a ver inim in n th tha atic in fs have ith m er y th w v m ri s a e f e i r . s b r d vy n e se der d to r y hea Mo and fin ifs ten e v r re g lon ets. Se lines a k l c a a tic br ver and

TY LE

Ser

SE

RI

F, T

RA

NS

ON

ifs

ITI

AL

SE

RI

ni odo d B on sta atti aram ille b v m G Gia laude asker B C n Joh

dur

ER NS ER

Th

OD

18

e ey pl C th e k

F, M

ys r u nt ayer

in

is h t g

e

i per

o

er w d

IF

Typography in

France The 18th century was an epoch of typographic originality. It was a time that was to sow the seeds of revolution in France, North America and beyond. But today we stand in the cobbled streets of 17th century France; Louis XIV is on the throne and Jacques Jaugeon is working on what is now considered to be the first Transitional (or Neoclassical) style typeface, the Romain du Roi or King’s Roman, commissioned by Louis XIV for the Imprimerie Royale in 1692.

The principal graphic novelty in the ‘Romain du Roi’ is the serif.

Its horizontal and unbracketed structure symbolizes a complete break with the humanist calligraphic tradition. Also, the main strokes are thicker and the substrokes thinner….

‘‘

‘‘

The Romain du Roi marked a significant departure from the former Old Style types and was much less influenced by handwritten letterforms. The designs also known as the Paris Scientific Type were engraved on copper by Louis Simmoneau, and then handed to the punchcutter Grandjean who began cutting the type in 1698. Interestingly, Jaugeon also designed a complimentary sloping roman (often referred to today as an oblique) as an alternative to a true italic. However, Grandjean himself was to produce the italic from his own designs.

German & Italian Movable type technology was invented in Europe around 1440

by Johannes Gutenberg (13981468), a goldsmith from Mainz (Germany). It was Gutenberg’s knowledge of metal which allowed him to perfect his invention, to print one of the earliest known books in the western world and the very first with the use of movable type. With this new technology he printed approximately 200 copies of a two volume Bible consisting of almost 1300 pages. Forty-eight copies still exist today, although only twenty-one of them are completely intact.

typography

Moveable type allowed for the casting of individual letters which could be assembled into words, to make up a printed page. After printing, the letters could then be re-assembled into different words and used again in the printing press. The model that he used for the design of his type came from the handwritten books that existed at that time.The original letters were drawn by scribes who used a wide, flat, almost brush-like pen.

Gutenberg and his collegues copied these letters so precisely that their printed page looked almost exactly like the originals. The letters consisted of strong dense verticals with almost no curves, although variations in stroke width appeared throughout reflecting the calligraphic techniques of the times.Today we call this style of type “black letter” or “gothic.” It was popular and in regular use in Germany until the mid-1940s.

‘‘ Bodoni’s precise, meausurable, and repeated forms expressed the vision and spirit of the machine age.

‘‘

The term modern which defines a new category of roman type, was first used by Fournier le Jeune in his Manuel typographique to describe the design trends that culminated in Bodoni’s mature work. The initial impetus was the thin, straight serifs of Grandjeans Romain du Roi, followed by engraved pages by artists. Next came the letterforms and page layouts of Baskerville, particularly his practice of making the light strokes of his characters thinner to increase the contrast between thick and thins.

The design of narrower, more condensed letterforms, gave type a taller and more geometric appearance. All of these evolutionary trends were encouraged by a growing preference for a lighter typographic tone and texture. In 1970 Bodoni redesigned the roman letterforms to give them more mathematical, geometric, and mechanical appearance.

He reinvented the serifs by making them hairlines that formed sharp right angles with the upright strokes, eliminating the tapered flow of the serif into the upright stroke in Old Style roman.

The thin strokes of his letterforms were trimmed to the same weight as the hairline serifs, creating a brilliant sharpness and a dazzling contrast not seen before. Bodoni decided that letters in a type font should be created through combinations of a very limited number of identical units.

, phy s. gra tool po -ty and rid es hyb hniqu m ter tec ht hic mig rap we typog at wh any m of rld use wo ely in a utin live e ro We ere w wh

tem of n o c uite tility s nd s a new and u m r a h o f is ngt e red xt no le Te gs str o c h i n i me ron br f ti s, Ch that o s e i id e ybr teg fac s h stra text u ro e gn igo esi anc A v rar y d form serif. po h-per lassic hig the c to

y h p a r

d i g r ‘ o ‘ b p y y t h

be ill br w y we f h at ve re o s th he e i e o c t el I b ing m pefa rald sign e e y e t h d lve se ed s uld h it n de ace z i o d t a i w wi th t f se re her st. A the es u f t fu rat e pa y o rfac ell n yp w h a t t m o ge ith int lue, brid rid s w e, b y a re tiv h dy v a ultu tinc ition e r c al wn ins tu nto o ear al in d o his n k a n tur ave n t al ul g r le i ob p c is en eop y gl age. o p t da vill a yp th an ern m od m

‘‘

computer typefaces A computer typeface is an electronic data file containing a set of glyphs, characters, or symbols such as dingbats. Although the term font first referred to a set of metal type sorts in one style and size, since the 1990s it is generally used to refer to Adobe led the way in developing fonts for personal computers, a scalable set of digital shapes but Adobe got too greedy. Adobe owned the PostScript language that may be printed at many and therefore controlled the way that computers talked to most different size. laserprinters.Adobe invented Postscript which used mathematical calculations to describe typefaces instead of relying on pixel by pixel definitions of fonts.The original Laserwriter was developed

by Adobe in 1985 and came with 13 fonts. It was developed in close association with Apple, and was in fact an Apple branded product, because the first Laserprinter worked only on Macintoshes.

The Macintosh was the first commercially produced computer to showcase the concept of the Graphical User Interface (GUI). It also helped develop the concept of WYSIWYG (What You See is What You Get) printing. What you saw on the screen was similar to what you saw when you printed. The concept was developed at the Xerox Parc research center.

Technology of Linotype The plain message physical science has for the world at large is this, that were our political and social and moral devices only as well contrived to their ends as a linotype machine, an antiseptic operating plant, or an electric tram-car, there need now at the present moment be no appreciable toil in the world.

‘‘

‘‘

The linotype, was commonly used in newspaper offices, and costing three thousand dollars and upwards, casts a complete line of type. The operator sits before a keyboard resembling that of a typewriter. When he presses a key, a brass matrix drops into a receiver, and, when sufficient matrices have been set, the operator presses a lever, and this line of matrices is automatically cast into a line of letters. The other lines are set and cast in the same way.

The matrices are automatically distributed to be set again. A single operator can set four thousand ems per hour of regular reading matter. This is exceeded, but four thousand is a good average. As the ‘‘em’’ is the largest letter, one thousand “ems’’ (the technical term used) would require the setting of fifteen hundred or more letters and spaces. The first-class hand-compositor sets eight hundred ems an hour, and the record speed is about two thousand.

‘‘ Monotype fit perfectly with the use of foundry types and, indeed, because it produced individual type slugs, it would normally make it unnecessary to use foundry type even for the most demanding typography.

‘‘

Monotype

The monotype is similar, and yet different, from the linotype. The operator sits in front of a keyboard, and each key when pressed makes an impression on a roll of paper similar to that used for the automatic piano-player. This roll is placed in another machine, which automatically casts and sets single type. The speed of the monotype is about that of the linotype.

The monotype is admirably adapted to book work, partly because its work is as easily corrected as is that of hand-set type, while a correction made on the linotype requires the resetting and recasting of an entire line. Many newspapers are set on the monotype exclusively, and other newspapers employ both the linotype and monotype.

Comparatively few books nowadays are hand-set, either the monotype or linotype being used. Notwithstanding this, the sale of ordinary type is on the increase, neither, of these automatic setting machines seeming to interfere with its output. Most of the country newspapers are printed directly from hand-set type, but the larger ones are set on the linotype or monotype, without the forms being stereotyped.

ysi ph a no s is ed in ata i e r r d to the a sto his t on r e T t . u eo typ da r y tp al nly emo , ou plat set t i en to off dig e, o m In typ ter s scre rect for ting. n i l ca mpu on r di nder prin red ign o co wed lm cyli phic ccur des n fi vie per, ress ogra es o type zatio i a p ital p xer hang r as gital pe , tyi r dig o o nd c as fa e. D of ty tion er d lith fou iod ctur tem itiza a wi ing g o er i a s r f P s p nu sy e d to pear thi d ma e the . Sinc read , ap ile d s an cam tion as sp tion mob -hel c a h e c CD and u b hy pli h od pr grap f ap es, L and g o , o a s p ge p en ran web scre . es on one am h g p eo vid

Digital

ll He f l o pe t ud ty . R iset fir s s g e n r. I Dig th ter , D the was arac gital 5 6 di och 19 ed . It In duc stem duce from ’s ph by 0 y ro o y d int ing s o pr tirel 197 lace was t t n e p t h e h e or e e s vic y t s r hic ts t RT de a C r s. B g wa on w ll do tha i s e d a on ast ettin mat f sm line ishe s l m es for n wa o ica fi p s r e in ie d ty rt to red ser ve in th pee s pe e d id r s o a e t e s s c l put act as th s t a pa so se ly s red out char k w d wa ll e e se a n es 0 clo appe ct. Th 0,00 rot nt a he H ble G o t i f u 1 la to ig e by vai od o pr 00 t nd. D l typ 968 as a light un a 1,0 seco digit in 1 d w om udr er fr , G ng d an t s fir signe udio ights Zapf rd U s for . de n St we ann era gner logy no sig ven rm d G esi De n se . He e an pe d tech i ld w ss ty bo He ar ly is ne n e h t vo re we

typography is born

The Revolution of

Truetype The Truetype format is not as clean and reliable as the type 1 format, but it allowed for an explosion in font design.Unfortunately this explosion caused a large quantity of low quality or designer impostor fonts. Most professional print houses to this day refuse to support Truetype fonts because of their low quality. Display Postscript was a version developed byAdobe a that could run on personal computer screens. Adobe offered PostScript to both Apple and Microsoft, they rejected Adobe’s proposal and decided to jointly develop their own font technology called Truetype.

TrueType is an outline font standard originally developed

by Apple Computer in the late 1980s as a competitor to Adobe’s Type 1 fonts used in PostScript. TrueType has become the most common format for fonts on both the Mac OS and Microsoft Windows operating systems.[citation needed] The primary strength of TrueType was originally that it offered font developers a high degree of control over precisely how their fonts are displayed, right down to particular pixels, at various font sizes. With widely varying rendering technologies in use today, pixel-level control is no longer certain in a TrueType font.

Phototypesetting machines projected characters onto film for offset printing. This “cold type” technology could be used in office environments where “hot metal” machines (the Mergenthaler Linotype, the Harris Intertype and the Monotype) could not. The use of phototypesetting grew rapidly in the 1960s when software was developed to convert marked up copy, usually typed on paper tape, to the codes that controlled the phototypesetters.

phototypesetting Phototypesetting was a method of setting type, rendered obsolete with the popularity of the personal computer and desktop publishing software, that uses a photographic process to generate columns of type on a scroll of photographic paper. Typesetters used a machine called a phototypesetter, which would quickly project light through a film negative image of an individual character in a font, through a lens that would magnify or reduce the size of the character onto film, which would collect on a spool in a light-tight canister. The film would then be fed into a processor, a machine that would pull the film through two or three baths of chemicals, where it would emerge ready for paste up.

Type Foundries A type foundry is a company that designs or distributes typefaces. Originally, type foundries manufactured and sold metal and wood typefaces and matrices for line-casting machines like the Linotype and Monotype machines designed to be printed on letterpress printers.

Today’s digital type foundries accumulate and distribute typefaces (typically as digitized fonts) created by type designers, who may either be freelancers operating their own independent foundry, or employed by another foundry. Type foundries may also provide custom type design services.

In England, type foundries began in 1476, when William Caxton introduced the printing press. Thereafter the City of London became a major centre for the industry, until recent times when famous metal-based printing districts such as Fleet Street came to the close of their era. The industry was particularly important in Victorian times, when education became available to all due to the new School Boards, and firms such as Charles Reed & Sons were in their heyday. The St Bride Printing Library in the City of London encourages wider public interest in the remarkable history of typefounding for the printed book and newspaper.

Emigre is a digital foundry established in Berkley in 1985 by Zuzana Licko. Emigre were early pioneers of the Macintosh. They founded the magazine of the same name in 1984. Using the newly type design program fontographer, Licko’s early typefaces can be seen as a celebration of the software of the time. Emperor, Oakland, Universal and Emigre for example are all bitmap faces designed for low resolution printers, while Citizen and Matrix reflect other restrictions.

Fontshop was set up in 1989 by Erik Spiekermann to market Postscript typefaces directly to end users. With a range of stock which included all the major manufacturers and fast delivery together with well- designed and targeted marketing. Font shop became the obvious place to buy fonts in the countries where it operated.

‘‘ Today thanks to the rapid development of computer technologies and digital fonts, a new chapter of western typography history is being written. Along with multiple modern fonts, reflecting the modern art ideas, such as graffiti or 3D effects, many font designers still do their best to give new life into ancient scripts, developing professional fonts based on old typography rules and classical typefaces, which have already withstood the test of time.

‘‘