OUGD401: Context of Practice - The History of Type

Aims:

• Simple introduction into the history of type
• Introduce six classifications
• Famous typefaces and their connotations
• Introduction into the metalinguistic function of typography 
• Bore everyone to death talking about kerning and x-heights

• Typography exists at the interception of visual communication and verbal communication
• Typography = Meta-communication, Paralinguistic's and Kinesis

BE VERY VERY CALM NOW - Use of uppercase and the colour red give the impression the statement is being shouted.

CLASSIFICATIONS 

• Humanist
• Old Style
• Transition
• Modern
• Slab Serif (Egyptian)
• Sans Serif

113AD - The first recognisable letterforms on Trajan's Column - The letterforms we serif as they were chiselled into stone.

1450s - The lat age of print

• The Gutenberg Press was invented - For the first time individual letterforms could be produced and therefore the printed word was widely available to a mass audience.
• Knowledge was spread
• Typography Started
• Gutenberg Gothic Script, 1450 - Based on Medieval handwriting 
• Humanist Typefaces - Which were the earliest forms of typography were also inspired by handwriting
• Early Humanist typefaces such as Jenson have a diagonal axis on the bar of the lowercase 'e'
• Centaur Font - Based on Jenson

15th Century, Venice

• Refined Humanist fonts - Oldstyle, axis of bar on lowercase 'e' is horizontal
• (New) Oldstyle: Palatino, Garamond, Perpetua and Goudy Oldstlyle

•  Specimen - John Baskerville and Aspecimen by William Caslon - "Ultra thin strokes on Baskerville's Specimen would blind audience"

Modern / Didone Typefaces

• Bodoni - No attempts to look like handwriting
• Ultra modern
• Used in Fashion e.g. Vogue and Grazia magazines - Accepted language
• Elegant
• Came from French Revolution 

1800s - Slab Serif / Egyptian

• Egyptian - Reference to orientalism
• Brass - For industrialisation 
• Fatface Typeface - Hyperbold Style

• I ♥ NY - Slab Serif used by Milton Glaser
• Modernism - Sans serif is modern, progressive and forward facing
• Times New Roman by Stanley Morrison - Created in 1932 and was reference to the type on Trajan's Column
• Cooper Black, 1921 - Used by The Beach Boys, Dad's Army and Easy jet

• Helvetica - Modernist

Difference between Arial and Helvetica:

• Helvetica 'G' has a Spur

• Arial 'G'  does not have a Spur

The Arial Typeface was created by IBM for their computers as they did not want to pay Helvetica royalties and therefore created a their own type face which was similar.

1994 - Post Modern

• Grunge Typography - Almost illegible and against communication
• Used by David Carson