type is power. the power to express words and ideas visually. it's timeless but
always changing, and that's what we're going to explore
most people agree that the creator of typography was a German man named
johannes gutenberg and, yes, he wore a hat like that. before gutenberg came along
and revolutionized the world of communication, books needed to be scribed
by hand
usually by monks, which was very time consuming and expensive. so gutenberg
created black-letter, the first-ever typeface, modeled after the writing of
the scribes. black leather has thick vertical lines and thin horizontal
connectors, which made it great for scribing, but it looked very dense and
squished together when printed. something needed to change
enter Roman type. this particular typefaces cambria which you're probably
used to seeing on your word processor but the first-ever Roman typeface was
created in the 15th century by the Frenchman Nicholas Jenson
this is his type face right here. jenson worked mainly in venice, italy and was
inspired by the lettering found on ancient Roman buildings. his letter forms
were based on straight lines and regular curves
this made them very clear and legible compared to the dense darkness of black letter
this legible new typeface was an instant success and quickly spread across Europe,
riding on the coattails of the Renaissance. the next major innovation in
typography after Roman letters was italics, which are like slanted and
stylized versions of Roman type
they were created in the late 15th century by Aldus Manutius from Italy
as a way of fitting more letters onto the page and saving money
now we use italics interspersed in roman type for emphasis
Aldus Manutius also created the modern comma and semicolon,
but that's another story
type development stayed fairly stagnant until the 18th century in England when
William Caslon created a typeface that set a new standard for legibility
while it wasn't anything radical, it was just what the world was looking for.
the style of Caslon's typeface is now referred to as old style. a few decades
later another Brit named John Baskerville created a new variety of
typeface which we call transitional. later still a Frenchman named Didot and
an Italian name Bodoni created typefaces that we have classified as modern
most serif typefaces fit into one of these three categories but what does
each category mean? an old style typeface has letters that have fixed serifs and
low contrast between thick and thin strokes. a transitional type face has
letters with thinner serifs and a higher contrast between thick and thin
strokes. and a modern typeface has letters with very thin serifs and
extreme contrast between thick and thin strokes
next, William Caslon's great grandson named William Caslon the fourth got sick of
all of these seraphs so he decided to remove them entirely and made a new kind
of typeface called the sans-serif
it didn't catch on immediately but would eventually get really big
during the Second Industrial Revolution advertising created a need for new
typefaces. letters were made taller and wider mainly used in large sizes on
posters and billboards
things got pretty weird but one happy result of all of this experimentation is
Egyptian or slab serif
it has really thick serifs and is usually used for titles. as a backlash to
the complexity found in typefaces of the 19th century, the early 20th century
brought something simple
Paul Renner from Germany created a typeface called futura. it was based
on simple geometric shapes
this is called the geometric sans
around the same time a British man named eric gill created a typeface called gill
sans that was similar to a geometric sans but with gentler, more natural
curves and this is called a humanist sans. the next major step in the world
of sans serifs happened in Switzerland in 1957 with the introduction of
helvetica. it has simple curves and is available in many different weights and
some would call it the world's favourite type face. the world of typography
changed forever
with the introduction of the computer. there were a few difficult years of
crude pixel type
due to the primitive screen technology but then technology evolved and
computers began to allow for the creation of thousands of beautiful
typefaces, and the odd dud, but now anyone has the freedom to create their
own unique typeface, and that is the history of typography
yeah