Lecture 8 History of Typography:

The history of Typography

General
Typography  is the intersect or crossover between visual and verbal communication.
Typography covers: a meta communication - a language that is used to comment on another language, paralinguistics - structures another language or the rhythm of communication and - gestures alongside words to change meaning.
Type classifications include:
Humanist, old style, transitional, modern, slab serif and sans serif.

Typeography through time
During the Roman Age most of our alphabet originated from this time. Tragans column.
Dark Ages  there was a gap of around 1000 years of no development
Medieval - during this period the lower case was developed.
Age of Print - Guttenberg printing press was invented in 1450, moveable type. First moveable  typefaces were based on human writing, black letter/gothic.

Humanist - 
The first typeface was created by Nicolas Jenson and it was named Jenson.
This typeface was much more readable and modern than the previous black letter.
Designed to resemble the easthetics of  Italian renaissance.
Some of the characteristics are: There is little difference in first and second stroke and inclination of the 'e'
Painter Geofroy Troy believed the alphabet should reflect the proportion of the human form.

Old Style
The following 50 years of type really started to drastically develop.
There was a huge shift between imitating human writing to type, as an art form on its own.

Transitional 
Type as a distinct form.
Now type wasn't based on the human form but created on quasi-scientific lines.
During the enlightenment period, 1693.
Characteristics are difference in stroke width. Also as society became more rational the letterforms where now becoming much more vertical.
During the late 18th century John Baskerville created a typeface with a contrast between thick and thin.

Modern
Start of Modernity.
Sometimes called Didone.
During1784 -  French Modernity, Giambattista Bodini.
Characteristics are very high stroke contrast, every angle horizontal and vertical, ordered, represented elegance and style.

Slab Serif
1880's, industrial revolution.
The nickname 'Egyptian' was very random and did not relate to the style in any way.
Characteristics are not sophisticated, rules of hierarchy where broken, type was condensed to fit lots on a page.
Typewriter font.

Sans Serif
Around in the 1800's but extremely popular in the modernist era.
Progressive, looking to the future.
Uni cameral, all text lower case.
Grotesk typefaces are simple and stripped down, all about communication and historicism.