Typography surrounds us: it adorns the buildings and the streets through which we pass, it is a component part of the ever-expanding variety of media we consume – from magazines, to television and the Internet – and we even increasingly sport it on our clothing in the form of branding and symbolic messages. The typography that is a fundamental part of our lives today is the culmination of centuries of development, as the letters that comprise the written word evolved and crystallized into the alphabets that are in common usage. Technology has played a central role in this development, affecting and changing the way that the marks we recognize as characters are made and presented. Through the development of the printing industry, technology gave birth to the concept of typography, the many different presentations of the same character set. While this book provides a deep insight into the essence of typographical development from the base of its historical roots, it goes much further, as by necessity it deals with language and communication, two concepts to which typography is inextricably linked. As the eighteenth-century English writer Samuel Johnson said, ‘Language is the dress of thought’. That being the case, typography can be viewed as one of the swatches of fabric from which that dress is made. It is hoped that this book will serve as a valuable source of typographical information with which informed design choices can be made, to add depth and context to a work. This book is also intended to be a source of creative inspiration through the visual exploration of typefaces over the ages.
‘ Typography at its best is a visual form of language linking timelessness and time.’
chapter 1 type and language
Typography has developed over the last 600 years as the printing process has evolved. The characters that are printed, however, have been developed over a much longer time period as language itself has developed from Egyptian hieroglyphs to the Latin letters we use today. This chapter looks at the history of typography in relation to the development of language together with the cultural and historical changes the world has undergone. Typography is not only a craft, it is also part of a wider context. Having an understanding of this context can help to inform and enrich typographic practice.
Type and language Type is the means by which an idea is written and given visual form. Many typefaces in use today are based upon designs created in earlier historical epochs, and the characters themselves have a lineage that extends back thousands of years to the first mark-making by primitive man, when characters were devised to represent objects or concepts.
This section is an introduction to the complex origins of type. An appreciation of typography naturally involves understanding how written language developed. A general timeline is presented here but it is important to remember that there is overlap across epochs and for many major developments, there exist counter-claims to the invention. What is shown here serves as a guide to the major milestones in typography. This section aims to be as comprehensive as possible, but it is impossible to be conclusive. One of the wonders of typography is this fluidity, its ability to adapt to circumstances, technological advances and cultural shifts. For simplicity, this section has been divided into the following categories; The alphabet, Early printing, 1800s, Arts and Crafts Movement, The early twentieth century, 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s and Graphic design since 2000.
Language is not static Letters, language and indeed typography develop and change over time as the dominant power inherits, alters, adapts and imposes its will on existing forms. The modern Latin alphabet is a result of such ongoing transition having been developed and adapted over several millennia.
For example, the modern letter ‘A’ was originally a pictogram representing an ox’s head, but as the Phoenicians wrote from right to left, the symbol was turned on its side. Under the Greeks, who wrote from left to right, it was turned again and finally, the Romans turned the character full-circle, giving it the form that we recognize today.
Reading direction The direction in which text is read varies from language to language and is determined in part by historical factors such as how text used to be written. For example, Chinese calligraphers use paint brushes to draw ideograms and so it is easier to write down the page with the right hand, while controlling the scroll with the left.
Cuneiform tablets Cuneiform uses a wedge-shaped stylus to make impressions into a wet clay tablet and is one of the earliest standardized writing systems. It was developed in ancient Mesopotamia, the region that is now east of the Mediterranean, from about 4,000 BC until about 100 BC. Early forms of cuneiform were written in columns from top to bottom, but later changed to be written in rows from left to right. With this change the cuneiform signs were turned on their sides. Cuneiform began to die out as other language systems such as Aramaic spread through the region in the seventh and sixth centuries BC, and as the use of Phoenician script increased.
Hieroglyphs
Hieroglyphs use a pictogrammatic writing system and were used by several cultures including the Ancient Egyptians and Incas. Each pictogram represents an object rather than a vocal sound. There are over 750 individual Egyptian pictograms. Hieroglyphs can be written from right to left, left to right, or downwards. This is indicated in each piece of text by the direction in which the objects face. For example, if they are facing to the left, the inscription is read from left to right. Border lines are used to indicate that text should be read from top to bottom.
Chinese and Japanese scripts
Written Chinese assigns a single distinctive symbol, or character, to each word. Many symbols have remained fundamentally the same for over 3,000 years even though the writing system has been standardized and stylistically altered. The system became word-based to express abstract concepts, with ideograms representing sounds rather than concepts.