Tuesday, 6 March 2012

History of type – Typography


Lecture 11/1/2012

History of type – Typography

Change font
Colour
Arrangement of text

Thinking about how something is presented

Visual communication – overlapping with – verbal communication

Typography = meta-communication
                        -It’s a language that comments of another language
                        -Paralinguistic (Body language, gestures, facial expressions, tone
                         and pitch of voice are all examples of paralinguistic features)
                        -Study of rhythm, space, speed of communication
                        -Kinesics – gestures along words, which underline or change                            meanings of words

Type classifications

Humanist/old style/transitional/modern/slab serif (Egyptian)/sans serif

1450 Gutenberg’s printing press – late age of print

Roman culture – Trajan’s column 113AD capitals come from this

Medieval times – Gutenberg gothic script 1450 – lower case comes from this

Huminist typefaces – Nicolas Jenson – Jenson was designed to look like human writing and easy to read

Links with the human body

Jersey, centaur, Kennerley – develops a font family – old style

(New) old style typefaces – palatino, garamona, perpetua, goudy old style.
17th century – becomes based on science and maths.
Quasi – scientific lines – Transitional fonts

William Caslon – forms that are unique and different to handwriting
Baskerville – transitional

Stroke contrast – more acute as it gets more modern.
Modern/didone- Bodoni typefaces
Didone – high stroke contrast
-       represent elegance, style and high end class – Vogue

Slab serif/Egyptian – Industrial, urban, noticeable, confusing, fat face, typewrite slab serif

Sans serif type – face – grotesque, stripped down, simple, anti historical
A unicameral type – all text to be lower case

Eric Gill – Gill sans
Times New Roman Font – Stanley Morison (1932)
Cooper Black (1921)
Helvetica (1957) – Swiss style, most dominant font, signifies modernism

Jonathan Barnbrook (1990)
David Carson – overlay, no structure, most modern & hand drawn

Type communicates visually and is not just a vehicle for content.

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