Introduction

Typography is central to the practice of graphic design. It is the form through which
language is presented to a reader. Whether a newspaper, a book, signage or viewed on a
screen, typography is mediating what the viewer reads.

The history of typography is bound together with the history of language, writing and
printing. The western alphabet we recognise today has developed over millennia, drawing
from ancient Phoenician, Greek, Etruscan and Roman letterforms and writing traditions as
well as Arabic numerals. As writing and reading have developed, so too has typography,
creating visual forms that suit the needs of the times. It is easy to see typography and
lettering as the same thing but strictly speaking typography refers to the mechanical
reproduction of words through printing, while lettering implies hand rendered type, writing
and calligraphy. However, as with all definitions, the boundaries do blur and there is a lot of
overlap between the hand and machine within typography.

The Foundational Hand – Irene Wellington

The technologies of writing, book making, printing, photography and computing have all had an influence on how typography has developed. Each new technology has brought with it different approaches to how we present letterforms, words and blocks of text. It is easy to
assume that the west invented many of the developments in these technologies; however
ancient China and Korea developed paper, movable type and printing presses centuries
before Europe.

Movable Type

Movable type or letterpress was a key development in the history of typography, allowing
individual letters to be reused again and again on the printing press. Johann Gutenberg
developed the first European movable type, printing a copy of the bible in 1455 while
William Caxton printed the first English books in 1475.

The idea of a standard English language, with commonly agreed spelling, grammar and
meanings is something we are very used to now, but for Caxton there was no such
standardisation and it was through the act of printing that the English language started to
become unified.

Gutenberg, Caxton and other early printers created typefaces that looked like the
manuscripts printing had replaced, but as printing spread across Europe to Italy typefaces
began to develop that reflected the ideals of the Renaissance. These new so-called Roman
typefaces form the basis of many of
today’s most used and widely
recognised fonts.

Interior of a 16th century printing house

Letterpress has given us much of the
technical language of typography,
such as uppercase and lowercase
letters, fonts, typefaces as well as
phrases such as ‘out of sorts’ (getting
your different typefaces mixed up).
Letterpress printing still exists today,
though not commercially as it is much
slower than digital technologies.
The advent of photographic print
processes provided alternative ways of
dealing with type and digital
technology has fundamentally
changed how we get text into print,
but the principles of typography have
broadly remained the same. If you have
access to some older books, run your
fingers over the printing, if you can feel a slight impression as if the letter have been pressed
into the paper, then it has been printed using metal typography, either set by hand, letter by
letter, or cast as a whole piece of metal in a technique known as hot metal printing. Modern
typographic printing is much smoother by comparison.

Terms such as typography, type, fonts and typefaces are often used interchangeably, however each term refers to something specific:

Type is the name of the individual metal letters that were used in
letterpress printing, these letters were cast in metal blocks with the
letter in reverse on the top.

Fonts are the characters in a given typeface, for example all the
uppercase and lowercase letters, punctuation and symbols.
Fonts come in different sizes and are measured by point size (usually
written as pt).

Typefaces group together fonts that are of a related design. Times
New Roman is a well known typeface that will include italic and bold,
uppercase, lowercase, numerals and all the different sizes of fonts it
comes in. Uppercase letters are CAPITAL letters and lowercase are small
letters, so named because metal type was arranged in cabinets so that
it was easy to pick out letters. Capitals were in the upper cabinet or
case and the small letters were in the lower case.

Typography focuses on both the design of typefaces and their day-today use, while typesetting is the act of using type to create words,
sentences and lines of text.

Research point

The history of typography, printing and reading are all linked; what else can you find out
about this history that you find interesting? Perhaps you are interested in a particular era,
form of typography or particular area of reading. It might be a wide subject such as the
history of the alphabet, or something very specific such as the use of typography in Film Noir, comics or American crime novels.

Undertake some secondary research to find out more, taking notes along the way and
collecting examples for your visual diary.