Design Context: March 2013

Origins of Typography

SUMER

The Sumerians began to experiment with writing at the close of the fourth millennium BC, in Mesopotamia.
Like most writing systems, Cuneiform, initially scratched into soft clay, started out as a series of pictograms. The word for bird, for example, existed at first as a simple pictorial representation of a bird.
In time, the pictures of things came to represent, not only things but, sounds.
It is clear that a written language with signs that represent sounds requires fewer characters than a language in which a sign stands for a thing or an idea.
Early cuneiform comprised some 1,500 pictograms.
A language in which a picture or grapheme represents a thing or an idea has its advantages: people may speak any language while the written form stays the same. So a Chinese from the Southern provinces can speak a totally different dialect than his compatriot in Beijing, who would not understand him when he speaks, but can read what he writes.
While the Sumerian language ceased to be spoken after about 2000 BC, the influence of its written form (Cuneiform) is still felt today.
The Sumerian language was mostly replaced by the language of their Akkadian conquerors. This form of writing was used until the 5th century AD.

Pictogram origins of Cuneiform

EGYPT

The Egyptians developed a similar system of pictograms, one many of us are familiar with. Hieroglyphic inscriptions, like Cuneiform started out as pictograms, but later those same pictures were also used to represent speech sounds.
Egyptian hieroglyphs come in several forms or styles — all influenced by the medium upon which they are written, the purpose for which they are written, and their intended audience.

Egyptian Hieroglyphics

The Egyptian pictographs evolved into a cursive style called hieratic that was freer, written more rapidly and contained numerous ligatures.

Hieratic Script

Although written mostly in ink on papyrus, the most famous example is to be found on the granite Rosetta Stone.
The Rosetta Stone (196 BC), and is important because it was the key to deciphering ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs. It is written in two languages, and three scripts: two forms of Egyptian (hieroglyphic & demotic), with a Greek translation.

THE FIRST ALPHABETS

Until the discovery of two inscriptions (graffiti) in Wadi el-Hol, Egypt, in 1999, it was generally held that the beginnings of alphabetic scripts could be traced to around 1600 to 1500 BC, to the Phoenicians.
However, the 1999 discovery reveals that it was instead developed by the Semitic-speaking people then living in Egypt. This strengthens the hypothesis there must have been ties between Egyptian scripts and their influence on those early Semitic or proto-Sinaitic alphabets. Moreover, it pushes back the origin of the alphabet to between 1900 and 1800 BC.

Inscription from Wadi el-Hol

By about 1600 BC in the region between the two dominant writing systems of the time, Cuneiform and Egyptian hieroglyphs, we see the emergence of other more systematised alphabets like ugaritic script (14th century BC) that developed in what is today Syria. The ugaritic script employs 30 simplified cuneiform signs. And thus begins the story of the alphabet.

Abecedary from Ugarit

PROTO SINAITIC

At the same time as the short-lived ugaritic script was being developed (an alphabet adapted from Cuneiform), another alphabetic system emerged that was influenced by Egyptian hieroglyphs. This alphabet of consonants was pictographic, yet each pictograph represents a sound rather than a thing or idea. It is this proto-Sinaitic alphabet that really marks the starting point, the root of numerous modern-day alphabets, from Arabic and Hebrew to Greek and Latin.

Evolution of the E

THE PHOENICIANS

The Phoenician alphabet was probably developed for quick and easy to read notes that a merchant would make on his trips along the ports of the Mediterranean.
This simple and ingenious modern alphabet of consonants from which the last vestiges of pictograms had been erased, is indeed a merchant’s instrument: easy to learn, to write and to adapt.
Adapted by cultures that we are generally much more familiar with: the Greek and Roman societies that form the base of modern Western civilisation and the lesser-known Tuscans.

Phoenicians alphabet

GREEK

Although the earliest extant Greek inscriptions date back to the 8th century BC many scholars think that the Greeks adopted the West Semitic Script (the Phoenician consonant alphabet) three centuries earlier.
For a long time the Greek scripts followed no fixed direction, being written left to right, right to left.
Greek scripts favour of abstract, linear forms.
Based on comparisons of late Phoenician alphabets and archaic Greek scripts it appears that the Greeks simply adopted most of the Phoenician signs but added the vowels that the Phoenicians had left out.

Greek Papyrus

LATIN

The Latin alphabet that we still use today was created by the Etruscans and the Romans, and derived from the Greek.
It had only 23 letters: the J, U and W were missing.
The J was represented by the I, the U was written as V and there was no need for a W.
In the third century BC, the letter G (a variant of C) was added; Z was borrowed from the Greek, then dropped as Latin had no need for it.
G took its place in the line-up, until the first century BC, when the Romans decided they needed the Z for borrowed Greek words, they re-introduced it, and placed it at the end of the alphabet, where it remains to this day.

Trajan Inscription

Uncial & Half Uncial

Most writing was of course done on papyrus and on walls, informal and quick.
This was a letterform that could be jotted down quickly with a reed pen dipped in ink.
The ‘old’ cursive is difficult to read but the ‘new’, that evolved from the 4th century onwards resembles our own writing.
The codex came at the same time. While the Romans used scrolls made of papyrus, in the fourth century somebody had the idea to cut parchment into oblong pieces and sew them together — thus creating the first random-accessible book.
Together with the eminently readable script this must be considered one of the greatest inventions of all time.

Unicail, France

Carolingian to Gothic

Alcuin selected it as a model script for the empire.
A legible book hand; long ascenders and descenders, letting in light between the lines, open and round letters with few ligatures and variant letterforms.
The early Carolingian scripts share some features with the Roman Half-Uncial.
The club shape ‘head serifs’ on the ascenders of b, d, h, and l, by the 11th century these were replaced by triangular serifs, similar to those we see in numerous roman typefaces of the incunabula.
The early, rounder a was dropped in favour of one similar to that found in early Roman Uncials.
In manuscripts penned in this hand, it is not uncommon to see the r with a descender.
The script quickly spread across Europe, deposing a multitude of regional scripts on its way.
By the second half of the tenth century, Carolingian script had reached England, replacing late forms of the Insular script.
That the open forms of the Carolingian script were replaced, from the 12th century, by the darker, more condensed, angular, ligature-ridden, closed forms of the Gothic scripts.

Left: Carolingian. Centre: Pre-Gothic. Right: Gothic.

Roman

Printing and 15th century humanism are closely related, and since the humanist philosophers and philologists reintroduced classical Latin as the lingua franca of their class, it is no wonder that the first roman alphabets of the earliest printers only used the 23 letters of the classical era.
The J was added later. The first J in print was probably made in Italy, early in the 16th century; the written form was first used in the Middle Ages, in France and the Netherlands.
The W is a letter not known to the Latins but used often in the vernacular languages of the west. Well into the 17th century it was set in type as VV, but you will also find two Vs that have been cut down and joined to form a W.
The seventeenth century have a dual alphabet of 26 letters, uppercase and lowercase forms.
There is hardly a straight line to be seen in the history of the alphabet. Many of the aforementioned scripts developed side-by-side, some disappeared and reappeared, some can be shown to be the product of the mind of one man.

Left: Early Roman Script. Right: Jensen, Venice 1472

Evolution of the A

Type Timeline

Stages of Typography

Humanist

The Humanist types appeared during the 1460s and 1470s, and were modelled on the lighter, more open forms of the Italian humanist writers. The Humanist types were at the same time the first roman types.

Characteristics:

Sloping cross-bar on the lowercase “e”;
Relatively small x-height;
Low contrast between “thick” and “thin” strokes (basically that means that there is little variation in the stroke width);
Dark colour (not a reference to colour in the traditional sense, but the overall lightness or darkness of the page). To get a better impression of a page’s colour look at it through half-closed eyes.

Although the influence of Humanist types is far reaching, they aren’t often seen these days. Despite a brief revival during the early twentieth century, their relatively dark color and small x-heights have fallen out of favour.

Old Style

The Old Style types start to demonstrate a greater refinement.
As a consequence the Old Style types are characterised by greater contrast between thick and thin strokes, and are generally speaking, sharper in appearance, more refined.
Old Style types the serifs on the ascenders are more wedge shaped.
Another major change can be seen in the stress of the letterforms to a more perpendicular position.

The very first italic type in 1501.
They were first created, not as an accompaniment to the roman, but as a standalone typeface designed for small format or pocket books, where space demanded a more condensed type.
The Old Style types can be further divided into four categories:

Some Old Style faces: Berling, Calisto, Goudy Old Style,Granjon, Janson, Palatino, Perpetua, Plantin, Sabon and Weiss, to name but a few.

Transitional

The Romain du Roi marked a significant departure from the former Old Styletypes and was much less influenced by handwritten letterforms.

Characteristics:

Vertical or almost vertical stress in the bowls of lowercase letters.

Greater contrast between thick and thin (sub-) strokes:

Head serifs generally more horizontal:

Examples: Baskerville (many flavours), Bookman (Linotype), Cheltenham (ITC), Clearface (ITC), Fournier, Joanna, Slimbach (ITC).

Modern

The first Modern typeface is attributed to Frenchman Firmin Didot, and first graced the printed page in 1784.
His types were soon followed by the archetypal Didone from Bodoni.
The Italian type designer, punchcutter and printer Giambattista Bodoni drew his influence from the Romains du Roi and the types of John Baskerville (high contrast), for whom he showed great admiration.

Characteristics:

High and abrupt contrast between thick and thin strokes;
Abrupt (unbracketed) hairline (thin) serifs
Vertical axis
Horizontal stress
Small aperture

Here are four Didone m’s compared:

Other notable Moderns: ITC Fenice, ITC Zapf Book, Adobe New Caledonia, ITC Bodoni, and Günter Gerhard Lange’s Berthold Walbaum.

Slab Serif

The Slab Serif was born in Britain.
Until this time, type was designed to serve one purpose—it was designed for long stretches of texts, for books. But with mechanisation, and major innovations in printing technology, advertisers in particular were looking for a type that stood out from crowd. Thus was born the the display face—type for use at large sizes, for short bursts of copy.

The Slab Serif or Egyptian is also home to further subsets of typeface styles.
Take a Modern style typeface, give its thicker strokes even more weight, triangulate some of those serifs, and you have a Fat Face.

The first Fat Face was designed by Robert Thorne, who was also responsible for coining the term Egyptian to describe what is generally known today as the Slab Serif.
By the mid-1800s, another sub-set of the Slab Serif class of types began to emerge—the Clarendons. They were an attempt to reign in some of the extravagences of the Fat Face display types, making them fit for use as text faces. Contrast was reduced, the serifs thinned somewhat and up with the x-height for legibility at those smaller sizes.

There are thousands of slab serif types available today; some are simply digitised oldies; others are sans serifs and geometric sans serifs with slab serifs stuck on; others still, rise above the crowd and bring something fresh to this style of type.
Just about every typewriter face is a Slab Serif. There are hundreds to choose from, from Courier to ITC American Typewriter.
The heavy-weight, no-nonsense serifs of the typewriter types are well-suited to this particular form of printing, and perform well on even the poorest quality paper

Sans Serif

Sans-serif forms can be found in Latin, Etruscan, and Greek inscriptions, for as early as 5th century BC. The sans serif forms had been used on stoichedon Greek inscriptions.
The first known usage of Etruscan sans-serif foundry types was from Thomas Dempster's De Etruria regali libri VII (1723).
Caslon foundry made the first sans-serif types for Etruscan languages.
In late 18th century, Neoclassicism led to architects to increasingly incorporating ancient Greek and Roman designs in contemporary structures. Among the architects, John Soane was noted for using sans serif letters on his drawings and architectural designs, which were eventually adopted by other designers.
Sans-serif letters began to appear in printed media as early as 1805, in European Magazine.
Early 19th-century commercial sign writers and engravers had modified the sans-serif styles of neoclassical designers to include uneven stroke weights found in serif Roman fonts, producing sans-serif letters.
In 1816, William Caslon IV produced the first sans-serif printing type in England for Latin characters under the title 'Two Lines English Egyptian', where 'Two Lines English' referred to the font's body size, which equals to about 28 points.
In 1786, a rounded sans-serif font was developed by Valentin Haüy, first appeared in the book titled "Essai sur l'éducation des aveugles" (An Essay on the Education of the Blind). The purpose of this font was to be invisible and address accessibility. It was designed to emboss paper and allow the blind to read with their fingers. The design was eventually known as Haüy type.
The first Grotesque face complete with lower-case letters was cast by the Schelter & Giesecke Foundry as early as 1825.
In 1832, Thorowgood of Fann Street Foundry introduced Grotesque, which include the first commercial Latin printing type to include lowercase sans-serif letters.
Sans Serif typefaces include: Franklin, Helvetica, Tahoma, Century Gothic, Gill Sans, Futura

Post Modern

True Post modern typefaces aren't very common as many people assume contemporary style typefaces are post modern ones instead.
True post modern typefaces are those which are created as a hybrid between two or more already original typefaces. They break the rules of typography and are made at random, using various pieces from typefaces to create a whole new one.

ELEGIAC POSTMODERNISM:

"Postmodern letterforms ... frequently recycle and revise Neoclassical, Romantic and other premodern forms. At their best, they do so with an engaging lightness of touch and a fine sense of humour. Postmodern art is for the most part highly self-conscious, but devoutly unserious...."

GEOMETRIC POSTMODERNISM:

"Some postmodern faces are highly geometric. Like their predecessors the Geometric Modernist faces, they are usually slab-serifed or unserifed, but often they exist in both varieties at once or are hybrids of the two. They are rarely, it seems, based on the pure and simple line and circle, but almost always on more mannered, often asymmetric forms. And like other Postmodern types, they are rich with nostalgia for something pre-modern. Many of these faces are indebted to older industrial letterforms, including typewriter faces and the ubiquitous factory folk-art of North American highway signs. They recycle not Romantic and Neoclassical but Realist ideas...."
"Postmodern art, like Neoclassical art, is above all an art of the surface: an art of reflections rather than visions. It has thrived in the depthless world of high-speed offset printing and digital design, where modernism starves. But the world of the scribes, in which the craft of type design is rooted, was a depthless world too. It was the world of the Gothic painters, in which everything is present in one plane...."
"There is no longer any distinction between text and non-text, image and non-image. The entire surface is now described in one language. Everything is now image. With [PostScript] Adobe ushered in an entirely new aesthetic and a new model of 'thinking the page' that will change the way typography itself is conceived." (Life Style, p. 65)