Who invented typography

Your email address will not be published. Type is everywhere — street signs, magazines, the web. Every typeface you see around you has been painstakingly and carefully planned out, and each has its own personality and vibe. But have you ever stopped to wonder how the typefaces we encounter everyday came to be? Who invented them, and why? Ben Barrett-Forrest, a Canadian graphic designer, put together this beautiful and clever video that brings the history of typography to life: Happy designing!

We will definitely be looking into this; thank you for your feedback! As civilizations advanced, the need to communicate complex concepts grew—hence the development of Egyptian hieroglyphics. By B. Also, by B. Phoenicians developed phonograms, or symbols used to represent spoken words. It is Phoenicians who are credited with creating the very first alphabet and around B.

In fact, the word Alphabet is a combination of the first two Greek letters, Alpha and Beta. The Romans, after several years, used this Greek Alphabet and on the basis of the same, styled the Uppercase Alphabet, which is still used today.

They also refined the art of handwriting and fashioned a number of different styles of lettering. Additionally, they also introduced different scripts — formal and informal for official and unofficial writings respectively.

The Middle Ages were all about hand-written and well-illustrated manuscripts. This flexibility means using fewer font files, resulting in faster page load times. Google Fonts allows people to only show variable fonts in their search results. One area where many typefaces are still lacking is global language coverage.

While many typefaces focus on Latin character sets, there are other Western languages such as Greek and Cyrillic that should be more widely included as standard in font files. Some areas of design change and evolve quickly, but typography has been slower to evolve over the centuries. These fonts allow designers to use multiple colors within a single glyph.

Then again, web fonts were technically possible for more than a decade before they were widely adopted. Download a PDF version of this infographic. Embed this infographic into a website. While there is no definitive list of the classifications of typefaces, there are seven that are generally recognized: serif, sans serif, script, blackletter, display, monospaced, and symbol or ornamental. Blackletter typefaces were the first in typeface history, followed by serifs and sans serifs.

The first typeface was a Blackletter variety used by Johannes Gutenberg on the first printing press, starting in This typeface design was created to mimic the calligraphic handwriting used by monks to hand-transcribe manuscripts prior to the invention of the printing press. Typefaces can be described with a few criteria: their classification serif, sans serif , letter shape geometric, condensed , mood formal, casual , suitability for different types of text headlines, body copy , and things like weight thin, bold or style italic, oblique.

The first commercial typeface styles—called Blackletter—were based on handwritten manuscripts created by monks prior to the invention of the printing press by Johannes Gutenberg in The letterforms closely resembled calligraphy, with complex shapes and ornamentation.

Subscription implies consent to our privacy policy. Thank you! Check out your inbox to confirm your invite. Design All Blogs Icon Chevron. Known as one of the most important pioneers of contemporary Typographic art influenced by Pop art, British artist Mike Edwards created and creates Word Paintings or Text Portraits in which each letter becomes rendered in a separate color.

When the image is viewed from distance, the letters merge together and create a photographic quality of the work. As the s were times of radical social changes , with the beginning of the peace movement and the psychedelic era , with it came new fonts and designs which were created to support the innovative ideas flourishing at those times. One of the most important designers of psychedelic posters was Wes Wilson , who heavily influenced typography by inventing a new font around , which became synonymous with the era.

It was the psychedelic font which made the letters become more dynamic and look like they are melting away from the prints. Typography was used as a way of spreading ideas about the ongoing social changes , protests and ways of adopting a new lifestyle. One of the key designers who also played an important role with his color experiments was Victor Moscoso , who used the concept of vibrating colors on his typographic posters, created by taking colors from the opposite end of the color wheel, with equal value and intensity.

Concerning the technology of the s, it included the invention of third-generation typesetters which used electronically stored font data. The bubbly, futuristic, colorful letters on album and book covers during these times remain an important inspirational point for artists even today, who try to copy the genuine retro fonts like Baskerville OF, Bubble Gum, or Futura.

But even though many artists and designers of the time found inspiration in the software development, others tried to renew traditional forms and to find different ways of applying them. In , the true master of traditional typography and printmaking, and a multidisciplinary artist, Alan Kitching , established The Typography Workshop , a studio that uses traditional techniques of letterpress printing but also combines them with obsolete technologies and seeks new ways to apply them.

The result becomes magical and can be seen through his innovative, colorful works which use wood and metal , but show how even these traditional materials can be inspiring.

As always, contemporary artists have been redefining and transcending traditional practices and procedures of typewriting with the help of technology and multimedia design tools. The contemporary typography works, in the spirit of postmodernism, include and combine everything from Neo-Pop , contemporary calligraphy , filmmaking , installation art , sculpture and street art.

Some of the notable artists working with this style today is definitely Craig Redman , who uses his iPhone, camera, laptop and Photoshop to create simple cynical messages presented in an optimistic, simple, form-reducing manner. Like many other artists working with typography, his work doesn't stop with clients but he also enjoys creating messages of his own.