A History of Type - Lecture Notes

• Typography is the midpoint between visual communication and verbal communication. 
• Metacommunication, para linguistics (subtle ways of saying something affecting how people receive it) and kinesics (physical gestures). 
• Mesopotamia, in the Middle East, was where communicating visually began. Western cultures then developed this.
• Writing things down allowed communication to reach a wider range of people. Culture, ideas and empires start to thrive. 
• An example of this is the Roman Empire flourishing due to communicating visually. At the fall of the Roman Empire, humanity fell into stagnation. 
• The Age of Print (beginning in 1450)
• Gutenbergs printing press was invented
• An end is brought to the dark ages, humanity is salvaged and enlightened by more people having access to ideas and knowledge. 
• First typefaces were gothic, mimicking handwriting. 
• Developments in contemporary type: technology allows us to play around with type more easily and a wide range of typefaces are more accessible now. 

Old style typefaces

• Connotations of sophistication
• Classical 
• Renaissance

Modern/didone typefaces

• More refined with fewer references to handwriting.
• Modernity, not classicism. Crisp, modern and elegant. 

Slab serif/Egyptian typefaces

• 1800s - nothing to do with Egypt
• A subvariance of didone typefaces but signified something different and unusual.
• Used to catch people’s attention on fly posters and adverts - loud information, shouting out, aggressive.

Elementary Education Act 1870 - directed by William Forster

• The majority of the pubic could not read but the education act meant that children needed to learn to read. 
• Giving people the equipment to access knowledge. 

Walter Gropius - 1919 (Bauhaus)

• Harnesses new technologies 
• Improves the world and modern society.

Sans-serif typefaces

• Futuristic, neutral and different
• Eric Gill - Gill Sans - represented English modernity (used for underground transport signage)

Times New Roman

• Connotations of the Roman Empire and its greatness.
• Opposed modernist ideas for futuristic typefaces.

Nazi Propaganda

• Gothic, black letterforms - greatness and power
• The rise of dominant tribes
• Opposing the modernists

Max Miedinger - Helvetica typeface (Swiss)

• Machine age
• No historic connotations - didn't limit its usage
• Promoted the idea that message was more important than presentation
• Slick, corporate, capitalism.

Steve Jobbs - 1990 - Apple Mac changed the relationship we have with typography as it gave people the opportunity to develop publications themselves. 

Tim Burners Lee - invented the web and allows access to knowledge and ideas to go global. 

This lecture taught me that typefaces belong in families which have different connotations usually dependant on their links to various historic movements. I can see the connection between the progression of type and the development of education and knowledge being more and more widely accessible. Type can communicate a message by itself, this is why it is important to get your typeface choices right to ensure that the information you are providing is received in the way you intended it to be.