Typography

Type is one of the document designer’s most important tools. Type is everywhere and most of us take it for granted, yet paradoxically, successful type design is one that does not distract the reader. It is the raison d’etre of type designers that type should work to make it easier for the reader to access information, as opposed to distracting them with the design of the typeface.

The study of typography alone, would require a separate course and years of study. You cannot separate type design from the related technologies of printing, paper production and selection, and the digital tools involved in its creation and manipulation. This is much more than can be covered in an entry-level course such as this one; therefore, our discussion will be limited to the basics with practical applications for document designers.

It was the development of printing, the discovery of moveable type, and the invention of paper and improvements in paper quality which allowed type design to flourish.

Paper was invented in China around AD 105, and it was this discovery above anything else that sparked the evolution of printing.

• The earliest paper was the same type of paper in use today, made entirely from vegetable fiber (tree bark, hemp, rags and other material).
• It wasn't until almost a thousand years after its discovery, by way of Persia, Egypt and North Africa, that paper made its way to Europe.
• All paper was made by hand until the nineteenth century. The first paper mills appeared in Europe in the early part of the twelveth century in Spain, followed by Italy, Germany, and finally, England in the late 1400s. Some of the earliest paper mills, like Italy’s Fabriano, still exist and still produce some of the finest hand made papers in the world.

Printing, using wood block on paper, existed in Korea as early as the eighth century, and, by the tenth century in China, it had already developed into an art form.

• Moveable type cast, in clay and held in place by a metal form, was invented in China sometime between 1041 and 1048 AD. Koreans were casting type in metal and printing books this way by the end of the fifteenth century.
• The invention of movable type was not seen as a significant discovery by the countries of the Far East. China, Korea, and Japan all lack an alphabet since their written language consists of over forty thousand separate symbols.
• It was the alphabet as it existed in Western languages that gave movable type such an important place in the history of printing in the West.

Movable type technology was invented in Europe around 1440 by Johannes Gutenberg (1398-1468), a goldsmith from Mainz (Germany). It was Gutenberg’s knowledge of metal which allowed him to perfect his invention, to print one of the earliest known books in the western world and the very first with the use of movable type. With this new technology he printed approximately 200 copies of a two volume Bible consisting of almost 1300 pages. Forty-eight copies still exist today, although only twenty-one of them are completely intact.

The invention of movable type was quite an undertaking although no one knows exactly how long it took. It is known that he already had the basics: paper, ink, and a wooden press (probably a linen or grape press).

Moveable type allowed for the casting of individual letters which could be assembled into words, to make up a printed page. After printing, the letters could then be re-assembled into different words and used again in the printing press.

• The model that he used for the design of his type came from the handwritten books that existed at that time.
• The original letters were drawn by scribes who used a wide, flat, almost brush-like pen.
• 
• Gutenberg and his collegues copied these letters so precisely that their printed page looked almost exactly like the originals.
• The letters consisted of strong dense verticals with almost no curves, although variations in stroke width appeared throughout reflecting the calligraphic techniques of the times.
• Today we call this style of type “black letter” or “gothic.” It was popular and in regular use in Germany until the mid-1940s.
• The style of type that we use today called “roman,” was developed in France in 1470. For text that is set for continual reading, roman, which was infinitely more readable than black letter, soon became the type of choice by most printers throughout Europe and England.
• Shakespeare’s plays, when first printed, were in a roman typeface.
• “Roman” is also another term for the “serif” font classification.