Typography Through the Ages

Man drew before he could write, and when he could write, he could form civilizations. The very structure of the alphabet and of letterforms as we know it, taken from the Romans (who stole it from the Greeks, who were inspired by the Etruscans) is based on four strokes – horizontal, vertical, diagonal, and curved. Understanding letterforms and their history influences decisions made in typography, allowing us to communicate ideas with both legibility and aesthetically pleasing design. The evolution of typography is exceptional -- from pictograms to Egyptian hieroglyphics to the geometric structure and order that the Greeks applied to the cockeyed Phoenician characters, the known alphabet became art forms of great harmony and beauty. And though the West cannot claim it, the invention of printing was one of the most important breakthroughs in human history. Romans were the first to give care to both forms as well as counterforms - something which designers of this day and age still adhere to. The Illuminated Manuscripts gave the world a vast vocabulary of graphic forms, page layouts, illustration and letter styles as well as techniques; it was a wealth of information which designers in this age base all of their designs upon.

In a brief fast-forward of history, the coming of the Sun King, Louis XIV of France, also came with the invention of Transitional typography, which was a more scientific and rational structural basis for letterforms, instead of the more calligraphic blackletterforms of Gothic design. With the Roman du Roi (the king's alphabet) eventually emerged Modern typography due to designers like Bodoni . The Renaissance itself saw the rise of antiquity and of humanism, and this affected both modern thought as well as design. Designers began looking back toward the basics of typography and of the Roman letterform - shedding the ideals of Gothic blockletter type - into the very letters and alphabet that we use today. The understanding of these concepts - of the history of language and creation of the alphabet - is significant in modern design; if you cannot grasp the history of type, then you can't see it's future. The use of Roman letterforms in twenty-first century design is unsurpassed in both print and in digital use. When we, as designers, can comprehend the very building blocks of typography, we can manipulate them with more ease, and can use their base as a platform to exapand and create new letterforms and fonts, even as the tools of typography continue to evolve.