Typography

TG R A

P H Y

Y P O

nineteenth twentieth, twenty f irst century

The first Egyptian slab-serif was made by Vincent Figgins. The influence of Egypt in Europe resulted in a typeface with serif terminals that may be angular and blunt, or rounded. The slab-serif had a bold appearance and was mainly used in large headlines.

V i n v e n t F i g g i n s

1815

Designed the first fat face, which was introduced for advertising purposes. This is a significant breakthrough in the history of type design. The process of making the fat face was flatten-ing an old face letter, rounding it’s forms and exaggerating it’s molding until it is a swollen modern face.

In French the word “sans” means “without.” This font became a default for body text in screens. Another important event in the first part of the nineteenth century was in 1816. William Caslon IV introduced the first sans serif type in his type catalog under the name of English Egyptian.

R o b e r t T h o r n e

W i l l i a m c a s l o n

1803 1816

from 1830 to the 1880s, wood type posters flourished in America and Europe. The steam-driven press and the mechanical casters eventually led to the development of web presses and the mass produc-tion of newspapers.

perspective letters were released.his development was a great advance in the perception of typography. The letters play in the space and generate depth and the feeling of 3D.

Clarendon was released and became immediately became very popular. Clarendon has been used in logotypes of corporations such as Sony, Wells Fargo, and the Spanish newspaper el País.

w o o dt y p e

V i n v e n tF i g g i n s

R O B E R T B E S L E Y

1830 1836 1845

He was the last living member of the Bauhaus, he designed Universal, a geometric sans-serif type face. Bayer developed a crisp visual style and adopted the use of all-lowercase, sans serif typefaces for most Bauhaus publications.

H e r b e r tB a y e r

1925

Another important invention in the end of the nineteenth century was the Linotype machine. This revolutionary machine was designed by the German, Ottmar Mergenthaler, who immigrated to the United States in 1872. The machine was released and put into operation in 1886 in the office of the New York Tribune. It was a significant improvement over the manual type setting. It al-lowed lines of metal type to be set from a keyboard similar to a typewriter instead of setting them piece by piece. “Elementary Typography” was

the title of an article written by Jan Tschichold and published in 1925. It had the first state-ment of constructivist graphic design principles. Among the prominent artists in the Con-structivism art movement in Russia that used typography in their art were Alexander Rod-chenko and Constantin Vialov.

O t t m a r Mergenthaler

J a n T s c h i c h o l d

1886

1925

After three years of work, Paul Renner finished the design of Futura, one of the most successful sans serifs ever designed. Renner was not associated with Bauhaus but he shared their principles. The Bauhaus and Renner believed that a modern typeface should express modernity. Futura is commonly considered the major typeface development to come out the Constructivist movement.

Like in the nineteenth century in the twentieth century new typefaces were designed, became very popular and had greater impact. Gill Sans, a typeface designed by Eric Gill, was released in 1928. This typeface became very popular 1929, was used in the London and North Eastern Railway, BBC and Penguin Books.

In the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, printing technologies have continued to advance. The printing process has also evolved but some maintain the basic concepts developed in nineteenth century and even before. The application of typefaces have been affected by industrial manufacturing processes. Today the personal computer has dramatically changed the dynamic between designers and typefaces. The computer became a platform where software that exploits the graphic potential was grow-ing strong. And had as a effect foundries created by individu-als. Today designers can take a change of designing their fonts or accessing hundreds of typefaces through internet.

Early in the relation ship between men and computer, in 1987 Emigre fonts were designed with Apple Macintosh and in 1987. This moment was important in the because it was one of the earliest typographi-cal exploration with the com-puter but today in the Twenty first century the computer and software like the adobe creative suite has change so much and has become a power full tool in the invention and manipulation of typography.

P a u l r e n n e r

E r i cg i l l

1927 1928 twentieth, twenty f irst century