Some interesting designed images

Typography

Typography is the study of type and type faces, the evolution of printed letters. Since man did not begin to write with type, but rather the chisel, brush, and pen, it is the study of handwriting, that provides us with the basis for creating type designs.

The first thing to keep in mind when thinking about the history and development of typography is that many early printers were not just printers, but typographers as well. The first independent typefounder was a French gentleman by the name of Claude Garamond. Although not the inventor of movable type, Garamond was the first to make type available to printers at an affordable price.

Garamond based his type on the roman font of Griffo (a man commissioned by Manutius to develop an italic type for the Aldine classics).Before Garamond's independent practice, men such as Jenson, Griffo, and Caxton played specific roles in the development of type. Jenson perfected the roman type, Caxton conceived a bastard gothic font, and Griffo developed italic.

Several of the fonts we see on our computers's have evolved from the work of typefounders of the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries.The weakest period the history of type rests in the sixteenth and seventeenth century printing presses. Many presses (for reasons unknown) mixed many sizes and styles of type into single pages, fliers, and playbills. These 100-150 years witnessed very little in the progression of typography.

Johannes Gutenberg and the printing press

The earliest dated printed book known is the "Diamond Sutra", printed in China in 868 CE. However, it is suspected that book printing may have occurred long before this date.

In 1041, movable clay type was first invented in China. Johannes Gutenberg, a goldsmith and businessman from the mining town of Mainz in southern Germany, borrowed money to invent a technology that changed the world of printing. Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press with replaceable/moveable wooden or metal letters in 1436 (completed by 1440). This method of printing can be credited not only for a revolution in the production of books, but also for fostering rapid development in the sciences, arts and religion through the transmission of texts.

The Gutenberg press with its wooden and later metal movable type printing brought down the price of printed materials and made such materials available for the masses. It remained the standard until the 20th century. The Gutenberg printing press developed from the technology of the screw-type wine presses of the Rhine Valley. It was there in 1440 that Johannes Gutenberg created his printing press, a hand press, in which ink was rolled over the raised surfaces of moveable hand-set block letters held within a wooden form and the form was then pressed against a sheet of paper.

My work..

In my Systems of Communication's class, I have to design my own and unique alphabet...

We learned a lot of things about old typography and fonts. Before creating our alphabet, we had to know a little bit about the history of it...