The History of Typography - Animated Short

(Typewriter clicks)

Type is Power

The power to express words and ideas

visually

its timeless

but always changing

and thats what we're going to explore

most people agree that the creator

of Typography was a German man

named Johannes Gutenberg

and Yes he wore a hat like that

before Gutenberg came along and

revolutionised the world of communication

books needed to be scribed by hand usually

by monks which was very time consuming and

expensive.

So Gutenberg created Blackletter

the first ever typeface modelled after the

writing of the scribes.

Blackletter has thick vertical lines and

thin horizontal connectors which made it

great for scribing but it looked very

dense and squished together when printed.

Something needed to change

enter Roman type.

This particular typeface is Cambria which

you're probably used to seeing on your

word processor but the first ever

Roman typeface was created in the

15th Century by the Frenchman

Nicholas Jenson.

This is his typeface right here

Jenson worked mainly in Venice, Italy

and was inspired by the lettering

found on Ancient Roman buildings.

His letter forms where based on

straight lines and regular curves.

This made them very clear and legible

compared to the dense darkness of Blackletter.

This legible new typeface was an

instant success and quickly spread

across Europe riding on the coat tails

of the Renaissance.

The next major innovation in typography

after Roman letter was Italics.

Which are like slanted and stylised

versions of Roman type

they were created in the late 15th Century

by Aldus Manutius from Italy

as a way of fitting more letters on

the page and saving money.

Now we use it Italics interspersed in

Roman type for emphasis.

Aldus Manutius also created the modern

comma and semicolon

but thats another story.

Type development fairly stagnant until

the 18th Century in England when

William Caslon created a typeface

that set a new standard for legibility.

Well it wasn't anything radical

it was just what the world was looking for

the style of Caslon's typeface is now

referred to as Old Style

A few decades later another Britt

named John Baskerville created a new

variety of typeface which we call

Transitional

later still a Frenchman named Didot and an

Italian named Bodoni created typefaces

that we have classified as Modern.

Most Serif typefaces fit into one of these

three categories but what does each

category mean?

An Old Style typeface has letters that

have thick serifs and low contrast

between thick and thin strokes

A Transitional typeface has letters with

thinner serifs and a higher contrast

between thick and thin strokes

and a Modern typeface has letters with

very thin serifs and extreme contrast

between thick and thin strokes.

Next William Caslon's great grandson, named

William Caslon the fourth got sick of all of

these serifs so he decided to remove them

entirely and made a new kind of typeface

called the Sans Serif.

It didn't catch on immediately but

would eventually get really big

During the second industrial revolution

advertising created a need for new typefaces

letters were made taller

and wider mainly used in large sizes

on posters and billboards.

Thing got pretty weird but one happy

result of all of this experimentation is

Egyptian or Slab Serif

it has really thick serifs and is usually

used for titles

As a backlash to the complexity found in

typefaces of the 19th Century

the early 20th Century brought

something simple

Paul Renner from Germany created a typeface

called Futura and it was based on

simple geometric shapes

this is called the Geometric Sans

around the same time a British man named

Eric Gill created a typeface called

Gill Sans that was similar to a geometric sans

but with gentler more natural curves

and this is called Humanist Sans

The next major step in the world of Sans Serif

happened in Switzerland in 1957

with the introduction of Helvetica

it has simple curves and is available

in many different weights and some

would call it the worlds favourite typeface

The world of typography changed forever with

the introduction of the computer

there were a few difficult years of crude

Pixel type due to the primitive screen

technology

but then technology evolved and computers

began to allow for the creation of thousands

of beautiful typefaces

and the odd ..ummm.. dud

but now anyone has the freedom to

create their own unique typeface

and that is the History of Typography