The History of Type, pg12

This section of the reading is basically just an introduction, so very little information is actually given...

Type is defined as the way ideas are given a concrete, visual form to facilitate communication. It's origins are derived from ancient times and many written languages used today have evolved from markings that were symbolic of specific objects rather than arbitrary characters.

Another point made is that the history of type is hazy due to advancements being made in different areas of the world during roughly the same time period. For example, though Guttenberg is generally credited with the invention of movable type in the 1440s, similar creations were produced by Italian, Netherlandic, and Chinese inventors, the earliest of which is credited to the Chinese Bi Sheng in the 1040s.

Also mentioned is the phenomenon of type of a certain style being directly associated with specific historic events, such as the script used to pen the Declaration of Independence.

Question - Is the history of typographical technology concrete? Copy and paste Cite at least one example to support your answer!

Typographic Terms

Absolute Measurements - Measuring scales which never change such as points, picas, inches, etc.

Relative Measurements - Measurements which vary depending on factors such as the font used. For example an 'em' or 'en' dash or space.

Kearning - Space between two characters. A--usually small--adjustment to the tracking. Often capitals with a lot of space on the under-righthand side will make adjacent lower-case characters appear too far away. This is an example of a time when a kearning adjustment is necessary.

Leading - The space between lines of text. Pronounced with a short 'e' sound.

Points/Picas - Units of measurement used in the printmaking business because they are easily divisible (12pt in a Pica; 12 is a multiple of 3 and 2). There are 6 picas in an inch.

x-height - The height of the 'x' character of a font (and most lowercase letters minus their ascenders and descenders). A relative measurement.

The em - A relative measurement equal to the point-size of the font. Used for spacing, indentation, etc.

The en - Half an em

Dashes (hyphen, en, em) - Horizontal lines of various lengths. The hyphen is 1/3 of an em in length.

Alignments: Justifcation, Flush Left, Flush Right - How a body of text meets it's boundries. Justified text is spaced so that the words on both sides of the paragraph touch the edges of it's container. A body of text that is either left or right aligned will only have words touching the boundries on one side, leaving the other side ragged.

Letterspacing - The spacing between letters...

Tracking - The spacing between lines of text measured from baseline to baseline.

Word Spacing - Spacing between words. Could be thought of as the width of a space.

Widow - A solitary word on the last line of a paragraph.

Orphan(s) - One or two words that were continued from a previous spread.

Indent, Fist Line Indent, Hanging Indent - A space that moves type away from the left edge (or right edge, if right aligned). First line indentation only occurs on the first line of a paragraph; a Hanging indent occurs on all lines except the first.

Who Was Adrian Frutiger

Adrian Frutiger is a Swiss typeface designer who is most famous for his Univers font, a grotesque (or, some claim, neo-grotesque) sans-serif font, meaning that it has lowercase letters as well as the capitals. Adrian was born in 1928 and started developing scripts in rebellion of the cursive taught in school. Later in life, he was an apprentice under Otto Schaerffli, then moved on to study calligraphy at the school of applied arts in Zürich. After this, he joined the Deberny & Peignot foundry, where he developed such fonts as "Président", "Phoebus", and "Ondine."

One of his innovations in typography was his invention of a two-integer numbering system to denote weight and width respectively (weight being the width of the line elements of the characters and width being the width of the entire character). Using 55 as a middle-ground (roman), fonts branch out (as shown in the grid pictured) ranging from the thin and condensed 39 (high numbers are condensed and low, extended, in the second place) to an extended bold 93, a condensed bold 67, and so on.

TYPO
Wikipedia - Adrian Frutiger
Wikipedia - Univers

Who Was John Baskerville?

John Baskerville was an 18th century printer, typefounder, letter designer, stonecutter, engraver, and master writer from England. He is best known for his font "Baskerville" which is considered a transitional font between the fonts of William Caslon and those of Giambattista Bodoni and Firmin Didot, which were modern in style. John was a perfectionist who sought to improve upon Caslon's work by increasing line-width contrast, making the curved elements rounder, and altering the axis of round characters. One of the distinguishing characteristics of his font face is the somewhat flamboyant tail of the capital 'Q.'

As a traditional typeface, it was doomed to a short run in popularity, being soon replaced by the fonts of Bodoni and Didot, but it was the recipient of a fair amount of notoriety while it was in vogue. Benjamin Franklin was one of it's admirers, and he was responsible for it's exposure in the then-new United States where it was used for government documents. It was not until the 1900's that the font experienced a revival and came to be known for more than its role in typographic history.

John's masterwork is considered to be the Bible he made for Cambridge University, for which he even crated his own paper.


Typophile.com
MyFonts.com
Wikipedia - John Baskerville
Wikipedia - Baskerville (Font)