Historical Milestone And Typography

Historical milestone and typhography

The first type of messages that we find in the history records were a series of pictures that told a story known as pictographs.

From pictographs developed more sophisticated ways of communicating through ideographs. Ideographs substituted symbols and abstractions for pictures of events. A symbol of a star represented the heavens or a peace pipe represented peace. Native Americans and Egyptians are examples of some folks who used ideographs. Chinese alphabets are still based on ideographs.

From ideographs developed a system pioneered by the Egyptians known as hieroglyphics. The Egyptians still used drawings to represent objects or ideas, but were the first to use objects to represent sounds.

At around 1200 BC, the Phoenicians gained their independence from the Egyptians and developed their own alphabet that was the first to be composed exclusively of letters.

The next great civilization, the Romans further developed the alphabet by using 23 letters from the Etruscans who based their language on the Greek. They took the letters ABEZHIKMNOTXY intact, they remodeled the CDGLPRSV and revived two Phoenicians letters discarded by the Greeks, the F and Q. The Z comes at the end of our alphabet because for a while the Romans discarded it, but then brought it back when they thought it was indispensable. The Romans contributed short finishing strokes at the end of letters known as serifs. Roman letters feature the first examples of thick and thin strokes.

The Type Designers

~Claude Garamond from France was the first that developed the first true printing typeface not designed to imitate handwriting, but designed on rigid Geometric principles. Garamond also began the tradition of naming the typeface after himself. Garamond became the dominant typeface for the next 200 years.

~In 1557, Robert Granjon invented the first cursive typeface, which was built to simulate handwriting.

~In 1734, William Caslon issued the typeface bearing his name which included straighter serifs and greater contrasts between major and minor strokes.

~In 1757, John Baskerville introduced the first Transitional Roman which increased contrast between thick and thin strokes, had a nearly vertical stress in the counters and very sharp serifs.

~in 1780 Firmin Didot and Giambattista Bodoni of Italy developed the first Modern Romans. The moderns carry the transitionals to the extreme. Thin strokes are hairlines, plus a full vertical stress.

~In 1815 Vincent Figgins designed a face with square serifs for the first time and this became known as the Egyptians or more recently as the Slab Serifs.

~In 1816 William Caslon IV produced the first typeface without serifs (sans serifs) of any kind, but it was ridiculed at the time.

~In the 1920s, Frederic Goudy developed several innovative designs and became the world's first full time type designer. We owe the Broadway typeface to him.

~In 1954, Max Miedinger, a Swiss artist created the most popular typeface of our time...Helvetica. The Swiss also championed the use of white space as a design element.