preface - indigoawards.s3.amazonaws.com€¦ · arabic hebrew nabataean greek alphabet glagolitic...

Alphabet is a series of marks that we use to represent sounds, and they haven’t always been the way they do. Throughout the centuries, alphabet has continuously changed and evolved, up until the way they are today. Studying the history of letters has taught me that the way letterforms are now, may not be the way that they’ll always be, and through this book, I will be talking about some of the major alphabets that the current alphabet has evolved from.

Evolution, as it is defined by the Oxford Dictionary, is the process by which different kinds of living organism are believed to have developed from earlier forms during the history of the earth; or the gradual development of something. However, to encapsulate the massive word into one: an evolution is a change. Now — a change, especially those that happened through a long period of time, can be visualized in many different ways: charts, compar-ison, the gradient between the two (or more) subjects. Yet, that is not how I envisioned this book to be. I perceive the change as a form of movement, and I would like to bring that movement into the alphabets to be discussed, as well as the way to indicate the evolution.

Additionally, in the last section, I will be discussing 24 type-faces that have been prevalent in the history of type, and for the purpose of this book, I will start the book with the study of alphabet — not writing.

preface

Type Ancestry

Phoenician Alphabet Arabic Hebrew Nabataean

Greek Alphabet Glagolitic Cyrillic

Frozen Letters

Etruscan Alphabet Ogham Runic

Roman Development

Capitals Roman Cursive Uncial Carolingian Blackletter Serif Egyptian Serif Sans Serif

Pixel Type

Dot Matrix Segmented Type Bitmap

02 03 07 11

15 17 21

25 27 35

41 45 49 53 57 61 65 69

73 79 83

Years in typefaces

Jenson Garamond Fournier Bell Clarendon Akzidenz-Grotesk Copperplate Gothic Franklin Gothic Centaur Wilhelm Klingspor Schrift Futura Gill Sans Peignot Mistral Univers Helvetica ITC Avant Garde Gothic ITC Bauhaus Trajan Template Gothic Mason Base 9/12 Gotham Whitney

87

89 91 93 95 97 99 101 103 105 107 109 111 113 115 117 119 121 123 125 127 129 131 133 135

phoenicianalphabet

01 — type ancestry

The Phoenicians were a group of Semitic people, comparatively small by modern standards who occupied a number of towns; Byblos, Sidon and Tyre, amongst others, on the coast of the eastern Mediterranean in 11 BCE. The Phoenician is also linked to the color purple. Although the Phoenicians called themselves Kena’ani, or Canaanites, the Greeks have also called them the “purple people” and their country, Phoiniki — the Greek word for purple or crimson being phoînix. The Phoenicians travelled, and did tradings throughout the Mediterranean (the sea in the middle of the world), and their alphabet went with them, and it got noticed.

A major difference between our Latin alphabet and that of the Phoenicians is that each letter had a meaningful name. A was called Aleph (which also meant cow), because the letter evolved from a simplified drawing of a cow’s head. However, the A that we know, just means A. The letter names are extrapolated from ancient Hebrew, with a key source being the alphabetic listing used in the Bible book Lamentations. The Phoenician alphabet is also the precursor of modern day Hebrew and Arabic.

02

The origins of the Arabic alphabet can be traced back to the writing of the semi-nomadic Nabataean tribes, who inhabited southern Syria and Jordan, Northern Arabia, and the Sinai Peninsula. Surviving stone inscriptions in the Nabataean script, a descendant of Phoenician alphabet, show strong similarities to the modern Arabic writing system. Like Arabic, their written texts consisted largely of consonants and long vowels, with variations on the same basic letterforms used to represent a number of sounds.

Arabic is written and read from right to left, and their upper and lowercase letters do not have any distinctions. However, shapes of letters usually vary depending on whether they are in an initial, medial, or final position in a word. Punctuation marks were not adopted until the 20th century. Short vowels are represented by a set of marks below or above the letters, which helps in the pronunciation of a word. These marks are usually only written in the Qur'an, where correct recitation is really important.


arabic/phoenician 01.01/arabic

Introduction to Arabic Alphabet

04

ا

ذدخ

ث

ز

ش

غ

ن

ص

ف

ه

ض

ق

و

ط

ك

ي

ظ

ل

ع

م

س

ت حجب

رalef

kha

shin

ghain

theh

ra

ta

kaf

waw

beh

dal

sad

feh

nun

jim

zin

dha

lam

yeh

teh

dhal

dad

qaf

heh

ha

sin

ain

mim

0605

Hebrew is a member of the Canaanite group derived from Semitic languages. It was the language used by the early Jews, but from 586 BC it started to be replaced by Aramaic. By 200 AD, the use of Hebrew as an everyday language had largely ceased, but it continued to be used for literary and religious functions, as well as lingua franca among Jews from different countries. During the mid-19th century the first efforts were made to revive Hebrew as a everyday language. One man who played a major role in these efforts was Eliezer Ben Yehuda (1858 – 1922), who was the first to make exclusive use of Hebrew in his home, encouraged the use of Hebrew among others, as well as its use in schools.

Today, Hebrew is spoken by some 5 million people mainly in Israel, where it is an official language along with Arabic. and a further 2 million people speak the language in Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Palestinian West Bank and Gaza, Panama, the UK and USA.

The first alphabet used to write Hebrew made its presence during the late second and first millennia BC. Hebrew alphabet is closely related to the Phoenician alphabet. The modern Hebrew alphabet was developed from an alphabet known as Early Aramaic.

Introduction to Hebrew Alphabet

hebrew/phoenician

01.02/hebrew


07

וא זב חג טד המ םי נכ ןך עסל

ק רפ שף תצ ץ1009

nabataean/phoenician

Introduction to Nabataean Alphabet

01.03/nabataean

Nabataean alphabet is the writing system used between approximately 150 BC and 150 AD in the Nabataean kingdom of Petra in the Arabian Peninsula. Used by the Nabataeans to write the Aramaic language, this alphabet was related to the Aramaic alphabet (a direct descendant of Phoenician alphabet), one of the major Semitic scripts.

The Nabataean script gave rise to the neo-Sinaitic alphabet, the ancestor of the Arabic alphabet. Just like its Semitic forerunner, Nabataean had 22 letters, all representing consonants, and was written from right to left. Nabataean inscriptions have also been found in Egypt and Italy and on coins from Petra.

A bilingual inscription in Nabataean and Greek scripts was discovered on the Aegean Island of Kos. The Nabataean script did not look like the distinctive and dynamic shapes of Arabic, but it’s naïve and doodle forms performed the important role of breaking from the visual lexicon of Canaanite and Aramaic lettershapes, leaving a tabula rasa for Arabic letters.

12


From left to right:

h, z, w, h, d, g, b,

(, s, n, m, l, k, y, ţ,

t, š, r, q, Ş, p

1413

16

greekalphabet


Herodotus (c. 484 – 425 BCE), a Greek historian, referred to Greek letters as phoinikeia grammata, or better known as Phoenicians letters. Although the Greek alphabet today has a modest number of users, it is the oldest alphabet in continuous use (dating back to the 8th century BCE) and Greece is the channel by which all of Europe became literate and gained the alphabet, including where the alphabet gained its name, alpha-beta. Proto-Sinaitic, North-Semitic and Phoenician scripts have been mentioned thus far as alphabets; yet this is not strictly true. They are consonantaries, or abjads, which are alphabets without vowels. The Greeks are the ones who then expanded the alphabet with symbols for vowels when they finally acquired them from the Phoenicians.

The Greek alphabet eventually came to contain seven vowel letters: A, short E, long E, I, short O (omicron), long O (omega) and U. The Greeks changed the direction of writing, and developed a style of writing called ‘boustrophedon’. meaning how the ox ploughs, which meant that lines of text-read alternately from right to left and left to right. As they changed the direction of reading, the Greeks also changed the orientation of the letterforms.

16

Glagolitic alphabet is a script invented for the Slavic languages approximately during the 860 CE by the Eastern Orthodox Christian missionaries St. Cyril and his brother St. Methodius. The two missionaries originated in Thessaloníki, Greece, on the southern edge of the Slavic-speaking world. They were sent from Byzantium to “Great Moravia” — likely centred around present day Moravia in the Czech Republic. The language they used, though not identical with that of the Moravians, was usable by the latter. This is now called Old Church Slavonic, or Old Church Slavic.

Their mission in Moravia lasted only a few decades. The missionaries’ disciples then went to South Slavic regions, more specifically Bulgaria and Macedonia, where they constructed a new script for Slavic in the 900s, based on capital Greek letters, but with some additions. This alphabet became later known as Cyrillic. Although dissimilar to Glagolitic in letter-form, Cyrillic had approximately the same number of letters as Glagolitic and identical sound values for those letters.

Old Church Slavonic was written in Glagolitic for around 300 years, and then Glagolitic gradually gave way to Cyrillic, which is still used for Church Slavonic service books in the Orthodox Christian churches and also for certain modern Slavic languages. Glagolitic gave way almost completely to Latin letters, though a few Croatian church communities went on to use the Glagolitic script service books into the 1900s, and Glagolitic is respected as part of the Croatian cultural heritage.

Introduction to Glagolitic Alphabet


glagolitic/greek01.04/glagolitic

17

a b v g d

e Ž 3 y z

Ï i j k Lm n o p r

s t u f hw c Ç Š É

....

. . . .

....

.

. . . .

....

. . .

A (az), B (buki), V (vidi), G (glagole), D (dobro)

E (est), Ž (živite), (zelo), Y, Z (zemla)

Ï (iže,) I (i), J (je), K (kako), L (ljudi)

M (mislite), N (naš), O (on), P (pokoi), R (rci)

S (slovo), T (trdo), U (uk), F (frt), H (hir)

(ot), C (ci), Č (črv), Š (ša), Ja (jat)

E (est), Ž (živite), (zelo), Y, Z (zemla)

Ï (iže,) I (i), J (je), K (kako), L (ljudi)

M (mislite), N (naš), O (on), P (pokoi), R (rci)

(ot), C (ci), Č (črv), Š (ša), Ja (jat)

20

Cyrillic alphabet is a writing system developed in the 9th– 10th century for Slavic-speaking people of the Eastern Orthodox faith. It is currently used exclusively as one of the several alpha-bets for more than 50 languages, notably Belarusian, Bulgarian, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Macedonian, Montenegrin (also called Serbian), Russian, Serbian, Tajik, Turkmen, Ukrainian, and Uzbek.

The Cyrillic alphabet was an indirect result of the missionary work of the 9th century “Apostles of the Slavs,” St. Cyril and St. Methodius. However, their mission to Moravia lasted only a few decades. As mentioned in Glagolitic section, their dis-ciples went to South Slavic regions of the first Bulgarian empire, now known as Bulgaria and the Republic of Macedonia, and they constructed a new script for Slavic based on capital Greek letters, with some additions, which became known as Cyrillic. Saints Naum and Clement, both of Ohrid disciples of St. Cyril and St Methodius, are sometimes credited with having devised the Cyrillic alphabet.

As the Slavic languages were richer in sounds than Greek, 43 letters were originally provided to represent them; the added letters were modifications or combinations of Greek letters or (in the case of the Cyrillic letters for ts, sh, and ch) were based on Hebrew. The earliest literature written in Cyrillic was translations of parts of the Bible and various church texts.


cyrillic/greek

Introduction to Cyrillic Alphabet

01.05/cyrillic

22

АБВГДЕЁЖЗИЙК

ЛМНОПРСТУФХЦ

ЧШЩЪЫЬЭЮЯ

а (A), б (B), в (V), г (G), д (D), е (E)

ё (YO), ж (ZH), з (Z), и (I), й (Y), к (K)

л (L), м (M), н (N), о (O), п (P), р (R)

с (S), т (T), у (U), ф (F), х (KH), ц (TS)

ч (CH), ш (SH), щ (SHCH), ъ (—), ы (Y), ь (')

э (E), ю (YU), я (YA)

26

etruscanalphabet

The Etruscans lived on the Italic peninsula before the Roman Empire, in an area called Etruria. A great amount of Roman culture was informed by the Etruscans. Much of the Greek culture that the Romans imitated was trans-mitted via them. Ironicaly, the famous icon of Rome, the Lupa Capi-tolina, is an Etruscan artefact. The Etruscan language was not Semitic like the Phoenicians, and not Indo – European like Greek, it was, in fact, barely related to any other language. One peculiarity is that it did not contain any voiced stops (b,d, and g) so it would not be possible to say the words: bad dog, it would sound more like pat tok.

Nevertheless, they still kept the letters for these sounds in their alphabet. We know more about the Etruscan alphabet than the language, as the speed of assimilation of the alphabet was rapid at this time in history. The modern Latin alphabet does not have useful Greek letters like long E and long O, as the Greek alphabet had already been taken for use and development by the Etruscans before the Greeks had developed them. Similarly, although the Etruscans used their alphabet for about 800 years, it passed to the Romans within about a century.

02 — frozen letters

26

ogham/etruscan 02 —

frozen letters

02.01/ogham

Introduction to Ogham Alphabet

Ogham, also known as the ‘Celtic Tree Alphabet’, is estimated to have been used from the fourth to the tenth century CE. It is believed to have been possibly named after the Irish God Ogma, however this is debated widely. Ogham actually refers to the characters themselves, the script as a whole is more appropriate-ly named Beith-luis-nin after the order of alphabet letters B, L, F, S, and N. The script originally contained 20 letters grouped into four groups of five. Each of these groups was named after its first letter. There are around four to five hundred Ogham inscriptions that is surviving throughout Britain and Ireland with the largest number appearing in Pembrokeshire. As for the origin of Ogham, there are four popular theories discussing. The differing theories are unsurprising considering that the script has similarities to ciphers in Germanic runes, Latin, elder Futhark, as well as the Greek alphabet. These differing theories will be shown on the following page.

27

The first theory is based on the work of scholars such as Carney and MacNeill who suggest that Ogham was first created as a cryptic alphabet designed by the Irish. They assert that the Irish designed it in response to political, military and/or religious reasons so that those with know-ledge of just Latin could not read it.

The second theory is by McManus, who argued that Ogham was invented by the first Christians in early Ireland in a quest for uniqueness. The argument maintains that the primitive Irish language were too difficult to transcribe into Latin.

The third theory states that the Ogham script was invented in West Wales in the fourth century BCE to intertwine the Latin alphabet with the Irish language, to serve as a response to the intermarriage between the Romans and the Romanized Britons. This would account for the fact that some of the Ogham inscriptions are bilingual; spelling out Irish and Brythonic–Latin.

The fourth theory is supported by MacAlister and used to be popular before other theories began to overtake it. It states that Ogham was invented in Cisalpine Gaul around 600 BCE by Gaulish Druids who created it as a hand signal and oral language.

3029

First theory: This theory is based on the work of scholars such as Carney and MacNeill who suggest that Ogham was first created as a cryptic alphabet designed by the Irish. They assert that the Irish designed it in response to political, military and/or religious reasons so that those with knowledge of just Latin could not read it.

Second theory: This theory is formed by McManus, who argued that Ogham was invented by the first Christians in early Ireland in a quest for uniqueness. The argument maintains that the sounds of the primitive Irish language were too difficult to transcribe into Latin.

Third theory: This theory states that the Ogham script from invented in West Wales in the fourth century BCE to intertwine the Latin alphabet with the Irish language in response to the intermarriage between the Romans and the Romanized Britons. This would account for the fact that some of the Ogham inscriptions are bilingual; spelling out Irish and Brythonic – Latin.

Fourth theory: The fourth theory is supported by MacAlister and used to be popular before other theories began to overtake it. It states that Ogham was invented in Cisalpine Gaul around 600 BCE by Gaulish Druids who created it as a hand signal and oral language. MacAliser suggests that it was transmitted orally until it was finally put into writing in early Christian Ireland. He argues that the lines incorporated into Ogham represent the hand by being based on four groups of five letters with a sequence of strokes from one to five. However, there is no evidence for MacAlisters theory that Ogham’s language and system originated in Gaul.

Mythical theories for the origin of Ogham also appear in texts from the eleventh to fifteenth centuries. The eleventh century Lebor Gabala Erenn tells that Ogham was invented soon after the fall of the tower of Babel, as does the fifteenth century Auraicept na n-eces text. The Book of Babymote also includes ninty-two recorded secret modes of writing Ogham written in 1390 – 91 CE.

3029

ᚆᚇᚈᚉᚊ

hÚath

Dair

Tinne

Coll

Quert

ᚐᚑᚒᚓᚔ

Ailm

Onn

Úr

Eadha

Iodhadh

3231

ᚁᚂᚃᚄᚅ

Beith

Luis

Fearn

Sail

Nion

ᚋᚌᚍᚎᚏ

Muin

Gort

nGéatal

Straif

Ruis

33

The word rune comes from the Norse rún which means mystery or secret. Little is known about the origins of the Runic alpha-bet and no one knows exactly when, where or who invented it.

Runes are the characters of the earliest written alphabet used by the Germanic peoples of Europe called Futhark. The runic alphabet was used within Germanic languages but primarily in Nordic countries. Inscriptions have been found throughout northern Europe from the Balkans to Germany, Scandinavia, the British Isles and Iceland, and were in use from about 100 to 1600 AD.

Runic inscriptions have even been found in North America, supporting claims that the Vikings arrived in the Americas long before Columbus. These days English and other Northern European languages are written using Latin letters, but they used to be written using “Runestaves.” The oldest known runic inscription dates to 160 AD and is found on the Vimose Comb reading simply “HARJA”.

runic/etruscan

Introduction to Runic Alphabet

02.02/runic

02 — frozen letters

36

The Runic alphabet is known as Futhark after the first six runes, namely f, u, th, a, r, and k. It consisted of 24 letters, 18 consonants and 6 vowels, and was a writing system where each character has a certain sound. Runes could be written in both directions and could also be inverted or upside down. The earliest runes consisted almost entirely of straight lines, arranged singly or in combinations of two or more. Later runes took on more complex forms and some even resemble modern day letters of the English alphabet.

With the resemblance to Mediterranean writing, it is thought that Futhark was adapted from either the Greek or Etruscan alphabet and its origin begins further back than the pre-historic Northern Europe. The earliest Futhark inscriptions don’t actually have a fixed writing direction, but instead it was written left-to-right or right-to-left, which was a feature of very archaic Greek or Etruscan alphabets before the third century BC.

One theory is that the runic alphabet was developed by the Goths, a Germanic people. Two inscriptions, the Negau and the Maria Saalerberg inscriptions, written in Etruscan script in a Germanic language and dating from the first and second centuries BC, give credence to the theory of Etruscan origins.

ᚠ ᚢ ᚦ ᚫ ᚱ ᚳ

ᛇ ᛈ ᛉ ᛋ ᛏ ᛒ

ᚷ ᚹ ᚻ ᚾ ᛁ ᛄ

ᛖ ᛗ ᛚ ᛝ ᛟ

.....

. . . . .

.....

. . . .

3837

romanalphabet

40

03 — roman development

Latin alphabet, also called Roman alphabet is the most widely used alpha-betic writing system in the world, the standard script of the English language and the languages of most of Europe and those areas settled by Europeans. Developed from the Etruscan alphabet at some time before 600 BC, it can be traced through Etruscan, Greek, and Phoenician scripts to the North Semitic alphabet used in Syria and Palestine about 1100 BC. The earliest inscription in the Latin alphabet appears on the Praeneste Fibula, a cloak pin dating from about the 7th century BC, which reads, “MANIOS MED FHEFHAKED NUMA- SIOI” (in Classical Latin: “Manius me fecit Numerio,” meaning “Manius made me for Numerius”).

The classical Latin alphabet consisted of 23 letters, 21 of which were derived from the Etruscan alphabet. In medieval times, the letter I was differentiated into I, J, and V into U, V, and W, producing an alphabet equivalent to that of modern English with 26 letters. Some European languages currently using the Latin alphabet do not use the letters K and W, and some added extra letters (usually standard Latin letters with diacritical marks added or sometimes pairs of letters read as one sound). In this section, the development of the Roman alphabet will be explored.

40

capitals/roman

03.01/capitals

03 — rom

an development

Introduction to Capital Letters

CAPITALIS were the letters that were used to present the text of a monument in Rome, from CAPITELLVM, meaning the head of column. Romans had another name for their big letters: MAIVSCVLVS (majuscules), which means “quite big”, and we still use the word majuscule to define the letters that are comparatively large, sitting in between two lines. The name we now use to define the refined letters used on monuments is called the CAPITALIS QVADRATA, or Square Capitals, because some feel they were modeled on base characters like O which were proportional to a square. Similar as their epigraphic models, the letterforms of square capitals have serifs added to the finish of their main strokes. The variety of stroke width was achieved by the use of a reed pen which was held at an angle of approximately 60 degrees off the perpendicular.

41

POPVLVSQVE ROMANVS

SENATVS POPVLVSQVE ROMANVS

IMP CAESARI DIVI NERVAE F NERVAE

TRAIANO AVG GERM DACICO PONTIF

MAXIMO TRIB POT XVII IMP VI COS VI P P

ADDECLARANDVM QVANTAE ALTITVDINIS

MONS ET LOCVS TANT...IBVS SIT EGESTVS

44

cursive/roman

Introduction to Roman Cursive

03.02/cursive

Both Square and Rustic Capitals were typically reserved for formal documents of some intended permanence. However, for everyday transactions, they were typically written with a cursive hand, in which forms were simplified for speed. These are then retrospectively divided into two styles: Early or Majuscule cursive, and Late or Minuscule cursive. Majuscule cursive was in use from the 1st century BCE to the 3rd century AD. From this point, the development of the Roman alphabet is greatly informed by this practice, quickening the writing speed and encouraged changes in the order,number, and direction of strokes, and led to changes of the letter shapes within the grid lines — 2 or 4 — of the letters. Starting with Majuscule Cursive and Rustic Capitals, we could see first hints of small letters or minuscules. Following roman cursive is what we know as Uncial letters.

03 — rom

an development

46

On the left, you'll find an excerpt from the beginning part of “The Aeneid”, a Latin epic poem written from about 30 to 19 BCE by Virgil, who was a Roman poet. Composed in hexameters, about 60 lines of which were left unfinished at his death, The Aeneid incorporates the various legends of Aeneas and makes him the founder of Roman greatness. This work is organized into 12 books that relate the story of the legendary founding of Lavinium, which is a parent town of Alba Longa and of Rome). The town is founded by Aeneas, who was informed as he left the burning ruins of Troy that it was his fate to found a new city with a glorious destiny which was located in the West.

Text in Roman: Arma virumque cano, Troiae qui primus ab oris

𐌰ꞇ𐌼𐌰

𐍅𐌹ꞃ𐌵

𐌼q𐌵𐌴

c𐌰

𐌽o tꞃ

o ı𐌻𐌴

quı

𐍀ꞃı𐌼

𐌵ꞅ 𐌰𐌱

o ꞃ𐌹ꞅ

48

uncial/greek

Uncials incorporated some aspects of the Roman cursive hand, especially in the shapes of A, D, E, H, M, U, and Q. ‘Uncia’ is Latin for a twelfth of anything; as a results, some scholars think that uncials refer to letters that are one inch (1/12 of a foot) high. It might, however, be more accurate to think of uncials simply as small letters. The point for the scribe, after all, was to save expensive parchment, and the broad forms of uncials are more readable at small sizes than rustic capitals. A further formalization of the cursive hand, half-uncials marks the formal beginning of lowercase letterforms, replete with ascenders and descenders, 2,000 years after the origin of the Phoenician alphabet. Due to politics and social upheaval on the European continent at the time, the finest examples of half-uncials come from manuscripts produced in Ireland and England.

Introduction to Uncial Letters

03.03/uncial

03 — rom

an development

49

YAAA

APOIA

XAWP

EXEIK

HACIA

AWCß5251

The first unifier of Europe since the Romans, Charlemagne, issued an edict in 789 to standardize all texts which were ecclesiastical. He entrusted this task to the Alcuin of York, Abbot of St.Martin of Tours from 796 to 804, under whose supervision a large group of monks rewrote virtually all the ecclesiastical and, subsequently, secular texts which were in existence then. Their ‘print’, which included both majuscules (upper case) and minuscules (lower case) — set the standard for calligraphy for a century, including punctuation and capi- tulation. These texts were then renewed and safeguarded until the invention of printing With a new literary revolu-tion underway and books being scanned into huge digital archives, it is worth reflecting that this is only possible due to the foresight of the Carolingians.

carolingian/roman

Introduction to Carolingian Letters

03.04/carolingians

03 — rom

an development

54

c𐌰pıtvl𐌰

o ccu𐍂𐍂ıt

t𐌴 mpo 𐍂𐌴

ᛁ𐌽f i𐌽o do

𐍂𐌴 l𐌹c t𐌹s

Known as a masterpiece for Carolingian alphabet, the Moutier-Grandval Bible finds its place in history as the product of Charlemagne’s desire to represent himself as an heir to the great Scholarly heritage of the Roman Empire, and to lift it out of what we would call today 'The dark ages'. One of the people he brought was Alcuin of York, who made books from the Vulgate translations of the Bible in Charlemagne’s scriptorium. The Moutier-Grandval Bible was not made in Alcuin’s time however, it was made under the Abbot Adalhard. Nonetheless, it gives one the idea and impression one could receive from a Vulgate Translation completed under Alcuin.

56

Regional variations on the Alcuin’s script came upon with the dissolution of Charlemagne’s empire. In northern Europe, a condensed, strongly vertical letterform known as the blackletter, gained popularity. In southern Europe, a rounder and more open-handed blackletter known as ‘rotunda’, prevailed. In northern France, England, and the Low Countries, a hybrid of the two, called 'batarde', was predominant. In the north, the blackletter style remained the standard for almost 500 years. In southern Europe, particularly in Italy, the scholars were rediscovering, analyzing, and popularizing both Roman and Greek texts.

Their sources were written in Alcuin’s Caroline miniscule, which they mistakenly believed to be that of the ancient authors. Scribes adapted the rotunda style to the Caroline as they copied the manuscripts, calling it the ‘scrittura humanistica’, — humanist script.

blackletter/roman

Introduction to Blackletter

03.05/blackletter

03 — rom

an development

57

Tex

tura

R

otun

da

Sch

wab

ache

r F

rakt

ur

The basic blackletter scripts are Textura and Rotunda, the former primarily associated with northern Europe and the latter with southern Europe. Both of these book scripts.

After 1480, Schwabacher script appeared in Bohemia, Switzerland and the German states. This type of blackletter was based on local bastarda traditions.

Fraktur, another bastarda-influenced type style, developed from Imperial Chancery hands during the reign of Maximilian I. Its name is derived from the broken curves that distinguish many letters.

6059

In fifteenth-century Italy, humanist writers and scholars rejected gothic scripts in favor of the lettera antica, a classical mode of handwriting with wider, more open forms. Lettera antica was the preference at the time as part of the Renaissance (rebirth) of classical art and literature.

Nicolas Jenson, a Frenchman who had learned to print in Germany, established an influential printing firm in Venice around 1469. His typefaces merged the gothic traditions he had known in France and Germany with the Italian taste for rounder, lighter forms. They are considered among the first — and finest — roman typefaces.

Italic letters, also introduced in fifteenth-century Italy, were modeled on a more casual style of handwriting. While the upright humanist scrips appeared only in expensively produced books, the cursive form thrived in the cheaper writing shops, where it could be written more rapidly than the carefully formed lettera antica.

serif/roman

Introduction to Serif Letters

03.06/serif

03 — rom

an development

62

Baskerville's Virgil of 1757 was his first publica-tion, a project which he began in 1754, and some authorities consider it Baskerville's finest work. The edition became famous for its typography, and overall design. Though book historians draw attention to the first use of wove paper in the first Baskerville edition of Virgil, there is no evidence that Baskerville was especially interested in this innovation in paper. Most of his later books were printed on the traditional laid paper. Besides the innovative typography and book design involved, Baskerville's first edition of Virgil was also known for the "glazed" surface of the paper.

P U B L I I V I R G I L I I

M A R O N I S

E T

B I R M I N G H A M I A E :

Typeis J O H A N N I S B A S K E RV I L L E.

M D C C LV I L

BU C O L IC A,

G E O R GIC A,

AE NEIS.

63

With the rise of industrialization and mass consumption in the nineteenth-century came the explosion of advertising, a new form of communication, which demanded the creations for new kinds of typography. Type designers created big, bold faces by embellishing and engorging the body parts of classical letters. Typefaces of astonishing height, width, and depth then appeared — expanded, contracted, shadowed, inlined, fattened, faceted, and floriated.

Serifs abandoned their role as finishing details to become independent architectural structures, and the vertical stress of traditional letters canted in new directions. By the mid of nineteenth-century, another subset of the Slab Serif class of types began to emerge — the Clarendons. They were an attempt to reign in some of the extravagences of the Fat Face display types, making them fit for use as text faces. Contrast was then reduced, the serifs thinned somewhat and up with the x-height for legibility at those smaller sizes.

egyptian serif/roman

Introduction to Egyptian Serif

03.07/egyptian

03 — rom

an development

65

1809

Description

de l'Égypt

Following Napoleon’s Egyptian campaign and dissemination of images and descriptions via publications like Description de l’Égypte (1809) an intense cultural fascination with all things Egyptian followed. While there was no relationship between Egyptian writing systems and slab serif types, either shrewd marketing or honest confusion led to slab serifs often being called Egyptians, and many early ones are named for the subject: Cairo, Karnak, and Memphis.

The common metonym “Egyptian” is derived from a craze for Egyptian artifacts in Europe and North America in the early nineteenth century, which led typefounders producing Slab Serifs after Figgins’ work to call their designs Egyptian. However, the term Egyptian had previously been used to describe sans-serif types in England, so the term ‘Antique’ was used by British and American typefounders. The term Egyptian was then adopted by French and German foundries, where it became Egyptienne.

6867

sans serif/roman 03 —

roman developm

ent

One could argue that the sans serif typeface existed as far back as ancient times — by their means of execution early chiseled faces were constructed from strokes with unadorn-ed endings. But in reality, it was the late 19th century when type designers deliberately decided to design faces that were without serifs. Type designers balanced the letters by using variable stroke weights (much as serif letters are balanced).

At first, sans serif 's letterforms followed the proportions of the Classical Roman Capitals. However, later sans serifs got their influence from geometric and modernist trends. From the Linotype essay by Adrian Frutiger, “the first sans serif font to appear in a type sample book was by William Caslon IV in 1816. This new form of type caught on quickly and began to appear all over Europe and the U.S., known as Grotesque and Sans Serif.”

Introduction to Sans Serif

03.08/sans serif

70

A

TS

ZLL

C

JJ1

BQJ

E

42

D

N

53

F

Q

67

V

R

JW

MFor years, the signs in the New York City subway system were a bewildering hodgepodge of lettering styles, sizes, shapes, materials, colors, and messages. The original mosaics (dating from as early as 1904), displaying a variety of serif and sans serif letters and decorative elements, were supplemented by signs in terracotta and cut stone. Over the years, enamel signs identifying stations and warning riders not to spit, smoke, or cross the tracks were added to the mix. Efforts to untangle this visual mess began in the mid-1960s, when the city tran- sit authority hired the design firm Unimark International to create a clear and consistent sign system. We can see the results today in the white-on-black signs throughout the subway system, displaying station names, directions, and instructions in crisp Helvetica.

pixelatedtype

74

With the advent of desktop publishing, type design and manufacturing entered a new era. The “analog” letterforms of metal and photo type were converted to a variety of digital formats. The first generation of technology resulted in “bitmap” fonts — comparable to superimposing a sheet of graph paper over a drawn letter and coloring in the boxes (pixels) that fell within the outline of that letter. Bitmapped fonts had the advantage that they could be carefully edited for quality and readability. However, they also had the disadvantage of requiring a separate font for each size and resolution, thereby taking up a relatively large amount of memory.

The current generation of digital font technology provides for “scalable” outline fonts. They are smaller in memory size and faster to process. Analog drawings of letters are plotted with a mouse or stylus to create an outline representation (made up of curves and straight lines). These digitized out- lines are made into a font that is installed in a computer operating system. In this section, I will briefly discuss three of the many current digital type precursors: dot matrix, segment type, and bitmap type.

04 — pixel type

74

If the design of a letter can be stored as numeric code that can be recreated on demand, there is no need to store expensive lead type or use the com- plicated mechanicals of a typewriter. This was the principle behind the dot-matrix printer. The design of a letter is broken down to a grid of dots and then stored as a numeric code. Then, a tiny device con- taining a 3-dimensional analogy of this grid, a grid of rods — also known as hammers — passes across an inked ribbon, much like the one in a typewriter, and the hammers that recreate the dot pattern of a particular letter briefly strike the ribbon, pressing it to the paper.

Introduction to Dot Matrix

dot matrix/pixel04.01/dot m

atrix

04 — pixel type

75

Although little known outside Germany, except in specialist circles, Rudolf Hell was very much a man who helped to shape the world as we know it. In 1927, he invented a direction-finder for pilots and in 1929 he invented the Hellschreiber, a precursor of the fax machine. He was also responsible for contributions to scanner technology, television and printing.

Born in the small Bavarian town of Eggmühl in 1901, Hell studied elec- tronics at Munich Technical University. His great idea was to divide letters, numbers and pictures into small points by electronic means, to transmit these by electronic impulses and to directly write images of characters on paper tape. Already in 1925 the young graduate invented a picture-disassembler tube which was the technical precondition for television. He became famous, however, in 1929, for his Hellschreiber, or teleprinter. This machine was soon being used by the post, press, police and meteorological service. In 1929 Hell gained his doctorate in engineer-ing for his Funkpeilgerät or radio-beam flight direction finder.

RudolfHell

1929

Germany

Hell-FeldHellschreiber

78

Another grid, well-known to any 1970s child is the segmented display. Quite different to a dot-matrix or bitmap, which use a map of many identical units, the design of the letters was broken down to a grid of seven vertical and horizontal bars, and called the 7-segment display or 7-Seg. The technology was only intended to display numerals but the bored school children at the time soon discovered that when certain numbers were keyed in and the display was inverted, it could be made to show words. With the desire for such a technology to display alphabetic characters, additional segments were made, and 16-segment display was created. But segmentation didn’t stop at 16, and the 38-segment display was produced. It was made by a grid of fifteen squares, divided by nine diagonal lines, with four curved lines placed at the corners to create a grid of 38- segments. The 38-segment display was created for use in public information displays.

04 — pixel type

seg-type/pixel

Introduction to Segmented Type

04.02/segmented type

80

In 1963, Wim Crouwel was one of the founders of the design studio Total Design (currently named Total Identity). From 1964 onwards, Crouwel was responsible for the design of the posters, catalogues and exhibitions of the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. In 1967, he designed the typeface New Alphabet, a design that embraces the limitations of the cathode ray tube technology used by early data display screens and phototypesetting equipment and thus only contains horizontal and vertical strokes. Other typefaces from his hand are Fodor and Gridnik. In 1970, Wim Crouwel designed the Dutch pavilion for Expo '70 (Osaka, Japan).

A design of Crouwel that is well known in the Netherlands is that of the Number Postage Stamps for the Dutch PTT. According to Wim Crouwel, New Alphabet was ‘over-the-top and never meant to be really used’. However, as unreadable as it was, it made a comeback in 1988 when designer Brett Wickens used a version of the font on the sleeve of Substance by Joy Division.

th

e n

ew

al

ph

ab

et

8281

Introduction to Bitmap Letters

As mobile phone screens drive the demand for greater visual sophistication in the display of alphabetic characters, and LCD technology has become less expensive, the principle of representing alphabetic characters with a grid of dots or pixels has returned to information and consumer technology. With the ever increasing screen resolution and anti-aliasing, a method of placing intermediate grey or colored pixels around the outline of a letter is improving, meaning that our letter shapes on screen are going to look better and better. Within the machine ring, a reduced 5x5 black or white pixel grid demonstrates how this method might be used in the austere visual medium of a low resolution screen.

bitmap/pixel

04.03/bitmap

04 — pixel type

83

The Lo-Res family of fonts is a synthesis

of pixelated designs, including Emigre's

earlier coarse resolution fonts, as well

as bitmap representations of Base 9.

Lo-Resfamilyby Zuzana Licko

Lo-Res family replaces the preexisting Emigre, Emperor, Oakland and Universal families and groups these related bitmap designs under one family name in the font menu, thereby simplifying their naming. The Lo-Res fonts also offer technical improvements, including a more complete character set, more consistent character shapes among styles and weights, as well as improved alignment among the various resolutions.

Currently, bitmaps are also gaining popularity due to their continued use in electronic gadgets other than PCs. While computer developers strive towards faster performance and higher resolution in high-end devices, respectively lower resolutions remain more affordable, portable and efficient and therefore continue to be implemented in such devices as cell phones, pagers and microwave oven panels.

Whatever the stylistic, cultural or functional reasons behind the adoration of bitmapped type, the result is an increased need for bitmap typefaces which are fine-tuned for the computer's display grid; which has prompted this reworking of Emigre's bitmap font offering into the Lo-Res family.

86

05 — years in typefaces

years in typefacesThere are countless more typefaces that have made their marks in the history. However, in this section, I will only be discussing 24 typefaces out of the hundreds, since that will require, and deserve, another book. For each typeface, there will be paragraphs, set of words, or just a phrase that will be set in them. But they are not just any arbitrary choices of words; every single page that is set in the typeface will have some sort of correlation with it. Along with showcasing the letters, I will also be discussing the origin of the typeface, its classification, and the designer.

87

05 — years in typefaces

87

&&

&& &&

&& &&

&&

&&

&& &&

&& &&

&&

From top

left:

Jenson

G

aramon

d

Fourn

ier B

ell C

larend

on

Ak

ziden

z-Grotesk

C

opp

erplate G

othic

Fran

klin

Goth

ic C

entau

r W

ilhelm

Klin

gspor Sch

rift F

utu

ra G

ill Sans

Peign

ot M

istral U

nivers

Helvetica

ITC

Avan

t Gard

e Goth

ic IT

C B

auh

aus

Trajan

Tem

plate G

othic

Mason

B

ase 9 & 12

Goth

am

Wh

itney

Typefaces to be discussed:

Jenson (c. 1470)

Made in the Renaissance period, Nicolas Jenson’s typeface is one of the very first typefaces with roman letter shapes. It is called a Venetian serif, distinguished from other Humanist serifs by its obviously calligraphic construction and its angled, beaked “e”. There are many interpretations of Jenson’s work, but Adobe’s is one of the most visually appealing and functional. It has four complete subfamilies (called “optical sizes”) to emulate the size-specific designs of the original metal type. Among these, Caption is dark with sturdy serifs and low stroke contrast for small text, whereas Display is light and delicate, with fine details and long extenders for lovely titles. Good for: Any text, short or long, that calls for a rich, flowery perfume.

Country of origin: Italy

Classification: Venetian Humanist Serif

Designer: Nicolas Jenson

05.01/Jenson

4 EUSEBIUS 4DE EVANGELICA PR AEPA-

ratione à Georgio Trapezuntio è Græco in Latinum traductus, opus cuique fi-

deli non folum utile, uerum- etiam iucundum &

perneceffarium, fummáque diligentia emeda-

tum.

PAR ISIIS .

Vænit Antonio Augerello, & Simoni Colinæo.

Ex officina Antonii Augerelli fub figno D Iacobi, uia ad S. Iacobum.

1 5 3 4 .

9089

Quia nouerai mores hominum ;tumetiam pertentare te prprfusuolui, q recte ifta fentires. Sed omittamushaeciam tan dem fili; atq; ad ehm partem fermonis, ex qua egreffi fumus, reuertamur.B. F. Immo euro pater nec reuertamur: quid enim afpluis nobiscum platanis illis ? de iss enim loquebamur. Sed (fi placet) ad Aetnam potius, de qua fermo aberri coeptus eft, properemus.B. P. Mihi hero pérplacet; ita tamen, uta ne feftines: tibi enim ego omnes has pomeridianas horasdico, Sed quondam me impellente nimium iam extra Aetnac terminou prouecti fumus, non comittam, ut te interpellem faepius; nifi quid erit, quod deea ipfate rogem. B. F. Sanèmonsip fe fitu, forma, magnitudine, feritate, incendiis mirus; demum tota fui qualitate acfpecie longeconfpicuss, et fibi uni pareft. Ab aurora mare Ionium bibit; et Ca

Garamond (c. 1532)

Refined and readable, Garamond is probably the most popular of the Humanist serifs. Longtime users of Adobe will be familiar with Robert Slimbach’s first crack at this classic typeface, which is Adobe Garamond. However, Garamond Premier is a major improvement of it. The most important difference is that Robert Slimbach drew separate subfamilies (optical sizes) correspond-ing to different sizes of metal type. This lets Garamond’s delicate beauty stretch out in headlines but not break apart when small. Despite a subdued character in Caption and Regular (Text) sizes. Garamond is never dull by any means. Use with care; since it has a formal personality that might not fit more casual topics. This typeface is good for infusing a document with some importance, reverence, or poetry.

Country of origin: France

Classification: Old Style Serif

Designer: Claude Garamond

05.02/Garam

ond

9291

G R O S - T E X T E S E R R É

Fournier (c. 1742)


Classification: Transitional Serif

Designer: Pierre-Simon Fournier

05.03/Fournier

9493

Nº. LV. 53

CE que l'on appelle proprement le Génie , eft toÛjours accompagné d'une forte d'audace, & cette audace , regardée par le vulgaire comme un mouvement de la va- nité, eft un certain effor de l'ame , qui caractèrife les hommes d'un merite fupérieur. C'eft un fecret preffentiment qui les a- vertit de ce qu'ils doivent faire ou entreprendre.

Although it’s a contemporary interpretation, Fournier ODP maintains the spirit of Fournier’s original design successful- ly and offers much more than Monotype’s single digitized weight, based on its earlier 1925 interpretation of Fournier’s designs. Interestingly, Fournier cut the roman and italic styles with a fairly significant difference in x-height — the italic is smaller — and this feature was faithfully carried over by Monotype. For that reason, if one is using Monotype Fournier, mixing roman and italic in one line can create the impression that the italics are set too small. This will not bother everyone but it’s something to look out for when setting up your text styling.

Bell (1788)

Bell was first cut in 1788 by Richard Austin for the printer and publisher John Bell. Born in London, Austin had trained as wood engraver before he joined Bell’s type founding operation as a punch cutter, and after spending ten years with the firm he went on to cut Scotch Roman for William Miller’s Edinburgh foundry around 25 years later. This typeface is particularly useful for evoking an American feel, given its runaway success in the US following its first release in 1788. However, as an alternative you may like to take a look at Austin from Commercial Type.

Country of origin: United Kingdom

Classification: Rational Serif

Designer: Richard Austin

GOODY TWO-SHOES. ₁₉

more ignorant than herfelf. She found, that only

the following Letters were required to spell all

the Words in the World; but as some of these

Letters are large, and some small, me with her

Knife but out of feveral Pieces of Wood ten Sets

of each of these :

a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o

p q r s t u v w x y z

And six Sets of these:

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O

P Q R S T U V W X Y Z.

And having got an old Spelling Book, she made

her Companions fet up all the Words they

wanted to spell, and after that she taught them

to compose Sentences. You know what a Sentence

is, my Dear; I will be good, is a Sentence ; and is

made up, as you fee, of several Words.

The usual Manner of Spelling, or carrying on

the Game, as they called it, was this : Suppose

the Word to be spelt was Plumb Pudding (and

who can suppose a better ?) the Children were

placed in a Circle, and the first brought the

Letter P, the next l, the next u, the next m, and

so on till the Whole was spelt; and if any one

brought a wrong Let-ter

05.04/Bell

9695

Clarendon (1845)

When one thinks “slab serif,” Clarendon is often the first thing that comes to mind. Its sturdy structure, punctuated by ball terminals, has made it one of the most popular faces of the last 50 years. The versions we know today are generally derived from mid 20th-century modernizations of styles from the early 1800s. Unlike the type that inspired Giza, Clarendon has an increased contrast that opens up the counters. This lets it to be used for short passages of text. Serifs are also lighter and bracketed — still heavier than a book serif, but less imposing than Giza’s. There are a variety of alternatives for Clarendon that either improve its readability (Ingeborg, Eames Century Modern), or enhance its expressive qualities (Farao).


Classification: Grotesque Slab

Designer: Robert Besley

ENGLISH CLARENDON ON GREAT PRIMER BODY. Cast to range with ordinary Great Primer, the Fitures to En Quadrata.

PIRACY is the great sin of all manufacturing communities:—there is scarcely

any Trade in which it prevails so generally as among TYPE FOUNDERS.

Messrs. BESLEY & Co. originally introduced the Clarendon Character, which

they registered under the Copyright of Designs’ Act, but no sooner was the

time of Copyright allowed by that Act expired, than the Trade was inundated

with all sorts of Piracies and Imitations, some of them mere effigies of letters.

Notwithstanding this, nearly all the respectable Printers in Town and Country

who claim to have either taste or judgement, have adopted the original Founts,

and treated the Imitations with the contempt they deserve.

05.05/Clarendon

9897

Akzidenz Grotesk (1898)

It is relatively unusual for a typeface with no designer to be accredited, but Berthold Akzidenz was developed from 1898 onwards by staffs at Berlin’s Berthold Type Foundry as a face for general use. The styling of Akzidenz-Grotesk stems from typical mid 19th-century display faces. Originally known as Accidenz-Grotesk, its name derives from the German word Akzidenzschrift, which can be translated variously as ‘display type’ or ‘jobbing type’. Looking at Akzidenz-Grotesk today, it is difficult to reconcile with the fact that it was designed almost 120 years ago. It still looks very Modernist, and contemporary, and in fact, and most significantly, it is credited as the inspira-tion for Neue Haas Grotesk, which later became Helvetica.

Country of origin: Germany

Classification: Grotesque Sans

Designer: H. Berthold AG Staff

Dampfschiffahrten REEDEREI STERN

82 640 cps 56 Min. ca. 18kg

82 641 cps 68 Min. ca. 22kg

82 642 cps 76 Min. ca. 24kg

Carte d'IdentitéPARIS/ROUEN

Radiumbäder IM RUNDBAU

05.06/Akzidenz Grotesk

10099

Copperplate Gothic (1901)

Copperplate Gothic is one of the earliest designs by Frederic W. Goudy. Despite its name, this typeface is actually not a Gothic at all. A cursory glance may fool you into thinking that it is a sans serif, but tiny chiseled serifs make this a Glyphic, meaning a face that appears to have been carved in stone. Copperplate Gothic has the distinction of being the all-time best-selling type ever released by American Type Founders, which is quite a significant achievement, considering the output of ATF at its height. Other near-identical faces were marketed by Monotype and Stephenson Blake namely Spartan), Ludlow (as Lining Plate Gothic) and the Italian type foundry Nebiolo (as Atalante).

Country of origin: United States

Classification: Glyphic

Designer: Frederic W. Goudy

Endemann Pianos

Endemann Piano Company 422 east roberts avenue

Pittfield, PA.

AMERICAN

INSTRUMENTS OF UNUSUAL

EXCELLENCE

ON DISPLAY

AT THE MUSIC SHOW

HARMONY HALL

NEXT WEEK

05.07/Copperplate Gothic

102101

Franklin Gothic (1902 – 1912)

Franklin Gothic is the modern-era version of American Gothic; it’s an Akzidenz-Grotesk for the United States. The use of the word ‘Gothic’ for typefaces drawn in this style is known as an Americanism and should not be confused with the European usage of the term when applied to blackletter typefaces. Gothic was traditionally used in the US to denote a sans serif typeface and probably derives from the fact that sans serif faces were so closely associated with Germany. The equivalent classification in Europe is Grotesque sans serif. ITC Franklin Gothic is a good option that sticks closely to Benton’s original design and it also includes a broad range of styles and weights.


Classification: Gothic Sans

Designer: Morris Fuller Benton

CO

RO

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AU

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THE

MU

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30

FIF

TH

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CIT

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OF

PAIN

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ING

AN

D S

CU

LPTU

RE

BY

Oct

ober

16

th t

hrou

gh N

ovem

ber

23rd

, 1930

The

publ

ic is

urg

enty

ly r

eque

sted

to

visi

t th

e G

alle

ries

in t

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ng,

from

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om 8

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ord

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cong

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adm

issi

on.

05.08/Franklin Gothic

104103

Centaur (1914)

Centaur has long been regarded as the finest interpretation of the Humanist serifs of Nicolas Jenson, designed during the second half of the 15th-century. It was designed by Bruce Rogers, and his original 1914 interpretation of Centaur is generally regarded as the best ever take on this 15th-century Humanist serifs. A year following his success of creating the typeface, Rogers used this typeface in a limited edition of Maurice de Guérin’s The Centaur, published by the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Rogers never designed an accompanying italic style for Centaur. Thus, the modified version of italicized Arrighi was used instead.


Classification: Humanist Serif

Designer: Bruce Rogers

FRA . LUCADE.PACIOLIO.BORGO.S.SEPOLCROB.STANLEYMOR ISON†THE.GRO.LIER.CLUBNEW.YORKMCMXXX111

05.09/Centaur

106105

Wilhelm Klingspor Schrift (1919 – 1925)

Wilhelm Klingspor Schrift is a blackletter typeface in Textura style which means that it belongs to the most calligraphic group of faces used in the earliest books, which take their style from formal handwriting. Between 1919 – 1925, the typeface was designed by Rudolf Koch for the Klingspor Type Foundry of Offenbach am Main. Wilhelm Klingspor Schrift is regarded as one of the finest 20th-century blackletter typefaces. It is a beautiful example of a blackletter that is elegant and not too heavy, with sharp elements of decoration and hairline strokes at the terminals of both uppercase and lowercase. The fine decoration was dialed down to improve its legibility, stroke widths were increased slightly and the x-height was made slightly larger.


Classification: Blackletter

Designer: Rudolf Koch Incipit epiſtola Sancti iberonimi ad Paulinum pzeſbiterum de omnibus divine historie

libzis.capitulum pzimum. Frater ambioſius tua midji munuscula perferens detulit simul et suavissimas litteras. que a pzin cipio amiciciarum. fidem pzobate iam fidei et. veteris amicicie noun:pzefeuebant. Dera enim illa necessitudo eft. et drifti glutino copulata. quam non utlitias cei familiaris. non pzefencia tantum cozpozum. non subdola

Wilhelm Klingspor Schrift Rudolf Roch`

Debr. Klingſpor . Offenbach am Main . 1925

05.10/Wilhelm

Klingspor-Schrift

108107

Futura (1927 – 1930)

Futura is the classic Geometric sans serif that has never really gone out of fashion since its first appearance in 1927. Designed for Frankfurt’s Bauer Type Foundry by Paul Renner, Futura was, in typographic terms, a game changer. Futura is a model of geometric simplicity with round characters drawn as near-perfect circles and practically no stroke contrast. Renner’s first design used only triangles, circles, and squares, but this proved to be problematic in terms of legibility so he was persuaded to adjust some glyphs to bring their proportions more in line with classic roman characters. Futura was very successful and, in Europe, it was licensed to Deberny & Peignot for European distribution.


Classification: Geometric Sans

Designer: Paul Renner

Bauersche GießereiJohann Christian Bauer founded the Bauersche Gießerei

in Frankfurt am Main in 1837. The most important designers

employed by Bauer included Emil Rudolf Weiß, Heinrich

Wieynck, Heinrich Jost, Lucian Bernhard, Imre Reiner, F. H.

E. Schneidler, Konrad F. Bauer and Walter Baum. In 1972,

the foundry closed its operations in Frankfurt and moved

production to a former subsidiary in Barcelona, Fundición

Tipográfica Neufville.

05.11/Futura

110109

Gill Sans (1928 – 1930)

Long a standard part of the Mac’s pre-installed fonts, Gill Sans has become known to modern-day users as quite an elegant sans serif option when compared to the other they find on their computer. But in many ways, Eric Gill’s typeface, a follower of Edward Johnston’s type for the London Underground, Gill Sans is an awkward mix of Geometric and Humanist ideas — from its circular “o” to its dynamic, calligraphic “a.”, and the varying widths of the uppercase. However, the long-legged “R” causes spacing issues, especially in the lighter weights, and the “g” is an odd concoction that even Gill himself fittingly called a “pair of spectacles.” Still, Gill Sans has a lasting charm which has become synonymous with British culture ever since it debuted.


Classification: Humanist Sans

Designer: Gill Sans

THE BOOK

¶ The world of 1931 reads daily news-sheets like that one called the Daily Mail; it is brought up on them; it both produces them & is formed by them. We may take it that the Daily Mail represents the kind of mind that we have got, and in all kinds of subtle ways books are expected to conform to the Daily Mail standard. Legibility is what the Daily Mail reader finds readable; good style is what he finds good; the beautiful is what pleases him.

¶ Makers of books, therefore, who refuse this rather low standard are compelled to efface personal idiosyncrasy & to discover, if it be possible, the real roots of good book-making, just as St. Benedict in the 6th century, confronted by the decayed Roman society, was compelled to discover the roots of good living. Good book-making, good living — that is to say not what you or I fancy, but what the nature of books and the nature of life really demand.

05.12/Gill Sans

112111

Peignot (1937)

If there were ever a typeface to symbolize France in the 1930s, Peignot is the answer. It was designed by Adolphe Mouron Cassandra in 1937 for the Parisian type foundry Deberny & Peignot, as a commission from the owner, Charles Peignot. Peignot benefited from a dramatic launch when it was chosen as the official typeface for the 1937 Paris World’s Fair. It was applied to everything from exhibition stands to the towers of the Palais de Chaillot, sited at the Trocadéro and opposite the Eiffel Tower. Cassandra was insistent about the type’s suitability for body text, even though its outward appearance labels it as a decorative display face. Somewhat surprisingly, the origins of the typeface stem from medieval calligraphy.


Classification: Display

Designer: A.M. Cassandre

Exposition InternationalePARIS 1937 MAI – NOVEMBRE

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Mistral (1953)

The genius of Mistral, was conceived by French designer Roger Excoffon for Fonderie Olive in 1953. By no means was Mistral the first casual script to attempt the emulation of joined-up text, but at that point in time, Mistral was the most successful script type. Creating convincingly fluid script setting in metal was really challenging because of thekerning, or the spacing between each character. To get around the problem. characters could project beyond the edges of the metal bodies of foundry type to overlap the shoulder of its neighbor — these extensions were called kerns. Ligatures such a fi, ffi, fl and so on were also used extensively to alleviate the problem.


Classification: Casual Script

Designer: Roger Excoffon

le Mistral05.14/M

istral

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Univers (1957)

Released in the same year as Helvetica, Adrian Frutiger’s Univers is the first multi-width, multi-weight superfamily designed as a consistent system from the beginning. The release was promoted by a multicolored tried diagram that is still well-known today. To achieve the pioneering uniformity throughout the type family, Frutiger created a core design that is quite spare, allowing for the extensive variations in weight and width. Univers is therefore a very natural typeface, delivering readable text while at the same time drawing very little attention to itself. Univers Next is the modern reworking of the family that was initially optimized for photo, not digital typesetting. Univers is good for a clear, neutral vessel for unfettered communication.


Classification: Neo-Grotesque Sans

Designer: Adrian Frutiger

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Helvetica (1957)

More than 50 years since its release, Helvetica is the world’s most widely known typeface. This popularity is due to its attempt at idealizing construction, minimal contrast, strokes which terminate at 90 degrees angles; letterforms and widths that are unusually uniform, bucking conventional forms; and the overall texture that is atypically almost homogenous. The result is useful for logos and graphic display type, where consistency is desired, but not as effective for long passages of text. Neue Helvetica is an effort in the 1980s to harmonize the previously incompatible styles. Neue Haas Grotesk refers to the original drawings for an even more holistic family, unconstrained by various compromises from technologies.

Country of origin: Switzerland (Germany)

Classification: Neo-Grotesque Sans

Designer: Max Miedinger & Eduard Hoffmann

Max Alfons MiedingerAfter finishing school in 1926, Max Miedinger was urged by his father to complete an apprenticeship in typesetting at Jacques Bollmann printing office in Zurich.

From 1930 to 1936 he worked as a typesetter for various companies and also took evening courses at the art school in Zurich.

From 1936, Max Miedinger worked as a typographer in the advertising department at Globus, Zurich’s renowned chain of department stores. In 1946, he started a new position as a salesman at the Haas Typefoundry in Münchenstein.

In 1954, he created his first typeface design: Pro Arte, a condensed slab serif. And in 1956, Miedinger returned to Zurich to become a freelance advertising consultant and graphic designer, like his brother, Gérard, younger by two years. Eduard Hoffmann, head of the Haas Typefoundry, was convinced of his talent and shortly thereafter commissioned him to design a new sans serif typeface, the Neue Haas Grotesk. Horizontal was the third and final typeface he created for Haas in 1965.

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ITC Avant GardeGothic (1970)

ITC Avant Garde Gothic was a response to popular demand for the type in the logo of Avant Garde, a groundbreaking magazine of the 1960s. The logo, designed by Herb Lubalin, was lettered by Tom Carnase. From it the two created a typeface for use in the magazine only. Later it became ITC’s first offering. Key traits are a large x-height, strict geometry, and the infamous leaning letters and ligatures that allow extra tight fitting words. These glyphs are often abused, leading Ed Benguiat to famously declare, “The only place Avant Garde looks good is in the words ‘Avant Garde.’” There are a few digital version of the typeface. The ITC Pro fonts have many of the alternatives and ligatures, but with merely slanted obliques instead of corrected ones offered by Elsner+Flake.



Designer: Herb Lubalin and Tom Carnase

AVANTGARDEGOTHICMEDIUM

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arde Gothic

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ITC Bauhaus (1975)

ITC Bauhaus was designed by Edward Benguiat and Victor Caruso and is based on Bayer’s Universal typeface. Given that there were never any uppercase characters designed for the typeface Universal, ITC Bauhaus is very much an interpretation rather than a revival; it’s the idea of the Geometric structure that has been carried forward by Benguiat and Caruso. There are a few digital versions of ITC Bauhaus available today. The best known is published by Linotype, which is available in the usual five weights: Light, Medium, DemiBold, Bold, and Heavy. The letterforms of a version sold by Elsner+Flake look similar to the others but in use the letter spacing seems to be little tidier, making it a good alternative choice.



Designer: Edward Benguiat and Victor Carusso ba

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Bauhaus

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Trajan (1989)

Trajan is synonymous with drama. This association is partly a result of Trajan’s overuse in movie posters — it has become the subject of internet parodies and design conference lectures. But these letters are pretty dramatic on their own — from the classical capitalist monumental proportions to the long, sweep- ing strokes and serifs. Carol Twombly’s source was Trajan’s Column, an early second century AD monument in Rome. While the letters were inscribed into stone with a chisel, a recent research mentioned that they were actually first painted with a brush, which explains their graceful serifs. There are many other interpretations of this style, such as Goudy, Pietra, Waters Titling, and Penumbra.


Classification: Glyphic

Designer: Carol Twombly

The Senate and the People of Rome to the Emperor, Caesar Nerva, son of the deified Nerva, Traianus Augustus, Germanicus, Dacicus, Pontifex Maximus, invested with the power of the tribune seventeen times, hailed imperator six times, elected consul six times, father of the fatherland, to demonstrate how lofty a hill and (what area of) ground was carried away for these mighty works. (based on D. R. Dudley,

Urbs Roma. 1967: Aberdeen).

Trajan Inscription's Translation

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Template Gothic (1990)

Template Gothic is dubbed to be ‘the typeface of the 90s’ by Rick Poynor, and it has to be said that the face was used to the point of ubiquity during that decade. It was designed by Barry Deck, a freelance designer who decided to undertake a period of study at the California Institute of the Arts in the late 1980s. Deck, influenced by Ed Fella’s fondness for the contemporary trend for deconstructed ‘grunge’ typography, started drawing experimental face Template Gothic in 1990. Deck showed his design for Template Gothic to type designer Rudy VanderLans, the co-founder with Zuzana Licko of digital type foundry Emigre, during a class visit to VanderLans' studio. It was then decided that Emigre should release the face commercially and Template Gothic went on to become one of the most used typefaces in the decade of 1990s.


Classification: Neo-Humanist Sans

Designer: Barry Deck

Barry Deck

¶If you've spent a few moments with a Coca-Cola, visiting the MoMA, flipping through a Conde Nast magazine or glancing at MTV, you have probably already spent a moment or two with Barry.

¶As designer of 20 typeface families, including none other than Template Gothic (called "the typeface of the 90s" by Rick Poynor), Barry has been helping brands find their visual voice since he received his MFA in Visual Communications from the California Institute of the Arts back in 1989.

¶Since then, he has spent nearly two decades pushing edges and leading creative teams in innovative branding initiatives for global consumer brands and extending visual languages across media and platforms from environments to interactive and TV.

¶His work has been published in numerous books, such as History of Graphic Design by Philip Meggs, as well as periodicals including the New York Times Magazine, Wired, Metropolis, Emigre, and Graphis. He has lectured and taught internationally and his work is in the permanent collection of the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum.

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othic

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Mason (1992)

Mason was inspired by a range of sources including 19th-century Russian characters, Greek architecture and Renaissance bibles, and started out as Manson; somewhat controversially, Barnbrook decided to name his typeface after Charles Manson, a serial killer. He chose the name in an attempt to express the concept of extreme opposite emotions that he’d linked to the feel of the typeface — love and hate, or beauty and ugliness — but the connection didn’t go down at all well in the US. Mason, along with a number of his other faces, helped make Barnbrook one of the highest-profile British designers of the 1990s. Barnbrook then followed up Mason with Mason Sans.



Designer: Jonathan Barnbrook

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Base 9/12 (1995)

Base Nine and Base Twelve were designed by Zuzana Licko for Emigre in 1995 after identifying a commercial need for a set of bitmap screen fonts that would render cleanly and accurately on-screen, and were accompanied by a companion set of outline printer fonts. Three operate styles were created; a serif and a sans serif were based on a 12-point screen font and named Base Twelve, whereas Base Nine was based on a 9-point screen font.Base Nine and Base Twelve were certainly trailblazing fonts for their time and have survived intact; all 12 styles can now be purchased in the OpenType format and are great for recalling a 1990s design sensibiity.



Designer: Zuzana Licko

Zuzana Licko

Born in Czechoslovakia, Licko (pronounced Litchko) emigrated to

the US with her family as a schoolgirl. She studied architecture,

photography and computer programming before taking a degree in

graphic communications at the University of California at Berkeley.

When Rudy VanderLans, her partner, launched Emigre, she began to

contribute fonts to the fledgling ‘magazine that ignores boundaries’.

Rather than replicate (on a dot matrix printer) typographic forms

already adapted from calligraphy, lead and photosetting, Licko used

public domain soft-ware to create bitmap fonts. Emperor, Emigre and

Oakland appeared in the magazine and were soon advertised for sale

when VanderLans and Licko co-founded the Emigre foundry.

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Gotham (2000)

One can’t really describe this Hoefler & Frere-Jones creation better than H&FJ themselves: “Gotham. What letters look like.” They typeface is simply self-evident. Each character just feels “normal” and “right.” Inspired by mid-century architectural lettering of New York City, Gotham celebrates the alphabet’s most basic form. These qualities made Gotham the most popular release of recent years. Gotham is used everywhere, in logos, in magazines, in the very things that inspired it; signs. Gotham’s simplicity is not merely geometric — like Avenir, it feels more natural than mechanical. In fact, its lowercase shares a lot with Avenir’s, despite being much larger. But Gotham’s essence is in the caps: broad, sturdy “block” letters of very consistent width.



Designer: Tobias Frere-Jones

GOTHAM, AN AMERICAN VERNACULAR

Between the two World Wars, a style of sans serif lettering emerged from outside of the typographic tradition. These straightforward, highly legible, no-nonsense letters were especially popular in architecture (perhaps because they satisfied the engineer’s idea of “basic building lettering.”).

In 2000, GQ commissioned Hoefler & Co. to design a signa-ture sans serif for them, which gave Hoefler & Co. the chance to explore this style. They began with a long-bookmarked piece of public lettering on one of the city’s most mundane buildings: the Port Authority Bus Terminal on New York’s Eighth Avenue. With the goal of allowing the typeface to exhibit the mathematical reasoning of a draftsman, rather than the instincts of a type designer, they allowed Gotham to escape the grid wherever necessary, giving the design an affability usually missing from geometric faces.

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Whitney (2004)

As a base, Whitney is a Gothic — doing much of what Benton Sans does for News Gothic — only it takes the style a big step further into Humanist territory, evolving into a more expressive sans serif that combines the best of the two categories. The apertures are very open and stems have a diagonal cut at their ends, adding to the contemporary feel. A bevy of alternative forms lend even more versatility, allowing the user to tone down the personality by swapping out the angled terminals. Whitney is not only a great face for texts, it’s also turned for wayfinding systems, with a compact design that is still clear from a distance. There is also a very complete set of figures as well as circled and squared “index” numbers to aid in infographics.


Classification: Gothic Sans

Designer: Hoefler & Co.

Founding of the Whitney Museum

The Whitney Museum of American Art was borne out of sculptor Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney’s advocacy on behalf of living American artists. At the beginning of the twentieth century, artists with new ideas found it nearly impossible to exhibit or sell their work in the United States. Recognizing the obstacles these artists faced, Mrs. Whitney began purchasing and showing their work, thereby becoming the leading patron of American art from 1907 until her death in 1942.

In 1914, Mrs. Whitney established the Whitney Studio in Greenwich Village, where she presented exhibitions by living American artists whose work had been disregarded by the traditional academies. By 1929 she had assembled a collection of more than 500 works, which she offered with an endowment to The Metropolitan Museum of Art. When the offer was refused, she set up her own museum, one with a new and radically different mandate: to focus exclusively on the art and artists of this country. The Whitney Museum of American Art was founded in 1930, and opened in 1931 on West Eighth Street in Greenwich Village.

The Museum moved to an expanded site on West 54th Street in 1954. Having outgrown that building by 1963, the Museum acquired its Marcel Breuer-designed building on Madison Avenue at 75th Street, which opened in 1966. Programming at the Breuer building concluded on October 20, 2014. The Whitney's new building at 99 Gansevoort Street opened on May 1, 2015.

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