Tuesday 24 April 2012

Theory to Practice//Font Classification




Gutenberg printing press changes the world because of moveable type. People can now be educated about typography and writing.



Letter and the alphabet come from the roman age. All in capitals though. To start with capitals were the only way in which typography was displayed as lowercase hadn't been created at this point. 

Gutenberg Gothic Script was the first moveable typeface created in 1450. This was the closest typeface to a human typeface at this moment in time.

Nicolas Jenson first human readable typeface - JENSON. This was the first typeface that could be read and look modern too.
Characteristics - main and 2nd stoke were the same size.
Crossbar on the 'e' is angled


Geofroy Tory says that a typeface should reflect the ideal human form.

Modern Humanist Typefaces
Centaur
Jersey
Kennerley
All these typefaces has an upstroke on the 'e' crossbar, this is the main characteristic of the humanist typefaces.


 Old Style Fonts

Garamond was first italic font. 
Difference between humanist and old style:
Spacing has increased - easier to read
upstroke on the 'e' has disappeared and now is flat.

Modern old style fonts
Palatino is the font used for LCA logo.


17th century enlightenment period. Through this time typography went through the stages of science and philosophy. It became more mathematical to create a typeface and the use of grid lined paper and measured circles etc to create a typeface was used. 1963.

This formed Transitional fonts. 1963


Stroke width became acute



1770. This was written in a transitional font.


Late 18th century John Baskerville created BASKERVILLE

The axis of the 'o' has changed through the stages of fonts, from being angled to being straight in the transitional stage.

Again in the transitional stage the hairline within the letterform became more acute.

Modern typefaces.


1784 DIDONE was created

characteristics - high contrast, abrupt serifs, vertical axis.


Slab serif - 1800's.
This stage of typography came around because of the world beginning to industrialise. 
There was more and more competition between shops, companies etc and the use of slab serif was for promotional material - advertisements, posters, shop signage. 
Characteristics - scream for attention, squashed letters.


FAT FACE - print reproduction, this is digitalised version of the print letters you would find in early ages when woodblock letter were used.


Clarendon - usable in text.


Typewriter, imitates that of a typewriter.

Through this stage of typography there was an emphasis on digital type looking like the earlier age of the more hand made fonts - letter block, letter press, typewriters.

Sans serf - 1800's
Berthold type foundry was created in 1896 which designed the font AKZIDENZ GROTESK.
Characteristics - simple, stripped down, follows form over function. 
This font communicates much more effectively.

Around the 1900's there was a time when a typeface was to be just lowercase and to scrap CAPITALS. The first example of this was Herbert Bayers unicameral typeface BAYER - 1925.


GILL SANS was created in 1926 by Eric Gill. This is a modernist typeface.


TIMES NEW ROMAN created in 1932 by Stanley Morrison. An example of post modernist font.

In 1941 the classification of Black letter was dropped and wasn't a style of font to be used anymore.


1921 COOPER BLACK was created by Oswald Bruce Cooper.


HELVETICA was created in 1957 by Max Miedinger. This font became the most dominant font ever created and used across the world. NYC used this font everywhere. 
characteristics - clean, crisp, communicates straight to point, seen as the 'perfect font'. 


Arial was a font created by Microsoft because they didn't want to pay for Helvetica and the Macintosh had got Helvetica pre loaded onto everyone of there machines, so Microsoft wanted to be different. But it turns out that they weren't so different, there are a lot of similarities between the two fonts, because Microsoft knew Helvetica was such a well known font, they used this as a basis to create ARIAL.
The difference are shown above.

Johnathan Barnbrook created the typeface BASTARD in 1990.
David Carson created a grunge font because he was one of the graphic designers of the time not to follow the rules.

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