10 Questions
- Whats the difference between RGB & CMYK?
- What are complementary colours?
- Whats the difference between a typeface and a font?
- What are the different font sizes suitable for?
- What are the origins of type?
- What are the 7 colour contrasts?
- Whats the difference between legibility and reablilty?
- What are the main anatomical features of type?
- Should you kern?
- How can type be arranged correctly?
Research into:
What are the origins of type?
What are the seven colour contrasts?
What's the difference between legibility and readability?
Origins of type
Typography all started with pictograms before the alphabet was created.
Chinese lettering/characters were developed over 3500 years ago, making it the oldest writing system.
Above is a diagram of how pictures slowly moved to letterforms
From 1503 Letterforms started to be seen as a form of art. Designers started to become interested in type, they liked the fact it was reducible. Modern type begins with the invention of moveable type and the printing press.
Printing
Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press this began the idea of moving type in 1436. Gutenberg created the first printing press and named it the Gutenberg Press.
Gutenberg Press
The Gutenberg press with its wooden and later metal movable type printing brought down the price of printed materials and made such materials available for the masses. It remained the standard until the 20th century. The Gutenberg printing press developed from the technology of the screw-type wine presses of the Rhine Valley. It was there in 1440 that Johannes Gutenberg created his printing press, a hand press, in which ink was rolled over the raised surfaces of moveable hand-set block letters held within a wooden form and the form was then pressed against a sheet of paper.
http://inventors.about.com/od/gstartinventors/a/Gutenberg.htm
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.
http://planetoftheweb.com/components/promos.php?id=174
The seven colour contrasts
TONE
HUE
SATURATION
EXTENSION
TEMPERATURE
COMPLEMENTARY
SIMULTANEOUS
Readability and Legibility
Above is something to prove that usually if the first and the last letters of a word are correct and the rest are all jumbled up it still makes sense and is readable.
Both readability and legibility have to do with ease of reading a piece of text. Readability is the ease in which the whole text can be read and understood. Legibility is a measure of how easily individual letters or characters can be distinguished from each other.
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