Typography
The art and technique of printing with movable type.
The composition of printed material.
The arrangement and appearance of printed matter.
Type is what language looks like, typography can also be described as the craft of endowing human language with a durable visual form.
"The written word endures... the spoken word disappears" - Neil Postman, Amusing ourselves to Death.
The beginning of type
Mesopotamia, 3200 BCE (ish)
All that is necessary for any language to exist is an agreement amongst a group of people that one thing will stand for another.
The alphabet comes from a descent from the first visual representations of lettering.
From the basic form of structure from a letter typefaces started to be developed, at the Bauhaus people were bought together such as fashion designers and theatre designers, they focused on the idea that form should follow function. Thus making the function of a project to drive the design of it. Modern design is linear, meaning it upholds a level of inevitability, proven by Bauhaus design. During this movement of modernism typefaces were to follow the trend.
1957- Helvetica captures an idea of modernism, less is
more. Epitome of modernist design. So successful due to being a benchmark to
modern type.
Arial came out 25 years after Helvetica, the year in
which copy right laws are released from intellectual content.
1990- first Mac available for an affordable cost and at a
size that could be put in a studio. First appearance of type in the way in
which we use it today, the point where type development became democratised.
1994- Vincent Connare made comic sans MS... unfortunately.
1990- Tim Berners-Lee created the world wide web and
allowed access for free, changed type… further democratised type as you didn’t
need to use print to communicate your ideas any more, you could publish a
website.
1995- internet explorer introduce template based
webpages, restricted websites down to only being viewed in particular ways,
only 8 fonts available. Influence how designers could create online content and
design websites for 25 years.
Communication methods changed the way people speak to
eachother, look at communication graph. The way we communicate with each is
constantly developing, number of sms has changed through the arise of online
social media such as snapchat and Facebook.
Emoji’s have been developed from this boom in online
communication, we have started replacing words with images. It is officially
classed as a global language. We have gone
back to a time where we are using symbols rather than letterforms,
taking us back to full circle to hieroglyphics/imagery language of 3500 bc.
Emoji type and development of type now is not based
around geographical location it is now online communities thus must be
understood by multi lingual groups.
POST MODERNISM –
“pretty much anything can go”
look at postmodernism defined slide.
1977 – Jamie reeves, created the visual culture that
surrounded punk, sex pistols visuals. A time where design went back to Bauhaus
influences but also teared apart the idea of using the grid system and type
ruling. Infits with the idea of punk culture, rebelling against ‘ideals’.
1992 david carson, ‘the anti-graphic designer’, modernist
not someone who ripped appart graphic design, was about representing culture in
appropriate ways to content. Undermines the grid and the way in which
subcultures should be represented.
Modern day- not reliant on just the skills we can
develop, due to the democratisation of design. Johnathan barnbrooke, doesn’t
just focus on design works across multiple disciplines, the idea of having a
single approach no longer exists it’s down to the individual, to shape that.
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