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Typography Pictorial History

Carl Shank • May 15, 2024

Typography Pictorial History. Typography has a rich and fascinating history that spans centuries, evolving alongside the development of writing systems, printing technologies, and artistic movements. Throughout this rich history, typography has evolved from a functional necessity to a sophisticated art form, reflecting cultural, technological, and artistic movements. Today, typography continues to play a crucial role in visual communication, shaping the way we perceive and interact with information. Here's an overview of the history of typography.

(3500 BC to 600 BC) The alphabet is old. Very old. The origins of our alphabet and writing systems go back to pictograph writing systems like Egyptian hieroglyphs.


*John Coleman Darnell, an Egyptologist from Yale University, in the 1990s made a discovery that rocked the alphabetic world. Looking for Egyptian relics, he discovered two ancient inscriptions at Wadi El-hol in central Egypt, about 30 miles northwest of ancient Thebes. This ancient road had evidence of inscriptions on the walls of the cliffs lining the roadway. The writings show the alphabet's invention from around 2000 B.C. A fascinating study of his report is found in David Sacks, Letter Perfect: The Marvelous History of Our Alphabet From A to Z.


The Egyptians wrote in hieroglyphics (called "sacred carvings"), using pictograms for letters. Pictures of familiar objects were used to convey sounds and words. The ancient Semites borrowed from these pictograms, so that, for example, the picture of a "head" was called resh, and since the word began with the sound of an "r," they selected that image for the sound. Thus, "R" is the sketch of a head. (*From Blog, "What's In A Name?" Oct 12, 2023)


From these backgrounds, the Phoenicians, descendants of people who lived in ancient Canaan, began writing their language in a 22-letter alphabet, sometime before 1000 B.C. They had inherited these letters from other tribes before them, but had the skill and knowledge to formally write them down. By 900 B.C. the Jews and other Near Eastern peoples copied the letters for their own use. The Greeks then followed about 800 B.C., adapting the letters for their own use.


The Phoenician alphabet begat the Greek which begat the Etruscan, a people who lived in northern Italy. From there, the Roman alphabet and writing were developed. The original Phoenician alphabet had 22 letters, while the Greek alphabet had 26. Interestingly, the Hebrews, another Semitic tribe which populated the Canaanite region under the influence of Joshua's campaign (in the Bible), only khet (j), qof (q)resh (r) andshin (v) resemble their Phoenician counterparts. The Hebrew writing from right-to-left derives from the Phoenicians.

This New Uncial Display typeface  takes inspiration from Uncial Writing. It is an iconic medieval system found in religious manuscripts from 800 BC. The letter designs served as a basis for the development of the Roman alphabet in force in the Western world. New Uncial was born from careful calligraphy, resulting in an opentype display font with clean glyphs, upper and lower case characters, easy to apply and capable of bringing impact to graphic pieces that seek aesthetic appeal. Thanks to Lucas Riedi for sharing this awesome typeface

(600 BC – 1450 AD) The Manuscript Era saw scribes meticulously handwriting manuscripts, using calligraphic scripts like Uncial.  In the sixth through tenth centuries, lower case letters (called minuscules) were formed, with modern lettering evolving from the Carolingian scripts. The Emperor Charlemagne used these letters as an educational standard.


**"Early uncial script most likely developed from late rustic capitals. Early forms are characterized by broad single-stroke letters using simple round forms taking advantage of the new parchment and vellum surfaces, as opposed to the angular, multiple-stroke letters, which are more suited for rougher surfaces, such as papyrus. In the oldest examples of uncial, such as the fragment of De bellis macedonicis in the British Library, of the late 1st–early 2nd centuries, all of the letters are disconnected from one another, and word separation is typically not used. Word separation, however, is characteristic of later uncial usage.


As the script evolved over the centuries, the characters became more complex. Specifically, around AD 600, flourishes and exaggerations of the basic strokes began to appear in more manuscripts. Ascenders and descenders were the first major alterations, followed by twists of the tool in the basic stroke and overlapping. By the time the more compact minuscule scripts arose circa AD 800, some of the evolved uncial styles formed the basis for these simplified, smaller scripts." (**From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncial_script)


The Carolingian Minuscule on the right, thanks to J. Pemery (https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=19018724) develops from strictly capital letters to small lettering.


Illuminated manuscripts, decorated with ornate initials, illustrations and borders were created by gifted and skilled scribes and artists, as samples below illustrate. (See Blog, "Old Bible Typography Versals," April 19, 2024)

(1450 – 1800) The Printing Revolution and new typefaces. Johannes Gutenberg's invention of  moveable type printing in the mid-15th century revolutionized book production and typography. Renaissance typefaces by Claude Garamond and Aldus Manutius enhanced typographic principles.


Aldus Manutius was a Venetian scholar, who became a publisher and printer when he founded the Aldine Press in 1495. He introduced personal or pocket editions of the classics in Latin and Greek that all could own, as well as works by contemporaries Pietro Bembo and Erasmus. His typefaces were all designed and cut by the brilliant Francesco Griffo, a punchcutter who created the first roman type cut from study of classical Roman capitals. Type designs based on work used by Aldus Manutius include Bembo and Poliphilus.


The typefaces Garamond produced between 1530 and 1545 are considered the typographical highlight of the 16th century. His fonts have been widely copied and are still produced and in use today. Publications include: "Essai d’un nouveau caractère de fonte pour l’impression de la musique", Paris 1756; "Manuel typographique" (2 vols.), Paris 1764–66. (From TYPOGRAPHY – An Encyclopedic Survey of Type Design and Techniques Throughout History by Friedrich Friedl, Nicolaus Ott (Editor), Bernard Stein, published by Könemann Verlagsgesellschaft mbH.)

(1700 – 1900) The Age of Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution highlighted William Caslon (1692–1766), who produced one of the most influential and popular typefaces of the 18th century. New printing technologies, such as the Baskerville type and the Stanhope Press improved print quality. Mechanization of printing processes and the development of new typefaces by Giambattista Bodoni (1740–1813) gave us a typeface characterized by its distinctive contrast between thick and thin strokes. William Morris (1834–1896), who led the Arts and Crafts Movement, promoted a return to craftsmanship (See "Golden Type" below) and traditional printing methods through his Kelmscott Press.

(1900 – 1960) The Modernist Era. The Bauhaus school in Germany produced a functional, minimalist approach to typography and design. Key tenets of Bauhaus design include form follows function and less is more. The style is characterized by a lack of ornament and a focus on clean lines that reduce forms to their essential elements. Bauhaus design, art, and architecture often features simple geometric forms such as circles, squares, and triangles. Jan Tschichold (1902–1974), a German typographer and book designer, played a significant role in the modernist movement and the development of functional typography. Eric Gill (1882–1940) was an English sculptor and typeface designer, known for his typefaces of Gill Sans and Perpetua. Sans-serif ("without feet") typefaces like Futura and Helvetica became popular, reflecting the modern aesthetic. Paul Renner (1878–1956) became known for the highly influential face, Futura, in 1927.

(1960–present) The Modern Age saw the development of digital typography and desktop publishing software, like PageMaker (now defunct & replaced by Adobe's InDesign) and QuarkXPress, which transformed the design process and allowed an entirely new cadré of typeface designers into the mix. Hermann Zapf (1918–2015), a German calligrapher, typographer and type designer, became known for typefaces such as Palatino, Optima and a pictogram font, Zapf Dingbats.

Andrew Carter (1937 – ), an American type designer, designed typefaces like Verdana, Georgia and Bell Centennial, which was commissioned by AT&T for the phone books.

The development of OpenType (SEE "Using OpenType Fonts," Blog Sep. 29, 2023) and TrueType font formats allowed for greater typographic control and cross-platform compatibility. Web typography, with the introduction of web-safe fonts and responsive typography techniques allowed expressive and experimental typeface designs.


These typographers and type designers have left an indelible mark on the history of typography, shaping the way we perceive and interact with text through their groundbreaking work and innovative designs.



Successful Layout & Design

By Carl Shank 24 Oct, 2024
Art in the Alphabet: What AI Cannot Give Us I am a student of typographic history. In fact, I have pulled together a book on this history ( Typography Through The Years: A Selected History ) available from most booksellers. This book is filled with digitized fonts from earlier years, many not generally available in the open printing and typography trades. They represent hours of careful labor redrawing or copying the pen written works of earlier typographers, like Lewis F. Day (See his Alphabets Old and New, London, 1910 or earlier). Does AI (artificial intelligence) help us or even substitute for us the work and beauty that goes into historic calligraphy and font histories? As with many people in many businesses and professions, I have used AI (especially ChatGPT and Claude) to access information files and reduce the time formerly spent in libraries or even online searches. That has been true even in my preaching and teaching as a theologian and retired pastor and consultant (See my extended BLOGs, “AI and the Ministry: The Uses and Abuses of Artificial Intelligence” and “AI and the Brethren in Christ: Hallucinations & Corrections” in www.carlshankconsulting.com ). Indeed, there are multiple copyright issues associated with AI generated feeds. In my BLOG on “Copyright Do’s and Don’t’s” Oct 23, 2023) I noted the following — “Right now, in the courts, there are lawsuits pending against big time AI players such as GitHub and Microsoft and Open AI seeking to see whether or not AI created materials are subject to copyright violations and piracy on a level not seen since the Napster violations in the 1990s. Getty Images have filed a suit against Stable Diffusion, an AI art developing tool, claiming that its images are too close to the real thing and thus violate copyright laws. This is far from "Fair Use" standards. The Clarkson Law Firm has two class action suits against OpenAI and Google claiming that AI "stole" copyrighted materials from their creators. Moreover, the U.S. Copyright office has ruled that AI cannot be considered an "author," since only a person can be an author. Additionally, Internet Archive ( https://archive.org/ ) has filed with the commission investigating AI and copyrights. They do not support any additional laws specifically targeting AI. They write — "Our high level view is that copyright law has been adapting to disruptive technologies since its earliest days and our existing copyright law is adequate to meet the disruptions of today. In particular, copyright’s flexible fair use provision deals well with the fact-specific nature of new technologies, and has already addressed earlier innovations in machine learning and text-and-data mining. So while Generative AI presents a host of policy challenges that may prompt different kinds of legislative reform, we do not see that new copyright laws are needed to respond to Generative AI today." More courts and Congress will have to argue it out. Suffice it to say at this juncture, that using AI to re-create an illustration or an entire book may involve copyright breaches. Be careful in using the technology to bypass coded laws. There are still many pitfalls, however, and many ways AI cannot help us. There are many who would agree with me in this “short-cutting” our way to beautiful and usable fonts and faces. My recent foray into AI revealed the following about developing historic early fonts, say from a craftsman like Lewis F. Day, by ChatGPT — “To create a typeface inspired by Lewis F. Day's decorative design style and the typography of sixteenth and seventeenth-century printing, we'd need to combine key elements from both sources. 1. Lewis F. Day's Influence: Ornamentation: Lewis F. Day was known for his intricate decorative designs, inspired by Gothic and Renaissance motifs. His work often emphasized geometric and nature-inspired patterns. Flourishes: Day's aesthetic would inspire flourishes around characters, especially in capital letters or title work, where borders or embellishments could be incorporated. Symmetry and Balance: His designs usually kept a strong sense of order and symmetry, meaning that the typeface could integrate balanced, stylized serifs or carefully positioned decorations. 2. Sixteenth and Seventeenth-Century Printing Influences: Old Style Serifs: Early printing typefaces like Garamond or Caslon, which were common in this period, feature elegant, moderate contrast between thick and thin strokes, and serifs with soft, rounded edges. These fonts have a warm and timeless feel. Ligatures: In keeping with old typesetting practices, ligatures (like "fi", "fl", etc.) would be an essential feature. Hand-Pressed Imperfections: The text could have slight irregularities to evoke the hand-pressed, metal-type printing look of that era, with slight ink spread or irregular edges on the characters. Decorative Initials: Sixteenth and seventeenth-century printing often incorporated large, intricate drop capitals, which can be revisited with ornamentation similar to Lewis F. Day’s floral or geometric designs. Key Elements for Typeface: Character Design: Incorporate Old Style serif structure with moderate contrast in stroke weights. Slight ink spread effect for a hand-pressed look. Ornamentation: Incorporate Day's floral and geometric patterns as flourishes on capital letters. Consider decorative borders on certain initials or for titles. Ligatures & Swashes: Use swashes on certain letterforms, especially for f, g, h, k, and long descenders. Drop Caps: Design large, decorative drop caps that feature intricate floral or scroll designs, combining Day’s Victorian influence with sixteenth-century engravings. This typeface would feel both classic and ornamental, paying homage to the elegance of early print typography with the decorative touch that Lewis F. Day often brought to his work.” While a sample of Day’s work in generalized pre-Victorian and Victorian era times can be previewed (badly, I would say) on AI (through Claude.ai, for instance), an actual typeface and its construction eludes AI, at least for now. First, the description above makes little sense unless I have been immersed in viewing Lewis F. Day's samples and history. And then, secondly, the descriptors are too vague and undefined. There is not merely one typestyle either in Victorian England or in Day's works. Take a look at the uncials (alphabetic capitals) below for a wide variety of what AI has tried to describe. The penned and hand drawn letters represented by Day and digitized by CARE Typography cannot be reproduced by AI, no matter how precise the tool. Moreover, accurate letter spacing and hinting and all the features that make up even a hand drawn font are not AI reproducible, nor in the range of AI generated feeds. And, to do so, would probably violate image-drawn copyrightable feeds. Conclusions. What does all of this mean for the typographer or printer or publisher? Do the hard work! Type formation takes significant time and effort and drawing and re-drawing, tweaking until the letters and letter spacings and kerning and everything is right and readable. AI will not do such work for you. Seek permission for its use . This is always the best and most honorable course of action. You may have to contact the publisher, who then in turn may contact the writer. I did this for a study guide I wrote on a book from Oxford Press in England on the life and work of Jonathan Edwards, the great early American theologian in New England. While it was only a study guide with excerpts on which to comment, and for church study and use exclusively, the Press required a contractural engagement that lasted for one year with a limited number of copies that could be printed and made available, even for religious study and use. It would have cost me hundreds of dollars. I declined and went another route with some of the material. Use legitimate free sources for photos and images . I use dreamstime.com in their free portfolios for the background photos and images for a number of book covers I have crafted. There are other legitimate sources in iStock, for instance. Licensing uses and rules apply to most of these freebies. And give credit for where credit is due, even for the freebies. The Lewis F. Day’s Alphabets Old and New and its samples are in the public domain now. Use your own work and photos . I know this requires substantial time and effort, but it is usually the right thing to do. I put together a historical calendar of the Lancaster PA area using photos I personally took. Use the old "buyer beware" adage here . Are you willing to risk your site being taken down, or getting a cease and desist letter, a bill or actually being sued through the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), which can be very, very costly. People actually make a living on book royalties and selling or licensing their work. Poaching their work for pleasure or profit is unacceptable. Extensis has an entire section on font use and licensing (www.extensis.com). Conclusion #2. For all Christians and people of faith, we need to heed the apostle Paul’s admonition in the Bible that “Everything is permissible, but not everything is beneficial. Everything is permissible but not everything is constructive.” (1 Corinthians 10:23) Yes, Paul is talking about Christian liberty and eating of food that was devoted to idols of his day, but the principle remains. What we CAN do is not always what we SHOULD do. This involves the use of AI in our churches and ministries. Second, beware of the “Babel influence.” You do remember the construction of a tower built by early peoples to reach to heaven in Genesis 11 — “Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves and not be scattered over the face of the whole earth.” Christopher Watkin notes in his massive study, Biblical Critical Theory: How The Bible’s Unfolding Story Makes Sense of Modern Life and Culture , “rather than playing a role in God’s story (filling the earth and subduing it), these people want God to play a supporting role in their story, as the heavenly antagonist who is ultimately beholden to, or vanquished through, their heroic self-aggrandizement.” (208-9) This is sinful autonomy. This is humankind globalization of power and wealth and achievement. This is what AI could promise if misused and misapplied. We need to always see the inherent temptation in AI drawing us away from God and dependence on God. Third, know the times and the promises and pitfalls of artificial intelligence. Get on ChatGPT 4 and Claude.ai and other AI tools. Find out how they work and can work for you. Use them biblically and intelligently and wisely. Be aware that your people are using AI all the time where they live and work, even if you don’t. In other words, be “smart” about AI and its growing use and influence — and keep the dependence on God strong and sure. Sources Lewis F. Day’s Alphabets Old and New , London, 1910 edition. Sara Hawkins, “Copyright Fair Use and How It Works for Online Images,” https://bit.ly/3YyNMCW Lucie Růžičková , "Ai and Copyright: The Legal Landscape," https://bit.ly/3Ao5zDw . Gibble, Kraybill & Hess, Attorneys in Lancaster, PA, https://gkh.com/protecting-copyrights-vs-protecting-trademarks/
By Carl Shank 11 Sep, 2024
Reviving Old Fonts . Lewis Foreman Day (1845-1910) was an influential English designer, author, and lecturer who played a significant role in the Arts and Crafts movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He became a prolific designer, working across various mediums including wallpaper, textiles, stained glass, pottery, and metalwork. Day advocated for the integration of form and function, emphasizing the importance of practicality in design alongside aesthetic considerations. His work and writings contributed significantly to the development of British design education and theory in the late Victorian era. His book, Alphabets Old and New , published in London, in 1910 gives sterling examples of his typography work. Day's approach to design, blending traditional craftsmanship with modern industrial techniques, helped shape the transition from Victorian aesthetics to more modern design principles. CARE Typography has digitized a number of the font faces in the book for modern use and aesthetic appeal. The typefaces below illustrate the beauty and craftsmanship of Day which can contribute to modern typography. These mostly pen drawn typefaces have been digitized by CARE Typography using Fontographer to make them available as usable fonts. Caps or Unicals are often used in display faces and advertising. Some of these classic faces can enliven your printing and advertising projects. They are available, either individually, or as a set, for a modest fee. Contact CARE Typography for more information and ordering, email cshanktype@gmail.com . 
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