Chapter 1- The Evolution of Typography
The book defines typography as “an
intensely visual form of communication.” This makes sense because we are such a
visual society that a lot communication of our thoughts and ideas are done
through sight. This chapter shows the progression of type from the invention of
movable type in 3150 B.C. through the twenty first century. The overall
timelines throughout this chapter were very interesting, they did a really good
job of painting a picture of the evolution of typography.
I found it really interesting to be
able to see the first alphabet and to see some of the same letterforms that we
still use today. It seems that the first alphabet had very little variations
between the letters, many of the letters look like a form of E, P, A, M, or N. It
wasn’t until around the 1400’s that I started to be able to recognize most of
the letterforms, while I wasn’t about to read any of the words, I was able to
pick out most of the letters. I also enjoyed being able to see some of the
first typefaces. It was interesting to see that many of the typefaces that we
use today are very similar to the typefaces that were invented in 1800’s.
Once the timeline got
into the 20th century, I started seeing more use of typography in
interesting and creative ways. Typography went from being only used for
communication to being also used for creative expression. This is
when I noticed that typography was starting to take off as an art form. Some of
the posters that I found interesting were #154, Brockmann’s concert poster and
#196, Stephan Sagmeister’s poster. Brockmann’s poster was very miminalistic but
I really liked his use of geometric shapes to create a design. I also
really enjoyed Sagmeister’s use of a handwriting type font on the image of the
face, it almost made it look like it was carved in.
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