OUGD401 - History of Type - Lecture

The history of type lecture taught me that I must have my own opinions in order to become an individual graphic designer with my own methods and principles. From a standpoint, there are two main theory's of type, Modernist and Post Modernist, which outlay a set of rules to attend to. Modernist type is the idea that there are a set of rules and principles that you can get right or wrong when designing a typeface. This was the tutors beliefs however, I come from a more post modernist view where I believe type should be more extravagant and decorative, this is probably due to the fact that, from a young age, I have been extremely interested in graffiti and bespoke illustrated typefaces. As illustrators and graphic designers creating type, we start to look at the emotions, accent and tone of the word to influence the design of our letter forms. I believe that you can achieve this more effectively by following post modernism and adapting a more controversial unique way of creating type instead of being constricted by rules and barriers. There is no single approach in a post modern world which means that every piece of typography has to be analysed individually. I do appreciate the teaching of modernism that type must follow a function however, as a graphic designer, I choose to use written literacy more to read the form and emotions of the letters.
Continents and  vowels are a consistent set of symbols for sounds which has been built up from pictures to diagrams to symbols over a period of thousands of years. It is a way of converting spoken language to graphic communication. My view is that as long as these consistent patterns are noticeable in a typeface, then the artist can be as experimental as they want with the text.

Johanne Gutenberg printed a bible using wooden letter press for the first time in 1436. This shows that influence for movable type was to spread the word of religion. From this point the amount of typefaces being created drastically increased as we no longer required hand written methods for mass producing type. However, it was still only the wealthy and religious scholars who could read written language and it wasn't until William Foster implemented the elementary education act in 1870 that the rest of the population started to learn the alphabet. This boosted the need for written language even further and solidified it as it as a significant part of modern culture. As can be seen on the timeline below, type increased drastically during the transitional period into the modern era.

This is where the modernist view of type started to be theorized where people were looking at the function of type instead of the form. Culture moved away from the decorative handwritten typefaces and started to strip type down to its bare bones in its simplest manor. Then the creative craft movement Bauhaus met with mass production between  1919 -1933. This moved type into lead printing of text onto a mass scale. Through this Max Miedinger invented Helvetica which was born out of the necessity for clean clear industrial concise type. This could then be mass produced to be the most functional font in history with its involvement with street signs and subway systems. Helvetica is the birth of modern type which then heavily influenced other typefaces such as Ariel which was released 25 years later by Microsoft  in 1982. In 1990 Steve Jobs. released the first apple Macintosh. This would become the first computer to sell for less than $1000 in 1990 which made it affordable for designers on a mass level. It also introduced a mouse with a computer for the first time which made it available to work with vectors on screen and again boosted creation of typeface into the 21st century.