Lecture Notes 3: Chronologies 1: Type - Production & Distribution

• We can chart our future clearly and wisely only when we know the path which had led to the present.
• A basic insight into Typography... (Typographics, A lesson on typography)
• "Type is what language looks like." ~ Ellen Lupton, speech made visible.
• "Typography is the craft of endowing human languages with a durable visual form." ~ Robert Bringhurst
• Type is a modernist obsession.
• "The written word endures… the spoken word disappears." ~ Neil Postman
• Where did it start? Mesopotamia (Ancient Sumer), 3200 BC (Mesoamerica around 600 BC)
• 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 human mind reads words as whole, and so regardless of whether the alphabets are in the right order or not, we can still quickly decipher and read them.
• Dictionary definitions of Typography: 1 The art and technique of printing with movable type 2. The composition of printed material from movable type 3. The arrangement and appearance of printed matter
• Johannes Gutenberg, introduced printing to Europe, the movable type printing began in approximately 1436.
• William Edward Forster, drafted the Elementary Education Act 1870, setting the framework for schooling of all children between the ages 5 to 12 in England and Wales.
• Walter Gropius, founder of the Bauhaus school (1919-1933), the birthplace of modern design education.
• Max Miedinger and Eduard Hoffman, creators of Helvetica.
• Set out to design a new sans-serif typeface that couple compete with the successful Akzidenz-Grotesk in the Swiss market.
• 25 years is the max. time that a design is protected by intellectual property before it lapses. Arial was released 25 years after Helvetica.
• Microsoft practically ripped off Helvetica in 1982 with Arial.
• Steve Jobs, 1990, introduced on October 15, the first Apple Mac to sell for less than US $1000.
• "By making itself evident, typography can illuminate the construction and identify of a page, screen, place, or product." ~ Ellen Lupton
• Type as an image, object, promotion, brand identity… etc.
• "Typography fostered the modern idea of individuality but it destroyed the medieval sense of community and integration." ~ Neil Postman
• Vincent Connare (1994), inventor of Comic Sans MS, he worked for Microsoft. (Reason number 2)
• Tim Berners-Lee (1990), invented the worldwide web, and for free.
• Bill Gates (1995), created Internet Explorer, the first globally adopted web browser. (Reason number 3)
• "We realize now that long documents do not work on the web. We should need have though otherwise but all those short documents we're reading instead are poisoning our ability to read long documents." ~ John Clark
• "Since typography is a communication method that utilizes a gathering of related subjects and methodologies that include sociology, linguistics, psychology, aesthetics and so much more… there is no single approach within typography that applies to everything." ~ Shelley Gruendler
• We navigate our whole lives using words. Change and improve the words and we can probably change and improve the world.

WebRep

currentVote

noRating

noWeight