Typography is the art and technique of arranging type to make written

language legible, readable and appealing when displayed. The

arrangement of type involves selecting typefaces ,point sizes, line lengths,
line-spacing (leading), and letter-spacing (tracking), as well as adjusting the
space between pairs of letters. The term typography is also applied to the
style, arrangement, and appearance of the letters, numbers, and symbols
created by the process. Type design is a closely related craft, sometimes
considered part of typography; most typographers do not design typefaces,
and some type designers do not consider themselves typographers.
Typography also may be used as an ornamental and decorative device,
unrelated to the communication of information.

The uneven spacing of the impressions on brick stamps found in the Mesopotamian
cities of Uruk and Larsa, dating from the second millennium B.C., may be evidence of
type, wherein the reuse of identical characters was applied to create cuneiform text.
Babylonian cylinder seals were used to create an impression on a surface by rolling the
seal on wet clay.

Egyptian logo-consonantal system

Egyptian hieroglyphs were the formal writing system used in Ancient Egypt for
writing the Egyptian language. Overlapping the use of hieratic writing was
cuneiform, which was developed by the ancient Sumerians of Mesopotamia
(3500-3000 BC) and thought to be some of the earliest writing used by
merchants. Its distinctive wedge-shaped features were made from the edges of a
reed pushed into a wet clay tablet. Later adapted and used throughout the middle
east, this form of writing was still in use when the Roman Empire was emerging,
with the last known example made in 79 AD.
Egyptian hieroglyphs first appeared around 3000 BC, painted onto plaster and
then carved in relief, but these were used in religious or royal settings. Later on,
a simplified version called hieratic script was developed for official documents.
Hieratic script was written in ink with a reed brush.

CUNEIFORM - Cuneiform proper is a logo-syllabic script that was used to write

several languages of the Ancient Near East. The script was in active use from
the early Bronze Age until the beginning of the Common Era. Cuneiform scripts
in general are marked by and named for the characteristic wedge-shaped
impressions which form their signs. Cuneiform is the earliest known writing
system and was originally developed to write the Sumerian language of southern
Mesopotamia.Writing began after pottery was invented, during the Neolithic,
when clay tokens were used to record specific amounts of livestock or
commodities.

Greek Lapidary letters

Built on the Egyptian logo-consonantal system, the Phoenicians developed a
phonetic alphabet consisting of 22 letters.
The Phoenicians system then was adopted by the Greeks who added the
necessary vowels. Early Greek was composed of only capital letters, written
between two guidelines to organize them into horizontal rows.
The words may have been in rows but the direction of reading was not yet fixed.
Greek was often read in a format known as boustrophedon or “as the ox plows.”
One row would read left to right and then switch from right to left.

Ancient Rome took the Greek lapidary letters and turned them into their own
alphabets i.e the Roman Alphabet or the Latin Alphabet. They added some
changes to the alphabet themselves - serifs. In the Roman Empire (27 BC–476
AD) text on stone plinths or columns was painted on by a signwriter, then
chiseled out by a stonemason. This resulted in serifs—the bits that stick out at
the edges of letters—that formed from the use of the chisels. Original Roman
texts only used capital (uppercase) letters.
Movable type printing (1040 AD)
Bi Sheng was a Chinese artisan, engineer, and inventor of the world's first
movable type technology, with printing being one of the Four Great Inventions.
Bi Sheng's system was made of Chinese porcelain and was invented between
1039 and 1048 in the Song dynasty. About 1041–48 a Chinese alchemist
named Pi Sheng appears to have conceived a movable type made of an
amalgam of clay and glue hardened by baking. He composed texts by placing
the types side by side on an iron plate coated with a mixture of resin, wax, and
paper ash. Gently heating this plate and then letting the plate cool solidified
the type. Once the impression had been made, the type could be detached by
reheating the plate. It would thus appear that Pi Sheng had found an overall
solution to the many problems of typography: the manufacture, the
assembling, and the recovery of an indefinitely reusable type.

Johannes Gutenberg (1440)

Johannes Gutenberg is known for having designed and built the first known
mechanized printing press in Europe in 1440. In 1455 he used it to print the
Gutenberg Bible,(The three-volume work, in Latin text, was printed in 42-line
columns and, in its later stages of production, was worked on by six compositors
simultaneously. Like other contemporary works, the Gutenberg Bible had no title
page, no page numbers, and no innovations to distinguish it from the work of a
manuscript copyist. ) which is one of the earliest books in the world to be printed
from movable type with the typeface blackletter (books from the time were
handwritten by monks in the typeface blackletter, hence the same was used in
the printing.)
Black letter (1440)
also known as: Gothic script, Old English script
Black letter, in calligraphy, a style of alphabet that was used for manuscript books and
documents throughout Europe, is distinguished by a uniform treatment of vertical
strokes that end on the baseline (e.g., in b or l), the use of angular lines instead of
smooth curves and circles (e.g., for b, d, o, or p), and the fusion of convex forms when
they occur together (e.g., as bo, pa, and the like).
Black letter and revised Carolingian roman were the two dominant letter shapes of
medieval typography. Black-letter type was used in the only extant work known to have
been printed by Johannes Gutenberg, the 42-line Bible.

ROMAN

By 1470, Nicolas Jenson created a Roman type based on the ancient

texts on Roman monuments. Roman is one of the three major typefaces in
the history of Western typography. When the art of printing from movable
metal type was perfected midway through the 15th century, letter cutters
attempted to make their letter forms as much as possible like the
handwriting of manuscript scribes. It was an elaborate ornamental
type—probably easier to write than to cut into metal molds—and it was
difficult to read and wasteful of space (hence expensive paper).
Adapted by many type designers of genius, it has been the “standard”
typeface of book typography.

ITALICS

Italic, in printing, a sloping, light-bodied, compact, and almost cursive letter

form, which, with roman and black letter shapes, has been one of the three
major typefaces in the history of Western printing. Used today almost
exclusively as a special function adjunct of roman letters, italic types were
used first as body texts in small volumes in which their space-saving,
humanistic characteristics were desirable.
CLAUDE GARAMOND (1540)
Garamond is a group of many serif typefaces, named for sixteenth-century
Parisian engraver Claude Garamond, generally spelled as Garamont in his
lifetime. Garamond-style typefaces are popular and particularly often used for
book printing and body text.

As printing spread, so did the desire for different type styles. By 1728 when William
Caslon set up his type foundry, a company that designs or distributes typefaces, he
had produced several typefaces and specimen sheets, which showed the font and
range of characters available. Most of the typefaces he produced were based on
Roman or Gothic styles. He also had some middle eastern typefaces available,
including Hebrew and Armenian. Caslon’s typefaces were known for their clarity and
elegance and many that bear his name are still in use today. Some notable types,
foundries, or designers that followed Caslon were John Baskerville, who created a
Roman-style type with thick lines, Firmin Didot (1780) and Giambattista Bodoni, who
created a modern style Roman typeface. The typefaces that these designers created,
or at least their modern digital versions, are still available today.

SANS SERIF (1890)

Sans serif, in printing, a style of roman letter stripped of its serif—i.e., such
embellishments as the vertical line at the end of the top right and lower left curved
segments of the letter “s,” the baseline on which the lowercase “n,” “m,” and “l” rest, etc.
Though the concept of such a type has challenged recent designers, the face itself is
used largely for display purposes, in which continuous reading is not a requirement.
Inconclusive tests appear to indicate that the roman face is easier to read with serifs
than without them. It has been suggested, again inconclusively, that the sans serif type
suffers in that its characters, when printed, tend somehow to stand out as individual
letters rather than as parts of words.
Neo-grotesque

Neo-grotesque designs appeared in the mid-twentieth century as an evolution of

grotesque types. They are relatively straightforward in appearance with limited stroke
width variation. Similar to grotesque typefaces, neo-grotesques often feature capitals of
uniform width and a quite 'folded-up' design, in which strokes (for example on the 'c')
are curved all the way round to end on a perfect horizontal or vertical. Helvetica is an
example of this. Unlike earlier grotesque designs, many were issued in large families
from the time of release.

Geometric
Geometric sans-serif typefaces are based on geometric shapes, like near-perfect circles
and squares. Common features are a nearly-circular capital 'O', sharp and pointed
uppercase 'N' vertices, and a "single-storey" lowercase letter 'a'. The 'M' is often splayed
and the capitals of varying width, following the classical model. Example - Futura

Humanist

Humanist sans-serif typefaces take inspiration from traditional letterforms, such as

Roman square capitals, traditional serif typefaces and calligraphy. Many have true
italics rather than an oblique, ligatures and even swashes in italic. One of the earliest
humanist designs was Edward Johnston's Johnston typeface from 1916, and, a decade
later, Gill Sans

TIMES NEW ROMAN (1931)

Times New Roman is a serif typeface. It was commissioned by the British
newspaper The Times in 1931 and conceived by Stanley Morison, the artistic
adviser to the British branch of the printing equipment company Monotype, in
collaboration with Victor Lardent, a lettering artist in The Times's advertising
department
SWISS STYLE (1950)
International Typographic Style (ITS), also known as the Swiss Style, emerged in
Switzerland and Germany in the 1950s. ITS became known for design that
emphasized objective clarity through the use of compositional grids and sans
serif typography as the primary design material (or element).ITS was built on the
shoulders of the ‘less is more’ ideal of the German Werkbund and the Bauhaus school
.Its is still very popular and commonly used for its clarity and functionality.

Paul Rand (1955)

The graphic designer Paul Rand was a seminal and pioneering figure in the
history of logo design and corporate branding. One of the originators of the Swiss
Style of graphic design—also known as the International Typographic Style,
which prioritizes clarity, precision, and simplicity. Paul from 1955 onwards, he
distinguished himself with progressive graphic identities that served companies'
interests.Rand created the logos for IBM, UPS, and ABC.

DIGITAL REVOLUTION (1980)

Until the late 20th century, the graphic-design discipline had been based on
handicraft processes: layouts were drawn by hand in order to visualize a design;
type was specified and ordered from a typesetter; and type proofs and photostats
of images were assembled in position on heavy paper or board for photographic
reproduction and platemaking. Over the course rapid advances in digital
computer hardware and software radically altered graphic design
The first digital typeface—Digi Grotesk—was designed by Rudolf Hell in 1968.
Early digital fonts were bitmaps, which resulted in less-than-ideal readability at
small sizes. In 1974, the first outline (vector) fonts were developed, which
resulted in better readability at the same time as reducing file sizes.By the late
1980s, TrueType fonts were created, which allowed for both computer displays
and output devices like printers to use a single file.
Typeface Evolution on Web (2000’s)
The 21st century brought considerable advances in web fonts . In 2009, the Web
Open Font Format (WOFF) was developed and added to the W3C open web
standard. This development paved the way for widespread adoption of web fonts
in 2011 when all major browsers finally adopted support for WOFF.

Steve Jobs and his contribution in typography(1984)

When the first Macintosh computer was released in 1984, Jobs did
something unprecedented in machinery: He provided users with a
wide assortment of digital fonts to choose from. The first Mac included
familiar typeface designs such as Helvetica and Times New Roman,
along with a number of new designs overseen by Jobs himself. These
included Geneva (a distinctly Swiss typeface), Chicago, and Toronto:
All named after some of Jobs’ favorite cities.

Comic sans
Comic Sans is a sans-serif typeface designed by Vincent Connare and released
in 1994 by Microsoft Corporation. It is a non-connecting script inspired by comic
book lettering, intended for use in cartoon speech bubbles, as well as in other
casual environments, such as informal documents and children's materials.
The typeface has been supplied with Microsoft Windows since the introduction of
Windows 95, initially as a supplemental font in Microsoft Plus! Pack and later in
Microsoft Comic Chat. Describing it, Microsoft has explained that "this casual but
legible face has proved very popular with a wide variety of people."
Its widespread use, often in situations for which it was not intended, has become
the subject of criticism and mockery.