Typography

Typography is the practical art of arranging how the printed word appears on the page.Tschichold, Jan 1991. The form of the book: essays on the morality of good design. Hartley & Marks, Vancouver. . Typography was born when print was born.Lefebre L. & Martin H-J. 1990. The coming of the book. new ed, London. Early types were based on the letterforms of scribes, and the letters cut into Trajan's Column ("monumental inscriptions").Morison, Stanley. 1926 Type designs of the past and present. Fleuron, London. Later, gradually, type designs were based on the special needs of books, pamphlets, newspapers and advertisements.Twyman, Michael 1970. Printing 17701970. London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, Chapter 3 Types and other letterforms.

Typography  includes not only letters, but all the set of symbols in a font, and it includes the overall design of a page or document.Tracy, Walter 1986. Letters of credit: a view of type design. Gordon Fraser, London.  It applies to any medium which may be read; therefore it includes text on computer screens. A typographer may design type, select fonts, and design the layout of pages and books. The term does not cover the act of printing itself, though many of the early printers were themselves typographers.Chappell W. & Bringhurst R. A short history of the printed word. Hartley & Marks, Vancouver. 

Typography in the 20th century was greatly influenced by three things:
Modernism and the modern art movement.Spencer, Herbert. 1969. Pioneers of modern typography. Lund Humphries, London. Revised edition by Rick Poynor MIT Press 2004. 
Information about the effectiveness of typography and design. Some of this comes from formal 'scientific' experiments,Tinker M.A. 1963 The legibility of print. Iowa State University Press: Ames, Iowa.Cornog D.Y. & F.C. Rose 1967. Legibility of alphanumeric characters and other symbols: II. A reference handbook. Washington D.C. National Bureau of Standards. but most comes from commercial sources.Journals on advertising research contain hundreds of examples. Naturally, sales results before and after a book or magazine redesign are compared. A redesign of the typography on the jacket of a book (Roget's Thesaurus) "nearly doubled the sales".Tedesco A.P. 1948. The relationship between type and illustration in books and book jackets. George McKibbin, New York. p31 Typographers themselves carry out mini-experiments to test alternatives.Spencer, Herbert 1952. Design for business printing. Sylvan Press, London. p88 This is an extension of scientific method to what is, at heart, an artistic process. 
The development of modern computer technology, which affected type design, and changed printing methods.

A traditional aim of the typographer would be to produce a page which is, above all, legible and attractive to read, without its being obtrusive. For display typography, such as advertising, the display must be noticed before it is read. This had led to the development of many display typefaces which are highly visible, and which are available in large sizes.Gottschall, Edward M. 1989. Typographic communications today. MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass. and London. Bringhurst, Robert 2002. The elements of typographic style (version 2.5). Hartley & Marks, Vancouver. 

 Related pages 
 Printing
 Typeface
 Writing
 Calligraphy

 References 


Category:Graphics
Category:Book terminology
Category:History of printing