Typography and Historical Scripts

History of Typography

• The earliest known attempts to communicate with images date back to around 25,000 B.C., with cave drawings being a primary form of pictorial communication.

Ancient Writing Systems

• The earliest form of writing emerged from Sumeria around 4000 B.C., with text written from top to bottom, then from left to right.
• Hieroglyphs used a pictogrammatic writing system, with over 750 individual Egyptian pictograms, and were written from right to left, left to right, or downwards.
• Phoenicians developed a system of 22 magic signs or symbols that represented sounds rather than objects, which became the basis of the modern Latin alphabet around 1600 B.C.

Development of the Alphabet

• The Greeks adopted the Phoenician characters, creating their alphabet and refining the language by adding the first vowels (5 of them).
• The word ALPHABET is derived from the Greek characters alpha and beta.
• Aramaic, created from Phoenician around 900 B.C., is a Semitic language that pioneered Arabic and Hebrew.
• The Romans further created the alphabet by using 23 letters from the Etruscans, with modifications and additions.

Typography and Printing

• The Romans used seven of their letterforms as base numerals, with each letter representing a numeric building block.
• Johann Gutenberg invented handset movable type in 1450, allowing for quick production of books and contributing to the expansion of knowledge.
• The Gutenberg Press utilized movable types, which were inked and then transferred onto damp sheets of paper.
• The first book printed using the Gutenberg Press was the 42-line Gutenberg Bible.

Typography Terms and Characteristics

• Many typographical terms are named after the different characteristics of type blocks.
• Block, Blackletter, Gothic, Old English, black, or broken typefaces are based on the ornate writing style during the Middle Ages.
• Blackletter typefaces are used to add decorative touches and appear heavy and difficult to read in large text blocks due to their complexity and unfamiliarity.