History of Typography

Understanding Typography

• A brief history of printed communication

Early Writing Systems

• The earliest known attempts to communicate with imagery were around 25,000 B.C

• These were pictorial forms (cave drawings)

• Early humans used pictographs – symbols to communicate ideas

Pictographs• Pictographs are

systems of symbols that represent ideas in a consistent manner.

• These simplified drawings represent objects

Pictographs• The ancient Egyptians

developed such a system called hieroglyphics

• The advantage of such a system is that it can be used to communicate universally- with no language barriers

Early Alphabets• The Phoenicians developed an

alphabet of 22 symbols around 1000 B.C.

• These symbols related to sounds in the spoken language

• There were consonants only – no vowels in this first alphabet

• The term “Phonetics” comes from this

Early Alphabets - Greek• The Greeks expanded

on the Phoenician alphabet by adding vowels and naming each character

• This system became the first system to read left to right and top to bottom

Early Alphabets - Roman• The Romans develop the

Greek alphabet further giving us the present alphabet we now use

• This alphabet had lowercase and uppercase versions of letters, condensed forms of text and cursive writing that flowed more naturally by hand

Writing During the Dark Ages• For hundreds of years

books were reproduced by hand, primarily religious manuscripts copied by monks

• Because of the painstaking long time it took to copy a single book, these rare books were treated as treasures and were works of art unto themselves

Typesetting from Wood

• The earliest known printed books

were produced using wooden

blocks with the text carved into

them, which was then used as the

printing plate.

• These “plates” were produced in

much the same manner as those

for wood engravings, instead of a

picture carved into them, the actual

text of the book was hand carved.

Invention of the Printing Press• German metal carver Johannes

Gutenberg invented the printing press

in the mid 15th century.

• Letters were carved into a small metal

plate, a “punch”. The letters were

arranged to form blocks of text.

• Molten metal poured over the top of

this to make a mold. This allowed

books to be printed in quantities that

had previously been impossible.

Invention of the Printing Press• This invention changed the

world, allowing rapid production and distribution of printed ideas for the first time.

• The Bible was the first complete book to be printed.

Hot Metal Composition• By the middle of the 15th century

Guttenberg’s metal type became

accepted and spread through

Europe.

• Movable type is also called

foundry type or hot type.

• In foundry type each piece of

type was cast into a precise size

from metal, which was comprised

of lead, tin, or antimony.

Hot Metal Composition

• Each piece carried a raised image

of a letter, number or character.

• The block of metal that carried the

character was called the body.

• The raised image that was inked

for printing was called the face;

which is where we today get the

term “typeface”.

Hot Metal Composition• A distribution box was made up of

many compartments, called the “California Case.”

• This box had a number of compartments so that each letter, number, and character was assigned a specific compartment of their own.

• I setting type letters were selected one at a time and lined up in what was called a composing stick until it was almost full.

Hot Metal Composition• Then, by using pieces of type with

no face on them, spaces between words were adjusted to bring the line to the required length.

• Each line was placed by hand into a larger box made especially for housing the type.

• The individual lines were laid out exactly like the page of a newspaper, book, or flyer was going to be, except the type was backwards as if looking into a mirror.

Hot Metal Composition

• In the beginning, printing from handset type, the type was inked and copies made directly from the type.

• When printing was finished, the type was taken apart, cleaned and returned to the distribution box for use another time.

Mechanical Composition

• For more than 400 years after the invention of the printing press, all type was set by hand.

• In the 19th century men begin to consider the possibility of creating typesetting machines.

Mechanical Composition• Numerous machines

intended to replace hand composition were invented but none were sufficiently practical until Ottmar Mergenthaler invented the first practical typesetting machine in 1886 called the “Linotype.”

Mechanical Composition

• This first linotype machine produced solid lines of text cast from rows of matrices.

• Each matrix was a block of metal, usually brass, into which an impression of a letter had been engraved or stamped.

Mechanical Composition• The line-composing operation

was done by means of a keyboard similar to a typewriter.

• The depression of a single key released a matrix of a character from the magazine that stored 90 characters.

• After a few rows of matrices were assembled, it was transferred mechanically to a mold making device.

Linotype Composition• Modern type alloy was forced into the mold against the matrices and

hardened almost immediately.

• The result was a bar of metal of the desired length of line with raised letters where the molten metal filled the impressions of the letters in the matrices.

Linotype Composition• After using the type for printing, it was dumped back into a pot

and melted down for use again.

• This machine was much faster then human hand typesetting and required less staff.

Photomechanical Composition• The next improvement in typesetting

methodology was that of photocomposition machines.

• These machines had discs of film, which had each letter of the alphabet, numbers and characters on them.

• An individual disc or drum usually contained two or more typestyles and many machines were designed to carry more then one disc or drum.

• By varying the distance between the character on the drum and the film, it was possible to use the same negative image to produce a wide range of type sizes.

Cathode Ray Tube Composition• The early 1960’s saw

the next improvement in typesetting methods.

• This group of machines made use of cathode ray tube (CRT) for photocomposition.

Cathode Ray Tube Composition• In this process, the image

of each character was created on the screen of a cathode ray tube similar to a television picture tube.

• This image was projected through a lens, where it formed a character of the appropriate size on light-sensitive paper or film.

Digital Imaging Composition• The age of electronics and

computers has changed the way printed products are created and produced.

• Typesetting was impacted with the introduction of the Fotosetter in 1949 and the Photon in 1954.

• In 1950, the PDI electronic scanner was introduced to perform color separations.

Digital Imaging Composition• Neither technology

advanced much until the 1970s when the Video Display Terminal (VDT) and computers were introduced to improve typesetting.

• At this time also Electronic Dot Generation (EDG) and digital magnification expanded the capabilities of electronic scanners.

Digital Imaging Composition

• The digital revolution in typesetting occurred in 1985 with the introduction of the plain paper typesetter and the film imagesetter.

Digital Imaging Composition

• Digital imaging in

prepress/platemaking started to

expand in 1975 with laser

printmaking, laser engraved

cylinders for flexography in the

1980’s, computer-to-film in the

1980’s; computer-to-metal plates

in 1991; thermal laser ablation

nonprocessing computer-to-press

plates in 1993; and computer-to-

thermal processless plates starting

in 1997.

Digital Imaging –The Present

• Digital imaging has transformed prepress.

• Photography has been almost completely replaced by digital imaging systems.

HP Indigo Digital Printer

Digital Imaging –The Present

• Most typesetting is now done on a personal computer with sophisticated software for page layout, illustration, and image editing by a skilled user.