Understand Darwin’s theory of typography to become a great designer
Evolution of typography — survival of the fittest.
Type is Power
The power to express words and ideas visually. It’s impossible to fathom the power of type.
Just try to imagine a world without type. Are you able to do that? Does it take you back to the early man era? Jumping to some weird sounds and dancing around the fire! Yes, we are just wild animals without type. The type has the power to make us not just humans but civilized humans.
Look at you! You are already leveraging the power of type. How would you even read if there was no type? How would you spam your friends at midnight if there was no type? And how would you write those beautiful lines on Twitter for the love of dear Trump?
So! There is no denying that Type is Power. It revolutionized our world just the same way fire revolutionized our human race.
Typography is the art and technique of arranging type to make written language legible, readable and appealing when displayed — Wikipedia
Father of Typography
Most people agree that the creator of typography is John Gutenberg. Remember this dude?
Wasn’t he the one who invented the famous printing machine? Yes! He was the first to invent a Gutenberg printing machine. And he revolutionized the world of communication.
But even before he invented this great machine, books existed. Though they existed, it wasn’t easy for those who wrote books. Monks would scribe letter by letter using their hands and it would take them forever to finish just one book. It was expensive and definitely time-consuming.
To save these monks, came our hero! Mr. Gutenberg! He finally revealed his superpower. The power of type and the power of his machine.
He created the first-ever typeface — Blackletter. Not surprisingly, it was modeled after the scribes.
Rise of the First Species
Blackletter
Blackletter had thick vertical lines and thin horizontal connectors which made it perfect for scribing.
But when it was used for printing, it appeared very dense and squished together. Something needed to change.
Roman Type -Jenson
You read it right. The change was from Blackletter to Roman type. You must have seen this on your wordprocessor — Cambria.
But the first-ever Roman typeface was created in the 15th century.
Once upon a time, there lived a Frenchman in a beautiful city — Venice, Italy. His name was Nicholas Jenson. Since he was working in Venice, he got inspired by the beautiful lettering on the Roman buildings. And he created a typeface based on straight lines and regular curves.
Jenson’s typeface was very clear and legible compared to the dense darkness of Blackletter. This legible new typeface was an instant success and quickly spread across Europe riding on the Renaissance.
Italics
The next major innovation after Roman letters was italics. It was a slanted and stylized version of Roman type. They were created in the late 15th century by Aldus Manutius. This dude was also from Italy. It’s amazing how Italy was obsessed with creation here.
Anyway, there is a good reason for italics to come into existence. Somebody wanted to save money. How? By fitting more letters onto the page!
And look at us! These days, we use italics for emphasis. Poor italics!
Aldus Manutius also created the modern comma and semicolon. Let’s not deviate.
Battles of Old Style, Transitional Style, Moden Style
Caslon
For long, there was no major innovation in the type development. It was stagnant until William Caslon rubbed his head in the 18th Century and this time it wasn’t in Italy. England came up as a gladiator in the Colosseum of Type fight.
William Caslon gave the world a new typeface — Caslon and it set a new standard for legibility. It wasn’t radically different but it was exactly what the world was looking for.
The style of Caslon’s typeface is now referred as Old Style.
Baskerville
As I mentioned above, England was fighting hard in the battles of type.
Another Brit named John Baskerville created a new variety of typeface just a decade later.
We call Baskerville style typeface as Transitional.
Didot and Bodoni
Later in the 18th Century, Frenchman named Didot and as expected Italian named Bodoni entered into the battle again.
Both Didot and Bodoni created typefaces which are called Modern Style.
What’s the Difference?
Most serifs would fit into one of the above categories. Aren’t you curious to know what is the major difference between these? How would you classify one from another?
Old Style typefaces have fixed serifs and there is low contrast between their thick and thin strokes.
Transitional typefaces have thinner serifs and the contrast between thick and thin strokes is higher.
And for the modern, yes! You guess it right. Modern typefaces have very thin serifs and extreme contrast between thick and thin strokes.
The Era of Advanced Species
Sans-serif
What happened next was completely unexpected. William Caslon’s great-grandson William Caslon brought something entirely new to the world. Yes! It’s not a typo error. His name was really William Caslon. This dude got sick of the serifs and he decided to remove them altogether creating a new typeface called sans-serif.
It didn’t catch up during his time but its usage grew exponentially during the Industrial Revolution.
Advertising created a need for typefaces that looked bigger, typefaces that were taller, typefaces that were wider. Why? Because they were supposed to be put on posters and billboards.
Slab-serifs
While the advertising demanded the need for different font styles, things got pretty weird during the chaotic experimentation of typefaces.
As a result of all this, the world discovered a new typeface called Egyptian typeface or slab-serifs. It has really thick serifs and usually used for titles.
Geometric Sans
A lot was happening in the industry of typefaces during the nineteenth century. There were bloody battles of different typefaces competing for the glory. It resulted in huge complexity and the world needed some peace. This world needed order in the crazy chaos.
A cool dude named Paul Renner from Germany saved the world from all the chaos. He created a new typeface called Futura. Now, you may ask — What was the superpower of this new typeface?
Well! Futura was based on simple geometrical shapes.
Humanist Sans
Around the same time when Futura was getting popular, a Britisher named Eric Gill created Gill Sans that was similar to Geometric Sans but with gentler and more natural curves.
Battle of Switzerland
Better late than never! It was 1957 when Switzerland said — Enough! We won’t sit quiet and watch the glorious battles of typography.
It was the next major step in the era of sans-serifs and it brought glory to Switzerland. It created a typeface that we all know as Helvetica.
Helvetica had simple curves and it was available in many different weights. Some would argue that it is the world’s favorite typeface.
Apocalypse and Start of New Era
The world of typography changed forever with the introduction of computers. There were few difficult years of crude pixel type due to the primitive screen technology but with the advancements in technology, everything changed.
It allowed for the creation of beautiful typefaces all over the world. Anyone has the power and freedom to create their own unique typefaces.
Welcome to the New Era!
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UX Crash Course: Chapter 1
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Aryan Indraksh is a Global UX Designer working with Expedia. Please feel free to reach out on Linkedin and Instagram.
