Typography and Today

Germ.. by typography.. is licensed under CC by 2.0

Typography, you may have seen this word before, especially if you’ve ready my previous posts. Yet, people may not know what typography is all about and why it is important in our culture today!

If you are unfamiliar with typography, a brief definition of it is…

1. The art or process of printing with type.

2. The work of setting and arranging types and of printing from them.

3. The general character or appearance of printed matter.

First, before we start out with our culture and typography today,  lets learn a little bit of history.

Where exactly does the alphabet come from and how was it made? Yes, this history is very important in the world of typography, in fact if the first alphabets had never been made, neither would have typography! From ancient history, people wanted to convey what they had to say not only by word of mouth, but they also wanted to preserve it – which is where writing originated from, that and human creativity.

• To get a general summery over this topic to have a better understanding of where the alphabet originated from you can look up The Origins of ABC in the permalink provided since the summary of this history alone could fill a few pages! This is a very informative site which will allow you to appreciate the long history, wrapped up into a brief summary, of how we achieved the alphabet we have today.
• It is very important to understand and grasp at the idea of where the alphabet came from to get the idea why typography has become so important in our society.

But, what exactly is so important about typography and how does it affect me?

Typography effects people more than they know, the simple way letters are arranged or placed on a sheet of paper or billboard can make a huge impact on how we view those objects or say… even when buying a product! Typography is all around us, in our commercials, in our newspapers, and essentially all advertisements we see.

• In graphic design, for example, typography can play a major roll in how graphic designers get to design their products or logos for a customer. When you see a logo, it usually has some form of the text forming into a shape or an object, this is an example of typography.
  • Next time you look at a logo, see if there is typography involved: do the letters form a shape, are the letters curved and written in a way that is different from fonts such as Times New Roman or other casual ones, does the logos words mash together to make it seem like another object?

As technology advances and creativity explodes in our culture today so does the entire realm of typography. There are endless fonts now that people can choose to create their works with simply because people are wanting to discover what our eyes are attracted to and how to arrange these letters in a way it could possibly affect whether we would wish to buy a product or not.

• If anyone is in need of a font… say for a festive look of the upcoming Fall season, Dafont.com is an excellent place to go, just make sure you give the owner proper credit for their hard work. Dafont is also an excellent place to see what all typography can produce – simply by using letters!

In general, typography surrounds our daily lives, can be a “make-or-break” scenario when buying products – this usually occurs within our subconscious, and for generations people have been designing different ways to write and how to convey simple words in an artistic fashion. As technology grows, so does the creativity for all of the fonts and how typography can be conveyed in our society. Typography really is an amazing way to express creativity through text in sometimes subtle and also BIG ways!

• Maybe the next time you have to design something, like a small advertisement, you might want to consider the use of typography and all of the ways it could make your advertisement unique.