


Caroline MinisculeĪround the year 732, a system of writing called the Caroline Miniscule was developed under the patronage of Charlemagne. Roman letters were the first to feature a mix of thick and thin strokes. The Roman alphabet consisted of 23 letters, written with short finishing strokes at the end of letters that were called serifs. This writing became the roots of our modern language today.įrom the Greek alphabet came the Etruscan alphabet, and then the Roman alphabet. The Greeks then adapted the Phoenicians’ language and added the first five vowels to them. When the Phoenicians gained their independence from the Egyptians, they developed the first alphabet that comprised exclusively of letters – no drawings or symbols. Apart from using symbols to represent objects and ideas, they also used objects to represent sounds. The ancient Egyptians developed their own system of ideographs, known as hieroglyphics. Today, modern Chinese characters are still based on ideographs. Pictograms were then refined into ideographs, which used symbols to represent objects, such as a wave to represent the sea and a star to represent the heavens. They were commonly discovered on tablets or on cave walls.
HELVETICA TYPEFACE ESSAY SERIES
The earliest form of writing discovered was a series of pictures that told a story, known as pictograms. Here’s how typography has evolved over each different era. Typography has come a long way, from its humble roots in the birth of the written word to a million-dollar industry today. A typeface is the design and look of a particular font. Most of us are probably familiar with a few of the most common font names, such as Arial, Times New Roman and Courier New. Fonts are collections of letters, each in a different style. Typography refers to the art of creating and designing letters, packaging them into collections called fonts. However, did you know that each font has its own personality?įirst off, what exactly is typography, and what is the difference between a typeface and a font? Each one has been handcrafted and specially designed into a system that most of us probably gloss over each day. Most people probably don’t stop to think about what font they are using, but typefaces are everywhere and there is no avoiding them.
HELVETICA TYPEFACE ESSAY FULL
We live in a world full of millions of different typefaces.
