Type and Tools

The relationship of letters and technology: an incomplete overview

The Pen

Persian Cuneiform — Cuneiform c.3000 BCE—300CESource

Reed Stylus — Blunt end of a reed stylus into wet clay tablets Source

c.1600 BCE: Hieratic script on Papyrus Source

Qalams — Qalam: pen made of cut, dried reed for ArabicSource

c.1200 BCE: Ancient Chinese Script on Oracle Bones Source

Seal script example — c. 221 BCE: Seal script style Source

c. 185 Han Dynasty Clerical Script Source

Types of calligraphic scripts — Types of Chinese calligraphic scripts Source

Comparison of ancient writing systems Source

Burmese manuscripts — Three different styles of the Burmese script Source

Brahmi Letter Shapes — Brahmi letter shapesSource

Roman forms — Roman brush letteringSource

Brush and Cchisel — Broad flat brushes defined the letters before they were carved, giving rise to “serifs” Source

Relationships of various scripts — Evolution of various Roman / Greek uncials Source

Parchment and Paper maker — 1568: Parchment and paper maker. Source

Movable Type

1377: Korean Buddhist document *Jikji*, oldest metal type specimenSource

Woodblock printing — Korean printing blockSource

Printing Press — 1436: Gutenberg develops the printing press Source

Punch-Matrix System — Type Shop in Plantin Moretus Museum, Antwerp.

The production of metal type Source

Printing Press demonstration — Press demonstration at Plantin Moretus Museum, Antwerp.

ATF Caslon Specimen 1923 — American Type Foundry Caslon Specimen, 1923 Source

Aldus Manutius (c. 1452-1515) and italic forms Source

Clarendon — 1874: Different weights are developed to provide emphasis Source

1918: Morris Fuller Benton develops a variety of weights and styles for Cheltenham. It was among the first typefaces to be released as a type ‘family.’Source

Hamilton Wood Type Specimen — 1899 specimen from Hamlton Wood Type Source

Wooden type allowed much larger sizes to be printed Source

Wood Type Poster — With the impact of Wood type, posters proliferated for entertainment, advertising, political campaignsSource

Linotype Machines enabled printing many copies more efficiently, enabling a more rapid pace of journalism Source

‘Farewell, Etaoin Shrdlu’ was a documentary on the end of “hot type.”Source

Sholes Typewriter — 1873: Sholes and Glidden typewriter with QWERTY keyboard Source

Digital Type

Digiset — Morisawa Phototypesetting Machine from 1960s Source

Frutiger’s Univers aimed to take advantage of Phototypsetting technology. Source

Apple Macintosh — Gerard Unger’s Demos, decomposed of several hundred bitmaps, to be used for typesetting on the Hell Digiset Source

Bitmap — A 8 x 8 bitmap composed of 0s and 1sSource

2003: Kare’s Chicago font on third-generation iPod Source

Netscape Navigator Browser, 1995 for Windows XPSource

Websafe fonts — A sample of core “Websafe” fonts

Vector — 1974: Outline fonts are drawings constructed by mathematical formula, allowing any character outline to be scalable to any size. Source

Splines — Apple TrueType splines, late 1980s Source

Cubic Bezeir — Cubic Bezier CurvesSource

1991: Adobe Multiple Master, a predecessor to Open Type Variable Fonts Source

OpenType 1.8

Variable Fonts

A variable font is a single font file contains many different variations of a typeface, instead of having a separate font file for every width, weight, or style. This format was developed in collaboration by Adobe, Apple, Google, and Microsoft.

The full family of Magmatic requires 30 files

Which would require 30 HTTP requests, and a data load of 2.1MB to be downloaded

As a variable font, it is a single file request of 478KB (88% lighter)

Digital letterforms are made of mathematical
equations, as functions of time

Masters and Instances — Masters vs. Instances Source

H

→

H

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H

Design Space visualizer — Design space visualizer (Occupant Fonts)

Laurence Penney’s Samsa, Variable Font Inspector

Axis Tag	Description	Valid Range
wght	weight	1—1000
wdth	width	>0, percent of normal width
opsz	optical sizing	>0, point sizes
ital	italicization	0—1
slnt	slant	-90—90

Standard Axes for Open Type 1.8