From the course: Graphic Design Foundations: Typography

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Type history

Type history

From the course: Graphic Design Foundations: Typography

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Type history

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- Let's take a brief look at the history of our letter forms. The way we identify and organize type styles today is based primarily on type history. So let's go back in time to see how we inherited our letter forms. The foundations of Western writing go back to the fifth century BCE. Carved Greek letters were one of the first formal uses of Western letter forms. Roman monumental capitals appeared in the First Century BCE and are the ancestor of all serif typeface. Passionate type files agree that the most revered example of carved Roman capitals is this panel at the base of Rome's Trajan Column, which was completed in the First Century. It's believed that these letter forms were created with a broad edge brush and that the action of the broad edge, combined with the incised V cuts of the chisel led to the creation of serifs. All over Western Europe in the millennium that followed, pockets of different lettering styles…

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