Relevance and Evolution of Writing and Type

Writing is extremely important to culture and society. Before writing existed, society had no way to record laws and standardizations, keep records of anything relevant to their culture, or communicate through writing without using the spoken word. Throughout the ages, various cultures have influenced the development of writing and text.

In Asian countries, alphabets were based on logograms, which are symbols representing an entire word. In Western countries, alphabets were based on phonetics. The alphabets used by western languages originated from the Phoenecians. The Greeks and Romans added 2 letters to the phonoecian alphabet when they adopted it. Greeks also standardized the way text was read (left to right, starting at the top), and designed the way letters looked so they would be more symmetrical and pleasing. In the middle ages, more letters were added to complete the modern 26 letter alphabet.

Caligraphy in the middle ages looked very different from Roman type and modern type. In the Gothic Age, Guttenberg invented the printing press (it was first invented in China, though), and it used the textura type, which mimicked hand-written caligraphy of the time. Later, during the Transitional period, text was re-designed into what is considered modern type. Modern type is was very influenced by Roman type (Letter Antica) after Roman type styles was re-discovered. Loui the 14th was instrumental in the birth of the Transitional Period when hebeurocratically decreed that everything in France must be written in Roman style because France must be the leader in science, art, and culture. During the Transitional Period, Bodnini and Didot refined the Roman style into the Modern style by creating and alphabet with interchangeable parts and with thick vertical strokes and thin diagnal strokes with the line thick and thin parts aligned symmetrically vertically and horizontally.