What is type?
Although this book is not about designing a typeface, it is useful to have an understanding of the historical and technological context in which type has evolved.
Letterforms developed as an alternative means of communication to the spoken word. Initially this visual communication took place through pictograms, which use an image to represent an object, and ideograms, which convey more complex meanings such as actions.
These symbols gradually evolved, in different ways within different cultures and societies, into the letterforms we are familiar with today. The letterforms would originally have been hand-produced by scribes, but, with the increase in populations and need for more complex communication, mechanical means of producing ...