typefaces

The look of letters – a history of typefaces you’ll recognize

For every news story or advertisement you see, there is at least one writer who has agonized over every word. But a designer has also agonized over how those words look. This is a list that shows just how much thought goes into the look of letters.

The two shown in the featured image are Helvetica and Bell Centennial.

Helvetica

This list just wouldn’t be complete without Helvetica — not only is Helvetica everywhere; it also has an entire documentary devoted to it. In that film, design writer Rick Poynor explains that Helvetica was born of the “idealism” and “sense of social responsibility” among designers in the post-World-War-II period. That idealism, combined with a need for “rational typefaces” for things like official signage, helped Max Miedinger and Eduard Hoffman create Helvetica in 1957. And because of its simple, clean look, the font has become pervasive. In 1989, for example, it became the official font of New York City Subway signage, but it has also been used in countless logos.

Bell Centennial

Bell Centennial was created in the 1970s for phonebooks, and specifically to address problems with the printing of those books. If you look closely at the letters, you’ll notice little notches where the strokes meet each other. Those are “ink traps,” meant to deal with the combination of the thin ink used to print phone books and the cheap paper they’re printed on, MoMA explains. Leaving those notches allows the ink to fill in the spaces and make the letters look full and correct when they are printed.

See many more typefaces at Vox

chinese

Iconography: Learn Chinese!

At Skiilight, we hold that iconography is the building block to your brand. Logos, letterforms, and icons combine to provide a user experience that creates meaning. Take a few moments (6 in fact) to learn the icons that billions of people already know.

In this TED Talk, ShaoLan walks through a simple lesson in recognizing the ideas behind the characters and their meaning — building from a few simple forms to more complex concepts.


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Watch this: Linotype: The Film

Browsing Amazon Prime Video a few days ago I discovered a fantastic little movie called “Linotype: The Film.”

Linotype: The Film is a feature-length documentary centered around the Linotype type casting machine. Called the “Eighth Wonder of the World” by Thomas Edison, it revolutionized printing and society. The film tells the charming and emotional story of the people connected to the Linotype and how it impacted the world.

The Linotype (pronounced “line-o-type”) completely transformed the communication of information similarly to how the internet is now changing communication again. Although these machines were revolutionary, technology began to supersede the Linotype and they were scrapped and melted-down by the thousands. Today, very few machines are still in existence.

The highly-skilled operators of the Linotype are in a battle against time. If their skills are not passed along to a new generation of operators, the machine will die completely. There is a small group of former operators that want to save the Linotype from the scrap yard, but some see this as a fruitless endeavor.

What place does the Linotype have in the age of new technology? Should the machine be shoved into a museum and left to rust? Why should anyone care about typography or the technology of communication? The film seeks to answer these questions.

Watch the movie for free if you use Amazon Prime or order it from Amazon or iTunes.