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From Hot Metal to HTML: The Story of Typography - Dylan Beattie - NDC Porto 2023
The history of typography stretches back thousands of years, from ancient cuneiform to digital fonts and web-based rendering, revealing the crucial role typefaces play in modern communication.
- The history of typography started 5,000 years ago in ancient Mesopotamia with cuneiform script.
- The invention of the printing press by Johannes Gutenberg in 1450 revolutionized the spreading of knowledge.
- The first digital font was created in the 1960s with the help of computers.
- The first raster fonts were used in the 1970s and 1980s, but were limited in their scalability.
- Adobe’s PostScript was introduced in the 1980s, which enabled scalable fonts.
- Microsoft’s TrueType font format was introduced in the 1990s, which was more advanced than PostScript.
- The development of web pages in the 1990s led to the need for fonts that could be rendered on screen.
- Web fonts were initially limited to a few standard fonts, but with the advent of CSS and font embedding technology, a wide range of fonts became available.
- The development of mobile devices and e-readers has further increased the need for high-quality fonts that can be easily rendered on small screens.
- The importance of typography in communication is highlighted, and the speaker emphasizes the need for designers to consider the visual aspects of digital communication in their work.