Typefaces, from the early revivals in foundry type by Deberny & PeignotĪnd American Type Founders to the later, highly successful revivals for Minion draws on the form and style of the book types of the Renaissance,īut it also draws on the robust 20th-century revival of classic Tradition of old-style text typefaces, used for books since not longĪfter the invention of printing with movable type. As a versatile and expansive digital type family, Minion 3 provides the tools for similarly polyglot publishing in the modern world. Scholarly works might require more than one script: notably Greek, alongside Latin, but sometimes other scripts from other writing systems, both contemporary and historical. Typefaces such as, Excoffon, Aldo Novarese and Eurostile were very popular and used frequently.Book publishing was central to the revival of classical learning that characterized the Renaissance, and the types cut for those books spanned multiple languages. All through the 1950's and 60's new versions of the sans serif typeface were being developed.

This movement led to the crowding of letters up to the point where they became absurdly difficult to read. The new technology of photosetting allowed for complete freedom in determining the spacing between letters. The reason for this was because in serif typeface the letters had were spaced farther apart because the serifs required more room. The spacing was also changed so the letters were closer together. Ĭompared to the lowercase letters the uppercase letters were considerably smaller in size. These typefaces had no typical models, and had strongly emphasized thick-thin contrasts and somewhat angular ovals. At the beginning of the 1950's, people began the actual work of constructing typefaces in this style. Instead of using typefaces like Futura and Erbar, there began to be a rediscovery of the sans serif typeface used at the end of the 19th century. Only in Switzerland did innovation continue to grow. Many people attempted such experiments as lengthening the letters and trying to construct them exclusively from lines and circles.ĭuring World War II the invention of new typeface styling was brought to a halt. This situation endured for one hundred years, and it was not until after World War II that sans serif typeface began to revolutionize the world of text publishing.ĭuring the 1920's there were many attempts to change the shape and style of the letters in the alphabet. The body text was still done in the traditional roman form of typeface. These new typefaces were only used in typesetting for titles and headlines. It was the capital letters that were more drastically altered.Īll the letters from A to Z were now similar in width, whereas before letters such as B and E were narrower and T and M were wider. The letters in the lower case still basically retained the similarity of the roman type. Generally the serif form of typeface is thought to be more old fashioned and grounded in history and tradition, while sans serif presents a new, more modern approach.Īt first sans serif created much controversy because people had been so used to the traditional serif form hence the name 'grotesque.' The alphabet began to take on many different styles and variations, ranging from slender to bold letters. The use of serifs also helped the eye stick to the line and therefore make reading easier. This new typeface began to grow quickly in popularity all over the US and Europe, appearing under such titles as 'grotesque' and 'sans serif.' Traditionally, serif letters were used because the scribes could not leave a clean line with their quills. It was first used in 1816 in a type sample book by William Caslon. The name comes from the roman typeface 'Serif' which has is the opposite of sans serif typeface. The name 'Sans Serif' refers to a typeface that does not have winged tips on the end (see figure 1). The typeface, sans serif (French for, 'without serifs') first appeared at the beginning of the 19th century and was referred to as 'Egyptian' font.

History typeface