Lecture 3 - Production and Distributuion

"The written word endures... The spoken word disappears" Neil Postman Amusing ourselves to death.

Type is what language looks like.
There are three definitions of typography in the dictionary: 1) The art and technique of printing with movable type. 2) The composition of printed material from movable type. 3) The arrangement and appearance of printed matter.

Having typography in our lives makes things much more interesting and memorable; as the quote says above - "The written word endures", so type has been a useful strategy for advertisers for centuries.

The first true alphabet was the Greek, which was adapted to Latin; however typography wasn't thought about much until 1450 where Gutenberg Press started being creative with their prints.

1870 was an important year for Britain, because the Elementary Education Act was enforced.

This meant that every single person between the ages of 5-12 had to attend school, so everyone received an education, including learning to read. Because of this, textbooks had to be printed to learn from.

Almost 100 years later, 1957, Max Miedinger created the "Helvetica" font. It's seen as a more general font that can be used on anything - or the definition of modernism.

25 years after that "Arial" came out. 25 years is the maximum time a font is protected before it lapses... If you look at how similar they are, most people would say that Arial is a rip off of Helvetica, created by Microsoft:

Arial

Helvetica

As you can see there are only slight differences between each font, so people claim Microsoft copied Miedinger... The tutor giving this lecture even said this is one of the reasons Microsoft is the "enemy" of type!

After many varieties of fonts served for all purposes, Bill Gates invented Internet Explorer in 1995, which was the first ever internet browser! This would go on to change the lives of a whole new generation...

The final quote given to us: "There is no single approach within Typography that applies to everything". This has proven to be true since so many styles have been used, since not one font can be used for everything.