COP 1 Lecture 4 - The History of Type - Production and Distribution - Part 1

Today's lecture was based around the idea that language is an agreement between people that one thing will stand for another. This means that language is negotiable - and type is what language looks like, a visualisation of language.

We started by looking at how typography is the art and technique of printing work, the composition of printed material from movable type and the arrangement and appearance of printed matter. Type is important because the written word endures, whereas the spoken word disappears.

In 7,000 BC the first ever example of type was recorded, and this was driven by trade - it was used almost as a receipt as an acknowledgement of commerce.

We also looked at things such as the Ancient Hebrew Alphabet and Sino Tibetan, which were crucial parts of the development of language. We talked about the Occidental and the Oriental hemispheres, the Western and Eastern hemispheres. Cuneiform came from the Western hemisphere and was the basis of the occidental alphabet.

The Rosetta Stone from 196 BC was the first recording of language as a common thing - there are three different languages recorded for the same thing - Egyptian, Demotic and Greek. This demonstrated an agreement amongst cultures that one thing stood for another.

We also looked at how words that are completely jumbled up can still be read and interpreted - this is because our brain reads words as a whole rather than single letters, so as long as the first and last letters are in the right place, we are able to interpret the word correctly. This shows that we can bend, break and change letters and they still make sense.

There is a range of different processes by which type is produced, from chiselling out of stone using tools used to make marks into materials, to brush based ink on papyrus paper. Different techniques make type appear in different ways, but this is always still legible and intelligible.

In 1450 Johannes Gutenberg began creating the first printing press, which meant 10 pages could be produced at the same time whilst looking the exact same. This revolutionized type and made it more accessible - which in turn lead to the Elementary Education Act in 1870 by William Foster, who made it compulsory for children aged 5-12 to learn to read in schools.

After the first World War, there became a need for mass production to help revive and rebuild society. This led to the Bauhaus movement, started in 1919 by Walter Gropius. This meant drawing arts and crafts together with industrialism and mass manufacture took place over handmade crafts.
There was new ways that type could be produced, and this is when typography was really first born.

To summarise this lecture, we talked about how type is a communication method, and we are able to navigate our lives using words.