Typography

Before the age of digital electronic media, typography focused on type design and its placement on the printed page. At first, many typographers worked in printing houses, where the work revolved around designing and creating printed material, from one-page documents to newspapers, magazines, and books. Later, the division of labor separated specialized type foundries from printing workshops and stationery stores. Printers were also publishers when every printing press functioned under government license. As these changes took place, typography branched into specialized functions, from the design and physical casting of type to the functions of what is now graphic design.

To market and distribute periodicals and books today requires increased focus on overall graphic design as well as on audience. Typographers and designers must address and manage design matters. The style, form, and appearance of printed material explicitly position publications in discourse fields and market sectors.

The birth of digital electronic media introduced new dimensions to typography. Typeset material was not always printed. It appeared on screen, and some type was active rather than static. While style, form, and appearance remained a central focus of typography, other factors became important.

Some changes were the result of technology. Computer-based typesetting followed photomechanical typesetting. It required the adaptation of classical typefaces, as well as significant modifications to typographic management. Desktop publishing required even greater changes. New approaches to type design and print production were a central result, along with major developments in onscreen visualization.

Technological change led to another kind of change, a reconceptualization of typography. Originally, typographical work was shaped by the physical and mechanical constraints of type. Designing type for foundry technology, cutting molds and dies, casting lead type, locking it into wooden chases, and printing on presses descended from Gutenberg's original printing process influenced all aspects of typography from type design to the make-up of the printed page. Advances in mechanical typography and printing did little to change this process. Even offset printing required an original typeset sheet from which the offset photo was made, or a lead-cast linotype lock-up for high-speed mechanical presses.

The birth of computer-based technologies transformed all this. The constraints imposed on typography by physical type media no longer existed. For example, the concept of leading, the distance between separate lines of type, originated with printing-press technology. Physical blocks of lead were used to lock in and separate lines of type. What began as a physical constraint on typography became a factor in visual ergonomics. When lead vanished, leading changed from a constraint to a development factor that many young typographers began to neglect or ignore. While negative leading became possible for showpiece [Page 449]typography, it was more common that type was badly leaded simply because unskilled typographers never learned to set leading properly.

Desktop publishing and computer-based typography had an even more profound impact. Where typography was once an expert art developed through apprenticeship or advanced training, the advent of the PC meant that anyone who could type letters on a keyboard and manipulate a mouse could set type. This led to exciting new experiments by thoughtful and adventurous amateurs, and resulted in the “new typography” movement of the 1980s and 1990s. Led by Émigré magazine's Rudy VanderLans and Zuzana Licko, and by designers like David Carson and Neville Brody, the movement sought to use typography itself as an art form. While often successful at creating visually stunning publications, it also resulted in vast streams of bad typography and shabby home-brewed design.

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