These images are edited selections from class slide lectures. Reading this page will not substitute for lecture content.
Why should a graphic designer study handwriting?
We study handwriting because the first mechanically printed letters were designed to directly imitate handwriting —adopting also the existing manual standards for form, rhythm and spacing.
The shape and line of hand drawn letterforms was influenced by the tools and materials used to make them. Sharpened bones, charcoal sticks, plant stems, brushes, feather and steel pens all contributed unique characteristics.
The form was also determined by the material upon which the forms were written; clay, papyrus, animal skins ‹vellum and parchment› and paper.
1.
Clay Bullae
8000 BC—3100 BC Mesopotamia
As civilization evolved from nomadic hunters into a more agricultural society and began to trade goods, it was necessary to find a way to record transactions. Small portable clay tokens were made in specific shapes to represent objects in approximately sixteen economic categories, sheep, grain,oil etc. The tokens were stored in clay ball-shaped envelopes, bullae, which were impressed on the outside with the shapes of the tokens found within.
Around 3100 BC the tokens themselves were eliminated and the just the shapes of the tokens were drawn on clay tablets.
(This was still not a system of writing — writing is used to represent language not as an accounting tool). The end of using tokens coincided roughly with the emergence of a system for graphically recording spoken language.
2.
Cuneiform
3100 BC
Cuneiform, the oldest known form of actual writing, was written with a wedge shaped stylus pressed into wet clay tablets. The characters started out as pictograms but later were rotated onto their sides, abstracted into symbols and organized into horizontal rows. Cuneiform was written from left to right, perhaps as it helped a right-handed writer to see their work as they wrote or to keep the clay from being smeared.
3.
Hieroglyphics
2613-2160 BC
A writing system is fused with the art of relief carving, in fact the Greek translation of the term means "sacred carving." Hieroglyphics adorned the walls of tombs to connect the mummified dead to the divine world. The system was a mixture of both rebus and phonetic characters —the first link to a future alphabetic system.
Write like an Egyptian at this link
Our English Alphabet
Building on the Egyptian logo-consonantal system, the Phoenicians developed a phonemic alphabet, which was later adapted by the Greeks and finally modified by the Romans into the Latin/Roman alphabet. English emerged out of Latin as part of the family of Romance languages, falling under the category of logo phonemic. Below are the major milestones in letterform development excerpted from Die Schriftenwicklung; (The Development of Writing), Hs.Ed.Meyer, Graphis Press, Zurich, 1958. Meyer's complete letterform
progression from the 5th C BC though the 18th C has been placed on the web by Dean Allen at "Evolution of Western Writing."
4.
Early Greek
5th C. BC
Early Greek was written in straight rows but read in alternate directions, reading from left to right and then switching to right to left —"boustrophedon" or "as the ox plows." Most scholars believe that the Greek alphabet was borrowed from the Phoenicians and passed on to the Greeks who added vowels.
Early Roman Lapidary
2nd Century BC
As copied from the Greek style, the first Roman stone carved letters were of equal width and were without serifs. Rudimentary word spacing begins with dots used to divide words.
Classical Roman Lapidary
1st C. AD
The first serifs are theorized to originate with the stone cutter's horizontal finish of the carved line to decrease the chance of a stone splintering at the end of a line and/or to mimic the thickness of the initial brush drawn guides.
Watch a modern day stone cutter carving the Trajan letters here.
Origin of Our Capital Letterforms
113AD
The letters in the inscription at the base of this monument are considered by many to embody the ultimate resolution of Latin letterform evolution. They have been studied by numerous type designers for almost 20 centuries—with many spinoff fonts including the famous Edward Johnston, Eric Gill and Carol Twombly reinterpretations.
Father Edward Catich, an calligrapher, authority on stone incising and authority on the Roman alphabet, theorized that serifs evolved from stone cutters following the form of brush painted letters in his 1968 work "The Origin of the Serif"
7.
Roman Capitals (above)
1st C. AD
These early scripts were attempts to copy the characteristics of letters that were inscribed in stone. They were written mostly on vellum with a flat edged reed or quill nib held nearly parallel to the baseline.
8.
Uncials (above)
5th C. AD
"The unical letter was used by the Greeks as early as the third century, BC...The Romans undoubtedly borrowed the style from this source and gave it the name unicals which is explained by the simple fact that these letters, in some of the early manuscripts containing them, were an "uncia"or a Roman inch in height. Later uncials were far from uniform in height, but the name persisted." Nesbitt
9.
Half-Uncials (above)
6th C. AD
Half-unicals are written between four guidelines allowing for the development of ascenders and descenders. This new style was easier and faster to write than the uncial style.
"The history of uncials and half uncials is part of the history of the Christian church from the fourth century through the ninth; they were essentially "church letters." The association has been so strong that it has limited the usefulness of both designs to work having to do with ceremonies
or festivities of a religious nature...There is no rule, however, which prevents their selection for other purposes; taste and discretion must decide." (Quote source: Alexander Nesbitt, The History and Technique of Lettering. Dover Publications, 1957).
Shown above is a contemporary piece by Spyros Zevelakis
You probably know unicals best from the 10 C. Irish half uncial (see them here)
After the fall of 5th C. Rome
After the fall of the Roman Empire, the end of a central advanced culture resulted in general illiteracy and the break down of handwriting into various regional styles. For 300 years the knowledge of writing was kept alive mainly in remote outposts such as religious cloisters and retreats.Shown above is an example from the 7th century.
Carolingian Minuscule
8th C. (789)—1100's
Emperor Charlemagne ‹751—814›reigned over the vast Frankish kingdom which encouraged a revival of art, religion, and culture through the medium of the Catholic Church. Although he was illiterate, in 789 he decreed that a standard style of writing be used for all legal and literary works to unify communication between the various regions of the expanding European empire—now known as the Carolingian minuscule.
The "Carolingian minuscule" is thought to have been developed through the efforts of the British monk, Alcuin of York. He based his clear and distinct letterform design on classical documents from ancient Rome. In addition to style, he set up conventions for uniform spelling, capitals at the start of a sentence, spaces between words and punctuation. Centuries later, during the Renaissance, the Carolingian hand was mistaken for the original Roman and copied as a "Classical" type style.
Carolingian minuscule developed from uncials and half-uncials, exploiting the Roman characteristics of rounded, open and clean forms.By the 12th century the letters began to narrow and crowd together in a stylistic change toward the Gothic style.
To see a better example at larger scale go
here or here.
1,1,2,3,4...
"Although all of our letters are the result of a long and peculiar evolution from Roman writing styles, our numerals come from another source all together: the culture of Islam. The Romans had a system of numbering ...certain capital letters I, M, V, X etc. used in arrangements to denote quantities. If one delves into the history of mathematics, one finds that much of the early searching was for a system of numbers that would work easily and well under all conditions. What was really sought was the zero....the focal point of mathematics moved from place to place over time From Egypt to Greece to Rome to India, where mathematicians finally found the use of zero— at about the 6th century. Exactly how the indian system came to the Arabs is uncertain, in any event the Arab world became the next dominance in mathematic and the numbers were named accordingly. Western Europe learned these numbers from the Moors in Spain and later during the Crusades.* By the 13th century Arabic numbers came into common usage.
(*Quote source: Alexander Nesbitt, The History and Technique of Lettering. Dover Publications, 1957)
11.
Blackletter: The Gothic Hands
12—15th C.
The term Gothic started out as Italian word for rude or barbaric to refer to the cultures north of the Italian Alps. Gothic style however had nothing to do with the Goths, rather it was a style influenced by Saracenic art —an influence from the Crusades—and was the culminating artistic expression of the middle ages, roughly from 1200–1500.
Lettering stylistically evolved until the 12th century when letterforms were drawn by "breaking" the stroke (that is lifting the pen to construct a letter out of several short straight strokes as opposed to one continuous stroke). All the rounds were converted to broken strokes.
The spirit of the Gothic style manifested itself in unhindered upward striving: vertical supplanted horizontals as the dominant line in architecture; the pointed arch replaced the round arch of the Romans; the almond shape, the mandorla, was preferred."* The Gothic spirit took hold in France, Germany and England.
Robert Bringhurst writes in his Elements of Typographic Style, "Blackletter is the typographic counterpoint to the Gothic style in architecture."
There are 4 basic styles of Blackletter that emerged from the 13th thru 16th centuries
.
• Textura ‹formal›
• Rotunda ‹formal›
• Bastarda ‹semi-formal›
• Cursive ‹informal›
By utlizing the blackletter style word spacing, linespacing and letterspacing were reduced which conserved space and materials. During the gothic period churches and universities were increasing the demand for books which opened the opportunities for the secular professional scribe, who were both men and women.
12.
Johann Gutenberg
15th C.
Mainz, Germany
(Visit the Gutenberg Museum)
Printing had been practiced in Korea, China and Japan for several centuries, and Europeans had printed type with carved wooden blocks for about 100 years before a modular "moveable type" system was developed in about 1450. A number of people were working
on "automated writing" but the commonly accepted originator of the modular moveable type system was
Johann Gutenberg.
Gutenberg's System: Cast Metal Moveable Type
The first step in making metal type is to carve a letter on the end of a steel bar, the punch.(left)
That letterform is struck into a softer metal bar made of copper, to create a mold called the matrix. (middle)
The matrix is placed into a type mold (right) and then molten metal is poured into the opening to fill the mold. The caster shakes the mold to avoid air pockets, and the letterform is almost instantly ready to remove.
Image for punch and matrix from "Type Casting."
Image of mold from Typefoundry.
The final letterform is released from the mold and cleaned and leveled for use.
A jeweler by profession, Gutenberg was knowledgeable in metal carving, casting and knew which metals worked best for each stage of his process. The mixture he used for casting type was a mixture of lead, tin and antimony.
Gutenberg's 42-Line Bible
Circa 1455
(See it here!)
Despite being a clever inventor Gutenburg was not a good businessman. He borrowed heavily from Johann Fust and when Gutenberg was unable to repay his debts, Fust successfully sued to take over the business. Fust then enlisted his brother-in-law, Peter Schoeffler, as a business partner and they produced the bible. The final product is known today as the Gutenberg bible.
A collection of samples printed by Schoeffler at Bridwell Library.
For an excellent permanent site about a Gutenberg Bible visit The Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin.
13.
Konrad Haebler's
Typenrepertorium der Wiegendrucke
"... we can say roughly that in the age of incunabula, about 1,100 printers used 4,600 type founts to print 27,000 titles of books and documents.
Gothic type accounts for 79% of all types used, while Roman types represents around 19%. Besides these two major founts, Greek, Hebrew ... were created... Some 1,200 Gothic type founts were used in both Italy and Germany, and some 700 Gothic type founts in France. Most of Roman types were used by Italian printers, while only a small number of German, French and Spanish printers used Roman type. Printers in England and the Netherlands seldom or never used Roman type."
Excerpt from the Japanese National Diet Library "Dawn of Western Printing."There are plenty of examples of type styles and a Type identification Experience
14.
Printing Technology Spreads Causing Societal Change
"Within 50 years over a thousand printers set up shop all over Europe. Many groups sought to control this new technology. Scribes fought against the introduction of printing, because it could cost them their livelihoods, and religious (and sometimes secular) authorities sought to control what was printed. Sometimes this was successful: for centuries in some European countries, books could only be printed by government authorized printers, and nothing could be printed without the approval of the Church.
Printers, rather than authors were held responsible for the spread of unwanted ideas, and some were even executed. But this was a largely futile struggle, and most such restraints eventually crumbled in the western world.
Some recorded printer casualties:
Antoine Augereau, Parisian printer and type designer, reputedly the teacher of Garamond, hanged and burned on Christmas Eve, 1534, on (supposedly trumped up) charges of printing heretical placards.
Etienne Dolet, printer of Lyon and Paris, burned at the stake on August 3, 1546, in Paris, on charges of blasphemy, sedition, and selling prohibited books.
Martin l’Homme, hanged in 1560 for printing a pamphlet against a Cardinal.
Renaissance Humanism
"Renaissance Humanism is the spirit of learning that developed at the end of the middle ages with the revival of classical letters and a renewed confidence in the ability of human beings to determine for themselves truth and falsehood."
Italian scholars, centered in Florence, sought to restore their lost heritage by reexamination of the literature of ancient Greece and Rome (studying writings including Plato and Aristotle.)
The central feature of Humanism in this period was the commitment to the idea that the ancient world (defined effectively as ancient Greece and Rome) ... was the pinnacle of human achievement, especially intellectual achievement, and should be taken as a model by contemporary Europeans.
15.
Reviving the Lettera Antiqua
"Graphic Designers owe a great debt to the Humanists, for it was they who created the script that became the model for small letters. The script came about through the Humanist passion for seeking out and copying the ancient manuscripts of the classical authors they admired. They were also attracted to the clear, open handwriting of the manuscripts they believed had been written in Roman times. In actual fact, the manuscripts the Humanists admired were mostly from the Carolingian period, and their script, which we call Humanistic, was derived from the Carolinigian Hand"
(Quote source, James Craig, 30 Centuries of Graphic Design p50
Copyists used two forms of letters based upon the ancient, or "antique" Roman models—The Lettera Antiqua formata (for elaborate manuscripts) and the Lettera Antiqua corsiva (more informal) for scholastic works.
(Quote Source, Leon Battista Alberti's Inscriptions on the Holy Sepulcher in the Cappella Rucellai, San Pancrazio, Florence, Christine M. Sperling)
Poggio Bracciolini 1380—1450
An Italian humanist and calligrapher, foremost among scholars of the early Renaissance to rediscover lost, forgotten, or neglected classical Latin manuscripts in the monastic libraries of Europe. The manuscripts he studied and copied were not from ancient Rome but actually from the Carolingian period.
Niccolò de' Niccoli (Florence)
A Vatican scribe whose cursive hand was adapted by Aldus Manutius in 1501 "Aldinian" and later referred to as italic.
Chacellaresca, an important variety of italics became the model for Lodovico Arrighi's La Operina, a manual of handwriting published in 1522.
Felice Feliciano Verona. c.1460
An expert on stone lettering, he published the first geometric study of the Roman inscriptions in 1463. He employed a module of a circle enclosed by a square with two diagonal lines extending from corner to corner.
Alphabetum Romanum. (above)
(Quote Source, Handwriting Identification: Facts and Fundamentals, Huber & Headrick.)
Renaissance architecture reintroduced the Classical Greek and Roman emphasis on symmetry, proportion, geometry and the regularity of parts from the work of ancient roman architect Vitruvius. Leonardo Da Vinci's Vitruvian Man exemplifies the blend of art and science during the Renaissance — the human figure as the principal source of proportion among the Classical orders of architecture.
Leon Battista Alberti 1522—1550
Alberti believed the circle and the square were the most perfect geometrical forms and they should be used as the basis for architecture and the alphabet. He revived the Roman tradition of inscribing monumental letterforms onto building facades.
(Above) Tempio Malatestiano di Rimini -L.B.Alberti
16.
Ludovico Vicentino degli Arrighi
Father of Italic
It is to Arrighi that we owe much of our present italic style through the influnce he had on French designers. Arrighi was a scribe in the Vatican chancellery, one of the gifted writing masters. He based his italic on the chancelleries style of writing which was nothing but a later style of the cursiva humanistica.
In 1522 Arrighi's printed a 32-page pamphlet on handwriting, La Operina, which was the first book devoted to writing the italic script (chancery cursive). The publication was reproduced using hand carved wooden blocks for printing.
The above specimen is a detail taken from a free download of La Operina provided by http://operina.com/
The Universal Penman 1741
Mr. Bickham's books that were not for decorative purposes but rather to exemplify legible and easy styles of business hand for clerks and others whose jobs necessitated a good deal of writing and record-keeping, prior to the era of the typewriter.
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