Why should a graphic designer study handwriting?

We study handwriting because the first mechanically produced letterforms were designed to directly imitate handwriting —importing the existing manual standards for form, rhythm and spacing into printed type.

The shape and line of hand drawn letterforms are 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. Additional factors included the material upon which the forms were written: clay, papyrus, animal skins ‹vellum and parchment› and paper.

2. Cuneiform
c. 3000 B.C.E.

Cuneiform, the earliest system of actual writing, was used in a number of languages between the 34C. B.C.E. through the 1st century C.E. Its distinctive wedge form was the result of pressing the blunt end of a reed stylus into wet clay tablets. The characters evolved from pictograms that had been rotated onto their sides, abstracted into symbols and organized into horizontal rows. (See below)
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.
Recommended Reading:Cuneiform, Reading the Past, C. B. F. Walker.
Write like a Babylonian at UPenn Museum of Archeology
.

3. Hieroglyphics
2613-2160 B.C.E.

The Egyptian writing system is fused with the art of relief carving— in fact the Greek translation of hieroglyphics means "sacred carving." The system was a mixture of both rebus and phonetic characters—the first link to a future alphabetic system.

Hieroglyphic images have the potential to be used in three different ways:

1. As ideograms, to represent the things they actually depict.

2. As phonograms to represent sounds that "spell out" individual words.

3. As determinatives to show that the signs preceding are meant as phonograms and to indicate the general idea of the word.

Recommended Reading
Middle Egyptian, by James P. Allen
(source for 1—3 above)

Write like an Egyptian at this link.

6. Classical Roman Lapidary
1st Century, C.E.

In 1906 W. R. Lethaby first theorized that the Roman serifs were derived from a stone cutter following the shape of letterforms painted with a flat, stiff brush. (See the Rustic Capitals shown left.)

In 1968 Father Edward Catich, a calligrapher, stone carver and expert on the Roman alphabet, published a similar opinion in his 1968 work The Origin of the Serif, Brush Writing and Roman Letters. “The lapidary stone-engraved letters were painted on stone with a square-cut tool and then incised; from such means resulted the thick and thin variations of the strokes and the serifs.”

Link to the Origin of the Serif

7. Trajan's Column
C. E. 117

The square capitals 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—the prototype for many derivative typefaces including the famous Edward Johnston, Eric Gill and Carol Twombly reinterpretations.

Watch a modern day stone cutter carving the Trajan letters here.

8. Roman Capitals
1st C.

These early handwritten scripts were attempts to copy the characteristics of square capitals 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.

9. Roman Uncials
5th C.

“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.”

Recommended Reading
Alexander Nesbitt, The History and Technique of Lettering. Dover Publications, 1957.

10. Roman Half-Uncials
5th C.

Half-unicals were 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:Nesbitt)

11.a /Irish Half Uncials (above)
8th C.

The Half-Uncial, written with a horizontally held pen nib, was imported into Ireland via missionaries. See the Irish variant in the Book of Kells.
11.b /English Half Uncials (below)
8th C.
In England the uncial evolved into a more slanted and condensed form.

  I, II, II, IV

  or 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.)

In 789 Charlemagne decreed that Alcuin's standard style of writing, now known as the Carolingian minuscule, be used for all legal and literary works to unify communication between the various regions of the expanding European empire.

11. Blackletter: The Gothic Hands
12—15th C.

Gothic was the culminating artistic expression of the middle ages, occurring roughly from 1200—1500. The term Gothic originated with the Italians who used it to refer to rude or barbaric cultures north of the Italian Alps. According to Christopher Wren's "Saracenic Theory" Gothic style had nothing to do with the Goths, rather it was a style influenced by a number of factors including Saracenic art— Islamic influence from the Crusades.

The Gothic spirit took hold in France, Germany and England. The spirit of the Gothic style manifested itself in unhindered upward striving: the vertical supplanted horizontals as the dominant line in architecture; the pointed arch replaced the round arch of the Romans; the almond shape, or mandorla, was preferred.

Different blackletter forms lent themselves to different applications:
• Textura ‹formal›
• Rotunda ‹formal›
• Bastarda ‹semi-formal›
• Cursive ‹informal›

The blackletter style of condensed word spacing, linespacing and letterspacing conserved space and reduced materials. The evenly spaced verticals dominated the letterform as shown in the (above left) example from The Art and Craft of Hand Lettering by Annie Cicale.

During the gothic period churches and universities were greatly increasing the demand for books. This demand opened opportunities for secular professional scribes who were both men and women. Women, often excluded from apprenticeships in foundries were able to gain respect as calligraphers. The blackletter type shown above is a digital version of Rhapsody, first designed by Ilse Schüle (1903-1997) in 1949 and cast by Ludwig & Mayer, Frankfurt, Germany.

12.
Johann Gutenberg (c.1398–1468)
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 of Casting Metal Type

1. Carve a letter on the end of a steel bar, the punch

2. That letterform is struck into a softer metal bar made of copper,
to create a mold or matrix

3. The matrix is placed into a type mold. Molten metal is
poured into the opening to fill the mold.

4. The type caster shakes the mold to avoid air pockets,
and the letterform is almost instantly ready
to remove.

Punch and Matrix from De Vinne's Plain Printing Types, 1900 (see"Type Casting.")
Image of mold from Typefoundry.
.

Fust then enlisted his brother-in-law, Peter Schoeffler, as a business partner and they continued the press.

There are 48 surviving copies of the bible throughout the world. Go visit one. Here is a list of their locations.
For an excellent permanent site about a Gutenberg Bible Visit The Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin.

14. Printing Technology Caused Societal Change

“Gutenberg’s basic process remained unchanged for centuries. Within several decades typesetting technology spread across Europe. The speed with which it did so is impressive: within the first fifty years, there were over a thousand printers who set up shops in over two hundred European cities. Typical print runs for early books were in the neighborhood of two hundred to a thousand books.

Some of these first printers were artisans, while others were just people who saw an opportunity for a quick lira/franc/pound. The modern view of a classical era in which craftsmanship predominated appears unjustified to scholars: there has always been fine craft, crass commercialism, and work that combines both.”

1


“Gutenberg’s basic process remained unchanged for centuries. Within several decades typesetting technology spread across Europe. The speed with which it did so is impressive: within the first fifty years, there were over a thousand printers who set up shops in over two hundred European cities. Typical print runs for early books were in the neighborhood of two hundred to a thousand books.

Some of these first printers were artisans, while others were just people who saw an opportunity for a quick lira/franc/pound. The modern view of a classical era in which craftsmanship predominated appears unjustified to scholars: there has always been fine craft, crass commercialism, and work that combines both.”

#14 Quote Source, Graphic-Design.com

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.
(List originally compiled by Charles Bigelow)

15. Renaissance Humanism

In the late 14th century Italian scholars, centered in Florence, looked back to ancient Greece and Roman as the pinnacles of intellectual achievement. Ancient manuscripts were studied, especially the writings of Plato and Aristotle.

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 exemplified the blend of art and science during the Renaissance — the human figure as the principal source of proportion.

Rationalizing the Letterform

Renaissance artists applied a mathematically analytical approach to all media, including letterforms.

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 to define letter proportion.
Alphabetum Romanum. (above)

Architect and scholar Leon Battista Alberti (1522—1550) believed the circle and the square were the most perfect geometrical forms and should be used as the basis for all designs from architecture to alphabet. He revived the Roman tradition of inscribing monumental letterforms onto building facades.

(Below) His Tempio Malatestiano di Rimini -L.B.Alberti Image Source

Revivalists of the Littera 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 Carolingian Hand.”
(Quote source, James Craig, 30 Centuries of Graphic Design, p50)

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. First called Aldinian it later was referred to as italic — or Italian.

Bartolomeo Sanvito

”Santivo expressed his classical spirit in scripts inspired by ancient Roman tombstones. Sanvito composed title-pages with titles in colored capitals modeled on Roman inscriptions, and faceted initials in imitation of the lettering on Roman imperial monuments. The splendor of late antique manuscripts led him to experiment and to copy texts in gold and silver inks on purple or saffron dyed parchment. Openings with a full-page drawing in silver, gold and colors on dyed parchment became a common feature of his manuscripts... Sanvito was patronized by papal and princely courts, and his work was clearly known to illuminators working in the Veneto, Rome, Naples and Bologna. His influence on editors and publishers of printed books ultimately determined the format and design of frontispieces and title-pages for centuries. His effortlessly elegant cursive hand is his most successful and lasting legacy. Widely copied, it played a major role in the replacement of gothic script by italic.”
Quote source
See more work by Sanvito at the Digital Scriptorium

The Universal Penman, published in 1741, was the ultimate guide to English penmanship. Engraved by George Bickham after the designs of England's finest scriptwriters, The Universal Penman was a compilation 212 broadsides, each one focusing on a different art, profession, emotion, or human moral. In addition to handwriting many of the broadsides are highlighted with engraved vignette illustrations created by Bickham.


Adventures in Copperplate Script

She designed numerous titles and lettering for the Bremer Presse who issued a portfolio of her work in 1926. In 1937 she published Edward Johnston, volume 1 in Verlag fur Schriftkunde, Heintze and + Blancketz monograph series. Anna Simons was published as volume 2 in the same series.