Thoughts on some R e a d i n g
From the CommDesignStudies Reader:
“Week 6″
"Industrialization of Print" by Elizabeth WilhideIn Design Museum: How to Design a Typeface, pp 44-49
With the rapid technological advances of the Industrial Age, machines were created to meet the increasing demands of the commercialised world. This sentence applies to many fields, disciplines and markets in the 19th century, including those creating and manipulating typefaces.
Paper became cheaper and available in bigger sizes, as businesses utilised both this and thick slab-serif typefaces to fight for customers’ attention.
Previously we had the evolution of typeface creation from handwritten letters to systems where letters carved out of wooden or metal blocks could be hand picked and arranged to print with elevated efficiency. Yet with the invention of the Linotype machine, these blocks no longer had to be hand arranged, and one operator could type out letters on a keyboard and the machine would arrange it in the correct order. Increasing both accuracy and speed.
These changes were tremendous discoveries at the time, yet we are still a long way away from the laser-jet and ink printers of today.
