Typography
Typography
is the art and technique of printing, the shape and arrangement of letters on a
written document. In media theory it refers to printed writing, in contrast to
handwriting, electronic writing or non-literary texts. Often the term also
refers to the paper used and the covers of the work. Today it mainly refers to
the creative process that applies to individual letters, writing, images,
lines, surfaces, but also spaces, margins, layout and other graphic elements of
print and electronic media. However, the actual design (conception and design)
of fonts (character sets) and individual letters is not considered part of the
term.
By
extension, moving texts on various screens can also take advantage of the
creativity of multimedia printers, making it possible to generate moving
letters (texts) but also with constantly changing size, shape and color, etc.
Some
examples of trades closely related to the term typography: typographer,
blacksmith, graphic designer, technical draftsman, production art director,
graffiti artists, web designer and many others. In addition, the digital,
computerized era has enormously expanded the circle of those who deal with
typography or various aspects of it, today anyone has access to the creative
typographic process.
Historic. Since Antiquity there were
books in the form of manuscripts elaborated in workshops where copyists or
scribes worked, who sometimes modified the text they had to copy, by mistake or
deliberately. Beginning with the 13th century, the number of readers in the
West increases. Although in that period the scribes were more numerous than
before, their activity was beginning to be less effective, especially since new
intellectual demands appeared, when scholars wanted the works to be as
consistent as possible with the author's text. That is why, at the end of the
Middle Ages, there was a need for a new method of reproducing writing that
would offer the possibility of a wider and more faithful diffusion of it
compared to the original. The requirements of this procedure were achieved by
using the pattern.
The invention of print. Given the new
requirements, several researchers have tried to contribute. The invention of
printing was not an individual invention, but "the product of a series of
searches and inventions, to which Johannes Gutenberg only puts the decisive
finishing touch." The first of the conditions of printing was the Chinese
invention of paper prepared from mulberry bark and silk waste, then from hemp,
because the parchment used until then as a support for writing, being crumbly
and thick, was not suitable for printing. The novelty of the invention of
printing consisted in the use of movable letters (characters), also invented by
the Chinese. They were already reproducing simple texts by printing with wooden
signs; however, the wood being fragile, it was not possible to print large
numbers of texts.
Gutenberg,
who had as his first profession that of goldsmith (goldsmith), has the great
merit of having introduced the use of metallic characters. Gutenberg began his
printing business in Strasbourg, but worked more in Mainz, where he founded the
"Book Workshop" society together with Johannes Fust. From the
"Book Workshop", in 1455, the first printed book in the world came
out, a Bible written in Latin on two columns of 42 lines each. In the same
year, differences arose between the two associates, and Gutenberg lost his
printing material and the commercial benefits obtained by editing the Bible.
After a few years, however, he managed to set up a printing house himself,
where the type with metallic characters showed its effectiveness.
Typographies in the Romanian Countries. On the current territory of
Romania, the first printing presses began to operate in 1508, the year a Liturghier
was published at Dealu Monastery, at the initiative of Voivode Radu cel Mare
(1495-1508). The printer of this Liturgher was Macarie, a monk who had worked
in Venice during the incunabula period, from where he had also brought the
Cyrillic letters for the printing house in Dealu. After Krakow and Venice, the
Dealu printing house was the third printing house in Europe that used Cyrillic
characters.
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