Tag Archive: Scholarly Article

• Display Phototype in New York: Folks, Firms and Fonts

  There wasn’t a place on Earth that photocomposition had a greater visual effect than on the New York advertising scene in the mid-20th century. The liberation from the limitations of metal type…

• Modularity: An Elemental Approach to Type Design

  The term “elemental approach” is used in this exceptional essay to describe an approach to design that seeks to reduce and rationalize the characteristics of the Latin alphabet. Aoife Mooney acquaints us…

• Of What Consequence, Design?

  This essay is an evaluation of how the Initial Teaching Alphabet was designed. Juliet Shen looks at the history and aesthetics of this curious “alphabet reform” which, amazingly, is still in use…

• Approaches to Applying Spacing Methods in Seriffed and Sans-Serif Typeface Designs

  The spacing of characters in a typeface is clearly as important as their design. Without optically balanced figure/ground relationships, the character designs do not reach their full potential as artistically nuanced vehicles…

• The Eszett

  Every glyph in a typeface has its history. Some, like the Euro symbol, are mere infants when compared to letters of ancient Phoenician origin. The eszett, that most German of all contemporary…

• Serial Type Families

  An in-depth look at serial type families, also known as typeface systems or type superfamilies. Lo Celso provides us with a view of their history and development, both aesthetically and technologically, as…

• The “Revival” of Slab-Serif Typefaces in the Twentieth Century

  This essay evaluates the formal characteristics of slab-serif typefaces and focuses on the evolutions of their form and use. It begins with a short historical survey of the early development of slab-serif…

• A Discussion on Type Design Revivalism

  An extensive look at some of the major type revivals in the early twentieth century, the various approaches to reviving Francesco Griffo’s designs and the controversy surrounding the revival of typefaces in…