A Brief History of Type: I found this video particularly excellent, given that it is an informative video. In my opinion, I prefer this video over the “Fun History of Type.” I feel that anyone who sees this last one will not take as much information about the topic; instead, they might get distracted by “the funny way to summarize the history of type.” Technically they are expressing the same idea but with a different approach to it. I need to say that I’m amazed by the way that the Type has evolved over the centuries. The world needs were the reasons for it to transform; initially, the only way to find writing was in the Gutenberg Bible, but only rich people could get their hands on it. The black letterforms were difficult to read, so the need for a highly readable typeface that could reach more people was what started the Type’s evolution. The reason for the creation of more typefaces can be credited to multiple events on history, like the industrialization and even WWI/WW2. It’s incredible to see how Type affects our daily lives and how it influences us to choose something depending on how the typeface visually reach us.
3 thoughts on “Comments on Brief/Fun History of Type videos”
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You could see it that way, however I find it more important that the Gutenberg Bible was one of the first books printed, not hand-made by monks. Certainly typefaces have gotten more readable, and legible, since then, isn’t it amazing though that Blackletter is still popular for some applications.
I admire both videos about type. However, while I may agree that the ” Fn history of type” is vague, it still gives the general basic understanding of the ways type had evolved from the ancient times in Egypt, Rome to the modern-day. As for the “Brief History of type” video, it was informative in how type was crafted and used in various ways such as in making letterforms in certain languages, to inserting them on pages, to being used in advertisements to now being able to be seen on our digital devices.
I wouldn’t define the second video as vague. It actually gives more information about the evolution of the writing supports (from caves, to wax tablets, to papyrus, parchment..) and how it influenced the evolution of the type. The fact that the type had to become thinner to fit a longer text in only one parchment page (because it was an expensive kind of paper), explains one important reason of the evolution of the type and one of the reason why books were not accessible to everyone and limited. The two videos complement each others, they show the story from two different perspectives. The narration in the second video might distract you or make it more interesting, it depends on personal preferences. Furthermore, I had never noticed how much Blackletter is still around us, from the titles of famous newspapers, to some Hip Hop covers albums to the works of so many modern calligraphy artists.