“A Brief History of Type” gives a short but intense view of the evolution of type from its first use centuries ago, to standardize communication and the commerce to the new era where type is used in a more artistic way. What appears from the video is that the evolution of type wasn’t uniquely caused by the development of the printing system which lead to the mass printing production. Definitely the work of the scribes and the first ceramic types in China and metal ones in Korea, the movable types used in the printing of the Gutenberg’s Bible, the invention of the Linotype by Otmar Mergenthaler which dominated most of the XX century, the Monotype system, the Litography and the new computer technology played a fundamental role in the history of type. However, type evolved mostly under an esthetical aspect. After the publication of the Gutenberg’s Bible, people like Nicholas Johnson started focusing on the readability of the type. The visual evolution of type actually started with his first beautiful work which became inspiration for big names of typography like Baskerville, Batoni, Caslon, Garamond and right after Benguiat, Gill, Zapf. Even though their purpose might have been mostly utilitarian, the transformation of the type design mainly reflected the spirit and style of the different eras in which the type was created. During the Renaissance and Einlightment period type was the expression of the pursue of excellence and beauty, during the Industrial Revolution, the need of a better and faster communication, but also became a mean to drive the attention to the printing (which created a new industry, advertising), during the 1960s and 1970s type expressed the revolutionary spirit and the research of modern new looks. In the late 90s, graphic designers started giving a more hand lettering typographic design because they wanted less traditional types.  

The “Fun History Of Type” video shows instead how the type had to adapt to the different writing supports. When Egyptians introduced the papyrus because easier to transport than rocks and to write on, they simplified the alphabet. Then the papyrus was substituted by the parchment, which was more expensive, so the type had to become smaller and thinner to fit as many words possible into one page. After the introduction of Gutenberg’s movable characters, typography suddenly subsisted calligraphy in fact Johnson and other important names in the history of typography created more readable typefaces once printed. With the spread of computers and the digital media, newspapers produced digitally, appeared exactly as the printed version which resulted as really difficult to read on pixelated screens. Carter had to invent the Verdana font to make those newspapers easily readable on the screen. Nowadays phones are the main devices used to read, so new typefaces have been created to cleanlier appear on small screens. Hence, with the constant evolution of the new technology, the type design will continue to thrive extensively. 

So I had the impression that in the first video the type evolved to be graphically more pleasant and stylish and in the second video it evolved under an utilitarian pressure. However, in an era with so many accessible and free typefaces, I hope that we will have an improvement in the quality of free fonts (not only estethically but also ecofriendly) and not only in the quantity.