Typographic Time Slogans

INTRODUCTION
From the Industrial Revolution of the 1800s to modernized society of the 1900s to present day, cultural shifts and advances paved the way for typographic evolution. As society shifted from the revolutionary machine age to cutting edge technology in the 20th and 21st century, the world of typography strove to achieve the perfect letterform for its time and place in culture. Throughout typographic history, there were changes in technology, the kinds of typographers who created the new typefaces. Through the centuries, the typographic aim was to establish a visual style for written communication that met the needs of the time period, as well as suited the current culture.

THE MACHINE AGE BEGINS
With the invention of the first steam
engine by James Watt, the Industrial Revolution began. The Industrial age was a time when mechanization and industrialization were sweeping Europe and America. As new technologies were rapidly invented, such as the electric light and telephone, the culture underwent drastic changes. With the innovative use of factory machinery to produce goods for the masses, the economy was no longer based on agriculture; rather it was based on the new industrial movement. People flooded into cities and left rural areas, in hope of finding employment.
People had a new vision for the future and sought a new typographic aesthetic to express society at the time. The technological advances of the Industrial Revolution initiated the modern age; new production methods and materials began to influence the look, quantity, and quality of commercial products, which were constantly being mass-produced for a growing consumer society.
Many new typographic developments arose during the 1800s due to technology. Print communication, for instance, was greatly impacted by the manufacturing and mass production of consumer goods. New kinds of print media and more functional type designs for commercial purposes emerged. The printing process could now be sped up, while photoengraving replaced handmade printing plates and line-casting machines that changed typesetting for higher levels of detail and efficiency. Because the new technology made the printing and typesetting process easier, creating typefaces did not require as much time as it did before. The 19th century included Friedrich Koenig’s steam-powered printing press of 1814, Joseph Niepce’s first photographic printing plate of 1822, Darius Well’s mechanical router that made it possible to manufacture large display wood types, Christopher Shole’s first practical typewriter of 1867, and Ottmar Mergenthaler’s Linotype keyboard typesetting machine of 1886.
Due to the need to promote the sale of ready-made goods, the commercial, or job, printer emerged. New print media, such as magazines and newspapers, rapidly grew with great appeal to the public. Print advertising became an effective way to sell products. Technology impacted printing, paper manufacturing, and mechanical typesetting; therefore, there was a new demand for innovative typographic style that would go hand-in-hand with mass-production. Print journalism and advertising demanded readable typography that was bold and distinctive.

TYPOGRAPHY EVOLVES AS TYPOGRAPHERS REACT London type founders reacted to advertising by taking high-contrast modern types to a new extreme.
In fact, in 1803, Robert Thorne produced the first “fat face,” meaning type that had vertical stems, which were much thicker than they were tall. Thorne’s fat face was appropriately named “Elephant.” The fat face type was bold and had serifs; it was the first kind of attention-grabbing typeface for Advertising. Boldface type, also allowed for a bold, distinctive appearance that created visual
hierarchy. Too meet the new typographic needs, a new era began; the era of Slab Serif, or Egyptian typefaces.
This era began with the creations of Vincent Figgins in 1815, who created the first Egyptian, or Slab Serif typefaces had limited variation of thick and thin strokes, heavy squared off serifs, large x-heights, and vertical stress in rounded strokes. While most of these typefaces were very bold and decorative, some were more refined and remain popular today, such as Clarendon. Clarendon is one of the most popular of the Slab Serif typefaces, and was copied by most of the 19th century foundries. The typeface has a simple, bold design that also met the needs of commercial popularity than aesthetics. A year after Vincent Figgins’s introduction of a Slab Serif to the world of typography, William Caslon IV, William Caslon’s great grandson, cut the first Sans Serif font, called it English Egyptian. It was called “grotesque” and “gothic,” a style of architecture that went through a revival at the time. Although the Sans Serif was made in the 19th century, it did not really pick up in typography until the 20th
century. Overall, typographers sought to create visual impact, and did not think readability was as important. Posters and advertisements required large-scale type, to get the viewer’s attention, so typographers created types with ornamentation to achieve this impact. Although the typographers of the 119th century were progressive in typography and created new types of letterforms, the typography lost some of the aesthetic quality that had been aimed towards in previous centuries. Types were bolder, incorporated outlines and inlines, utilized color, shades, and shadows. The added detail was ornate and sometimes over-the-top.

FROM MACHINE TO DIGITAL In a new light, the early 20th and 21st centuries that followed were not only progressive with type, but also achieved higher levels of aesthetic appeal. The new generation of designers and typographers sought a new direction in which basic letterform fit the needs of contemporary communication. Upon reaching the 20th century, typography no longer looked towards excess detail and took a different approach. The 20th century saw the continuation of advances in technology for printing and typesetting. Advertising and print journalism continued to flourish, and technology of the time allowed for even more progression in this field. Society was still part of the machine age, in which everything was being mass-produced for commerce. Society turned into a very consumer-based culture.

PHOTOGRAPHIC AND DIGITAL TYPE In contrast to the 19th century’s means of creating type, new technology was invented for typesetting that relied on photographic images. Experiments that involved using photography to produce type began at the end of the 19th century, when early patents had been taken out by E Porzsolt in 1894 and William Freise-Greene in 1895. Later, in 1915, Siemens and Halske, from Germany, came up with the idea of exposing images onto continuously moving paper due to electric sparks for short durations of time.