Chapter 1
History of Type
End of Chapter Review Answers
1. What are pictograms?
Simplified images illustrating specific words.
What are ideograms?
Images that stand for concepts or ideas.
What are phonograms?
2. What are the origins of the uppercase and lowercase letters we use today?
3. When and where was paper invented?
In 105CE Ts’ai Lun of China reported having invented paper.
What are three surfaces people used for writing before paper was available?
4. Explain the difference between woodblock printing and printing that uses movable type.
Both techniques are forms of relief printing, in which the ink sits on a raised surface. However, woodblock
5. What were the effects of Gutenberg’s (re)invention of movable type?
6. Explain the difference between relief printing, intaglio and planographic printing. How does each of these
printing methods affect the way that the printed type will look?
7. How do Transitional typefaces look different from Humanist and Old Style typefaces?
Transitional typefaces showed greater precision and higher contrast between thick and thin parts of
characters, as compared to preceding Humanist and Old Style typefaces. They also had greater symmetry
and a more vertical stress that reflected improvements and changes in technology.
How do Modern typefaces differ from Transitional ones?
8. Compare and contrast the ways that the Industrial Revolution and the digital revolution have influenced
typography.
9. What role has advertising played in the historical development of type?
10. How did private presses like Kelmscott, Ashendene and Doves revitalize typography?
11. Briefly describe the way that type was utilized by designers of the Modern Art movements? (Futurism, Dada,
De Stijl, and Constructivism).
Although each has its own visual style and political impetus, they all took part in reinventing art and design
in a voice that spoke to the common people, as opposed to the rich and powerful elite. In adopting sans-
12. How did the “New Typography” graphically represent the voice of its generation?
By proposing that the basis of type design for the modern age should be clarity rather than beauty and that
type stripped of ornamentation was most effective.
What social connotations were implied by its use?
13. What was the International Typographic Style?
A visual language that was suitable for international communication based on a clear arrangement of
How did Postmodern Art movements rebel against it?
14. What is Deconstruction? What is the Deconstructionist view of the audience’s role?
