Chapter 1 was simply a large timeline on how humans displayed the letters of their language, other known as Typography. It mainly focused on Indo-European language depiction. It seemed to me that the history starts to connect to what we are studying with Gutenberg with his invention of movable type where fonts became more "standardized". Before it would be monks writing or scribes hand writing/ carving rather than print. After Gutenberg's invention, time periods of fonts became more prevalent and identifiable. 1650 - 1800 CE was a time of secular and humanist beliefs. Old Style font seemed to come out from this time period. Then came the 1800 - 1899 CE where unique fonts started to show up that did not show as much of "tradition". This was because of the industrial revolution that let new technology be developed and have tools/ technology for typography be easier to obtain due to mass production. After the industrial revolution came the twentieth century where typography begins to mold to what we know today. Typography became more focused around advertisements and logos rather than official documents or books from what I see. The rise of companies and corporations helped drive that shift of purpose. Then it lastly ends with today's day or the millennium. new century. To me typography seemed to be still used for advertisement, yet what the textbook seems to focus on is typography attached to art. Very interesting that it would end the timeline on Facebook "arcade" signage. A weird way to end such a large history. Overall it was a lot of information to swallow.
Chapter 2
Chapter 2 was in my opinion the more important chapter out of the two we had to read. It began to list the terminology and science to Typography. Although one would be aware of these parts that are in typography, many would not know the correct terms or names. Things such as the "eye" of the e or "Spine" of an S. We all know an eye and spine are apart of those respective letters, but to find out there is actual terms connected to it is fascinating. It also lays out Families of fonts and classifications. It will definitely take me some time, even after one read, to really digest the matter and information of this chapter. I feel as though a good typographer and graphic designer should know all of these small details.
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