Typography: Art and the craft of printing and the arranging of layouts

Typography was born when print was born. Early types were based on the letterforms of scribes, and the letters cut into Trajan's Column ("monumental inscriptions"). Later, gradually, type designs were based on the special needs of books, pamphlets, newspapers and advertisements.

Typography pronunciation (help·info) includes not only letters, but all the set of symbols in a font, and it includes the overall design of a page or document. It applies to any medium which may be read; therefore it includes text on computer screens. A typographer may design type, select fonts, and design the layout of pages and books. The term does not cover the act of printing itself, though many of the early printers were themselves typographers.

Typography in the 20th century was greatly influenced by three things:

1. Modernism and the modern art movement.
2. Information about the effectiveness of typography and design. Some of this comes from formal 'scientific' experiments, but most comes from commercial sources. Naturally, sales results before and after a book or magazine redesign are compared. A redesign of the typography on the jacket of a book (Roget's Thesaurus) "nearly doubled the sales". Typographers themselves carry out mini-experiments to test alternatives. This is an extension of scientific method to what is, at heart, an artistic process.
3. The development of modern computer technology, which affected type design, and changed printing methods.

A traditional aim of the typographer would be to produce a page which is, above all, legible and attractive to read, without its being obtrusive. For display typography, such as advertising, the display must be noticed before it is read. This had led to the development of many display typefaces which are highly visible, and which are available in large sizes.

• Printing
• Typeface
• Writing
• Calligraphy