You can check out some beautiful contemporary examples of Gothic fonts in this article: The style of type which was perfected by the monks is now known as blackletter-a Gothic calligraphy script. Gutenberg’s Blackletter Revolutionīy the 12th century in Europe, hand-lettering had developed into an incredibly beautiful art form, practiced by monks who created illuminated manuscripts covered in ornate lettering designs. Trajan Pro and Times New Roman are two examples of typefaces which owe much of their design heritage to these early Roman type styles. Many of the serif fonts we use now can also trace their roots back to Ancient Roman capital lettering, which was used to inscribe monuments and municipal buildings. Mesopotamia provides some of the earliest evidence of ‘movable type’, with punches and dies being used to inscribe seals, currency and tablets. There is also evidence that similar ‘printing’ techniques were used in Babylon, Crete, and Ancient Greece. In second century BC Mesopotamia, punches and dies were used to stamp letterforms or glyphs onto seals, which makes it a very early form of printing. Many of the fonts you will see used widely today evolved from much earlier type designs. Typography as we know it only really came into being with the invention of the printing press (see below), but it actually has deeper origins. For most designers now, this refers to how type is formatted for displaying on a page, product (e.g. Typography is the term used to describe how type is arranged on a layout.

Looking for the perfect font to use in your typography project? You're sure to find something to fit the bill from the huge range on GraphicRiver or Envato Elements. Here we’ll explore a brief history of type and typography, starting with the early serifs engraved on the monuments of Ancient Rome, learning a little about the printing press revolution of the Middle Ages, and looking at the huge impact of 20th Century Modernism and the digital age on typography as we know it today. Type design has a long and fascinating history, and the digital fonts we use today often have incredible origin stories.

Text is never simply text-typography, or the way type is arranged on a layout, has a huge influence over the visual impact of a message, setting the tone and mood for the reader.

Caslon font history