A brief introduction to the history of western fonts

All the characters in the world originated from four unrelated cradles.

The western font is a combination of cuneiform characters in Mesopotamia and holy books in ancient Egypt, and then after a series of development, the present western font has come into being.

Most of the figures are carved on buildings, represented by Roman stone carvings. Craftsmen add beautiful decorative lines to letters when carving, which is the origin of serif. Therefore, serif can express a sense of classicality, elegance and solemnity.

The building representing the characters in this period is Trajan Column, and there is also a corresponding font called Trajan in the font. Because there were no lowercase letters at that time, this font only had uppercase letters. Do you think the e and e and f of this font are obviously narrower than g and h, and much narrower? This is what we call a typical unequal-width font with great differences in font width, which is also called ancient style. ,

Because Trajan fonts originated very early, and they are exclusive to aristocrats, and look elegant, ancient fonts can also show elegance, aristocratic temperament, and a heavy sense of history.

There are many fonts with this antique structure, such as Futura and Avant Garde.

From the 4th century to the 5th century, there appeared a kind of curved handwriting called Ansel. There is also a corresponding font Hammer Unzial on the font, but it is not suitable for general design because of its exclusive momentum.

From the eighth century to the ninth century, Caroline lowercase appeared in order to write faster. What is still preserved today is the Bible written with it. Is there a corresponding font in the font? Karina is also not recommended because of its exclusive temperament.

From12nd century to14th century, a brand-new font called Gothic style appeared, which is characterized by wide, black and angular characters. Gothic was used in Germany until18th century.

From14th century to15th century, serif appeared again, which was called Renaissance serif. The most typical example is the font Garamond designed by a man named Garamond. The fonts he designed have slightly different stroke widths, but they all look the same. The contrast between horizontal and vertical strokes is not great. It looks classical and elegant, and it looks good, suitable for long-term reading.

There are also fonts of the same type, Bembo and Sabon.

From the 16th century to the 17th century, a baroque style appeared in the society, pursuing luxury and exaggeration. At this time, the font also embodies this style, which is called baroque serif. Its characters are mainly carved on buildings with carving knives, so the elegant curve of Renaissance serif is changed into straight short thin lines, which has a strong decorative style.

The representative fonts of this period are Caslon and Jalal.

/kloc-font size system appeared in the printing industry in the 0 th and 8 th centuries, and classical writing style also appeared. It is characterized by neat strokes, strong contrast and extremely thin lines.

The representative fonts of this period are Didot and Potoy (I don't know what this font is).

At the same time, calligraphy appeared in Britain, and the strokes were coherent, smooth and elegant.

From A.D. 1800 to A.D. 2000, coarse serif, sans serif, Bauhaus and decorative styles appeared one after another, among which coarse serif and sans serif were still widely used.

Thick serif gives people the feeling of youth, sports and fashion, and the representative font is Baskerville. Many converse designs use this font.

The most famous sans serif font is the huge font family Helvetica. Sans serif can be roughly divided into ordinary sans serif, geometric sans serif and manual sans serif.

Two generations of empty geometry sans serif

Frutiger？ Sans serif feel