Chronologies 1: The History of Type- Production and Distribution

Language is an agreement among a group of people that one thing will stand for another. We are the most visually literate generation currently and typography is a modernist obsession.

Type: what language looks like.
Typography: is the arrangement and appearance of print based matter to change legibility and give it durable visual form.

The only evidence of language is what's been written down throughout history, for example Egyptian hieroglyphics. 7000BC is around when we began writing things down, largely driven by trade and acknowledgement of trades. The Mesopotamia 3200 BCE was the introduction of a cuneiform system, where pictograms became conventional signs and the signs could indicate phonetic meaning.

The Rosetta Stone crafted around 196 BC represents three different languages and is the first known case of translation. Before printing, language was created by chiseling into clay to make a mark or through papyrus and ink for example. Styles of language was driven not only by speech, but the development of production methods too. Gutenberg in 1450 created the first movable printing press, although this had already been developed in China 600 years previous. This meant type could be created on a mass scale. One of the biggest turning points was in 1870 when William Foster made the elementary Education Act, making it mandatory that everyone be taught to read. This shifted Britain into a new age of mass production, people were constantly finding new ways to record type from this moment.