Lutpon Letters

I'll admit that initially I was not sure how interesting a chapter on letters would be, however I was surprised at how many interesting thing I learned. First of all I thought it was really interesting how referring to letters as "uppercase" and "lowercase" originated. In print shops capital letters were literally kept in the case above the one were the smaller letters were kept thus creating an upper and lower cases respectively. 

I also thought it was really interesting that italic letters were originally used as a more casual style of handwriting. Italics were actually used in cheaper writing shops, because the cursive form saved money by saving space. To me personally, however, when I see italic letters they tend to have a connotation of more formal writing. For example many times on fancier invitations you see italics used. I think it is interesting how there has been a shift in how we perceive italic letters. 

On pages 18-19 there are example of John Baskerville letters. At the time that they originated they were seen as "shocking" this was also funny to me, because to me the letters seem so basic, perhaps even boring by our standards today. I could not imagine walking down a street and seeing a poster with this type and having the type along be what stops me in my tracks and shocks me. It's interesting how as a society were have really increased our tolerance to shock. I would imagine that for a graphic designer it become increasing difficult overtime to really shock people with your choice of typeface. 

I also found it really interesting that it was actually the increase in advertising that caused the need for an increase in letter size and new types of typography. I guess I never realized the direct connection between the two and just sort of assumed that the larger letters allowed for advertising - rather than the reverse. Today though there has probably been similar increasing demands for certain typefaces as we experience such technological innovation. We see type everyone on our computers screen, our PDA, cellphone, even the supposedly "basic" cell hpoe have text-messaging capabilities,  video-games and more. The amount of type we see in one day has dramatically increased over the past couple of decades and I imagine that trend will continue. 

As our demand for letters continues to increase I can only imagine the innovations that will develop in regard to typeface. Perhaps one day we will look back on the seemingly "shocking" typeface that exists today and just think " wow, thats pretty boring."