Blog post due February 3, 2013

Blog posting due February 3, 2014:

Summary

            Lupton described the evolution of fonts.  He began by describing the structure of a font: serif and stems, thickness or design, and the vertical versus horizontal stress of a font.  He then described the transition from wood to pantograph printing and discussed how the ability to quickly reproduce letters revolutionized printing.  He discussed the evolution of fonts over time from days when it was considered immoral to alter fonts to the 1990s, characterized by the “decay” of typeface (p. 30).  There are three categories of typeface, humanist, transitional, and modern, and it was interesting to learn the differences between them.

Critique

            I enjoyed the section discussing the difference between bitmap fonts and traditional fonts.  Bitmap fonts are made for digital screens and work by emphasizing the size and digital display of geometric shapes.  I liked the connection the author made that typeface relies upon connecting many visual elements and is much more complex than it at first appears.  The fact that newer, digital fonts are made out of pixels or “picture elements” (p. 57) emphasized to me how writing seems to go through cycles.  We began with a very visual system of communication in ancient times with hieroglyphics and other systems that represented symbols as pictures, then we moved to an oral era where the oral tradition was valued and letters were strongly tied to their phonetic sound representation, and now, in the digital era, we seem to be moving once again toward a more visual system of communication.

Connection

            This discussion of fonts and the connection to bitmap fonts, which are specifically designed for the screen reminded me of my reading of Kress (2003) Literacy in the New Media Age.  In this text, Kress describes how the screen is displacing the text and how literacy is becoming more visual than ever.  The reading of Lupton also emphasized how writing and fonts has always been a very visual process and that the creation of typeface is artistic rather than perfunctory.  As we move to the digital age in which text is often surrounded by visuals, sound, and hyperlinks, I am reminded that are need for visual representation of meaning is not new, but has always been an emphasis.