For this project I designed a timeline about typographic history during my assigned period of 1200 A.D. to 1860 A.D. Our timelines are meant to showcase the development of typography and the history of the westerm alphabet. For my timeline I didn’t want to solely focus on just typographic history but add in major historical events going on at the time, to provide some sort of context for what caused or pushed these ideas and inventions in typographic history to come to fruition. With that in mind I wanted my timeline to have a simple yet effective design. For my timeline I wanted most of the emphasis to be on the images but also show emphasis with the information provided with the images. 

    In my timeline the five levels of hierarchy emphasize the art era and the timespan of years we are in first and then leads to the image. Paired with the image is a description of the typographic event or the historical event that transpired during the time. I didn’t want the date of the event to be huge because I wanted more emphasis to be on the actual event or subject of history. For my timeline, I had the images organized in a way in which the reader is meant to follow each event in order but not in a linear path, instead the reader is meant to go in a zigzag pattern up and down the pages. Rather than having words be the dominating trait in my timeline I feel that the images tell the story and showcase their beauty by being the main focus of the timeline. My typefaces used throughout the timeline are Caslon and Futura, Caslon is meant to give off a more professional feel to the timeline while Futura is meant to be simple and easy on the reader’s eye. Then Franklin Gothic was used to emphasize the title of my timeline and make it pop. This project was a big learning experience for me and was stressful at times but ultimately came out to be an enjoyable experience with a certain field of Graphic Design that I am not too familiar with.

Timeline Process/Iterations

Annotated Bibliography

Printed Sources 

Carter, Rob, et al. Typographic Design Form and Communication.

This source was really helpful for making this timeline the book has it’s very own timeline that spans from the beginning of type to modern day type. The timeline had very many examples of other major historical events happening in the world at the same time of major typographic developments. I referenced this textbook for most of my information and the design of the timeline was very heavily based on the textbook’s timeline. The textbook included quite a bit of art from certain points in history that I used as a reference for much of the artwork in my timeline.  

Leborg, Christian. Visual Grammar. Princeton Architectural Press, 2006.

Eskilson, Stephen. Graphic Design: a New History. Yale University Press, 2019.

This written source mainly included information about graphic design history but it had a lot of history about different typefaces that were invented or used in the era of time from 1200 to 1860 that I was assigned. This textbook also included many pieces of artwork that could be included into my timeline, although most of the pieces of work in this book didn’t fit into my selected era of history. The book has a lot of segments in it depicting the evolution of popular typefaces. It provided a lot of insightful information about specific type specimens, their background, and who invented them.  

Leborg, Christian. Visual Grammar. Princeton Architectural Press, 2006.

Noble, Ian, and Russell Bestley. Visual Research an Introduction to Research Methodologies in Graphic Design. Bloomsbury Visual Arts, 2018.

Web Sources 

“14th Century, 1301 to 1400.” World History Timeline: 14th Century (1301 to 1400), www.fsmitha.com/time/ce14.htm.

This web source proved to be extremely useful when I wanted to include historical events other than typographic history. It provided me with a lot of the historical events that you can see in my timeline. It was a difficult task to find a lot of typographic history from before the Gutenberg press was invented so instead there are a lot of other significant historical events on the timeline that I found on this website. This website insight on those historical events and provided details about the events that I had never heard of before. This website will definitely be visited by me again sometime in the near future. 

“15th Century, 1401 to 1500.” World History Timeline: 15th Century (1401 to 1500), www.fsmitha.com/time/ce15.htm.

Preece, Warren E., and James M. Wells. “History of Typography.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 6 June 2019, www.britannica.com/technology/typography/History-of-typography.

This web source was used to fill in gaps in my timeline that the main textbook I used could not, and it provided quite a bit of knowledge about typographic history that I needed. I found a lot of the information on this webpage very interesting and it actually turned out to be an enjoyable experience while reading through it. I would recommend this source to anyone that needs information about typography history, because to me it seems like a very credible source and the information from the source is quite intriguing to anyone that is in the field of graphic design or studying anything that involves typography. 

Fussell, Grace, et al. “A Brief History of Type.” Design & Illustration Envato Tuts , 27 May 2019, design.tutsplus.com/articles/a-brief-history-of-type--cms-30372.

“The History of Typography and Its Journey Through Art.” Widewalls, www.widewalls.ch/typography-history-art/.

This source is full of useful information about typography through the history of art and it goes into detail about more recent typography history. Which isn’t my era of typographic history but it proved to be useful for concepts that were developed in the past and have been carried through the history of typography. The information proved to be very useful when it came to not only the history of typefaces but which typefaces were best for certain situations. The website has some details about typography’s importance in art as well which wasn’t too useful but was an interesting read. 

“History and Evolution of Typography - Extended.” Fontfabric, 20 Feb. 2020, www.fontfabric.com/blog/history-and-evolution-of-typography-fonts-timeline/.

Contributor, Guest. “The Evolution of Typography: A Brief History.” Print Magazine, 10 June 2015, www.printmag.com/typography/evolution-typography-history/.

Flask, Dominic. Typography : Design Is History, www.designishistory.com/design/typography/.

Tracy. “A Brief History of Typography & Typefaces.” Ashworth Creative, 21 Dec. 2018, www.ashworthcreative.com/blog/2014/07/brief-typography-typefaces/.

“History of Typography Timeline.” Visual.ly, visual.ly/community/Infographics/history/history-typography-timeline.