Brief History of Type: What I Learned

Considering I knew pretty much nothing about the history of type, nearly everything in the article was new to me. Particularly interesting facts I learned are:

1. Gutenberg was not successful during his lifetime (as any truly great artist, I suppose.)

2. The differentiation between lower and uppercase type occurred as far back as the sixth century.

3. Fraktur was outlawed by the Nazis in 1940 for being a "Jewish typeface."

4. "Fat faces" is a type term! Sounds strange, but fat faces are an offshoot of modern fonts and are composed of slab-like vertical lines with an emphasis on vertical serifs and typically acquire a wedge shape.

The article offered a wealth of information, which is almost impossible to summarize here without writing a novel. These were some of the facts I found particularly interesting though.