The Origin & History Of Fonts [Infographic]

As a designer, it is always important to stay up to date with the latest design trends. That also includes the millions of fonts that are out there. The way a brand or a creative design is received depends a lot on the font that is used. For example, if you are trying to launch an exclusive and posh brand, you’d do best in trying to find a font that delivers that message. “A product or a brand is only as strong as the design behind it,” is usually a saying you hear when you are trying to discuss it. However, finding the right font is a whole other endeavor and can be anything but easy. If you don’t know your way around the font community, it can be quite hard to know where you should start to look.

Mashable recently put out an interesting infographic that took us through the history of some of the most memorable fonts. The infopgraphic called A History Of Western Typefaces goes as far back as 1440 when Johannes Gutenberg designed the first movable type and thus created the earliest known printer press devices. After that, there was a whole lot of innovation going on, and as a designer, it will do you great to know the background of some of the people and fonts that you use in your every day work.

There are typefaces released pretty much on a daily bases, but only a fraction of them become standards that millions of people use every day. A couple of such fonts are Verdana and Georgia. Matthew Carter, the designer and creator of these types, won the National Design lifetime achievement award for his contributions as late as 2011. Standards are being created regularly, so if you are one of the people out there designing fonts and typefaces, there is a slight chance that your creation will become something that millions of people will use to design their own documents. It’s amazing what a few letters can do, right?