COP Lecture: History of Type

This weeks lecture was on the importance of type of a form of communication. Type is a form of communication that lies between visual and verbal its this which allows it to bring messages across in both subtle and obvious ways. The lecture mainly covered the history of type which has different origins depending on where the subject is taught. The route of all western type was the roman language as they created our alphabet. After this point text was changed to both reflect ideas/styles or just for easier visual communication. The main point I feel to take from this lecture is the historical backgrounds behind different type categories and using those to your advantage. In the lecture we were shown a few examples of different political campaigns using different type faces to convey different messages to the people. The Nazis used a gothic stye font to go against the modernist style fonts which were being heavily used at the time, this was to convey german historic greatness within their campaign. Shepard Fairey is the artist responsible for the Obama 2008 campaign posters. These were very iconic posters which used a very modern font. The font used was completely opposite to the one the Nazis did for their campaign who's font symbolised tradition/pride Shepard Fairey has used one that is clean and new looking that symbolises change.