Typography

Letters are the most basic elements of visual expression for conveying information. While expressing those letters more accurately and beautifully is One of the objectives of design&sbquo their graphical quality is now required as part of design skills and methods. Typography originally included everything from expression to technology in letterpress printing. With the progress of printing technology&sbquo however&sbquo the age of the metal type has ended and typesetting technology is now history. Today&sbquo the meaning has shifted from the expression of letters in printing technology to the graphical format of the expression of letters itself in particular. In other words&sbquo typography represents the graphical quality of the entire layout through "the combination of composite letter types&sbquo" such as the selection of fonts&sbquo their size and arrangement. Moreover&sbquo the expression of information primarily employing letters today is not limited printed matter. Publication in general is now simplified due to the use of computers and DTP. The expression of information conveyed mainly through letters has expanded drastically not only through printed matter but also through homepages and email on the internet. Representative display formats in font layouts such as hypertext and PDF (Portable DocumenT Format) are now subjects of typography. As mentioned above&sbquo typography that was conventionally based on the composition of letters in printing technology has evolved today to mean "letters composed in a visual design." Furthermore&sbquo the layout of animated letters and letters with hypertext functions are now included in typography. Demand has shifted from static expression and information fixed on two dimensional surfaces to dynamic&sbquo three-dimensional expressive formats. Future issues of typography will include not only visible letters but also techniques of cognitive expression.

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