Blog Post #1

One of the earliest forms of expression is known as the cuneiform script. They were written in clay tablets and the development of symbols began, because of the facility in writing through poking in this medium.

The first original bookhand was the Capitalis Quadrata, also known as square capital letters. In order to conserve space, they compressed the letters, which then gave birth to a new form of writing. This is where a man called Alcuin of York first appeared. His job was to clarify the writing of these scripts; and he then developed the minuscules because he discovered it was quicker to write if the brush was not lifted throughout the process. The development of the Caroline minuscule increased the uniformity, clarity and legibility of writing.

After this, we begin to see the birth of master works, like "The Book of Celts", which represented a new style with decorative elements; one of them being the use of initial caps, which we still see in the works of today.

Due to the crusades, people begin to bring back the method of printing along with paper and how to make it.
In order for printing to be successful a couple of things were necessary in a society:
1) There had to be a growing middle class
2) There had to be students in an expanding university system i.e a more literate class.
3) Increased Literacy

A man called Johan Gutenburg introduced what we know as modern book printing.  He took advantage of this opportunity and began to develop a system of casting letterforms, creating a model and a series of letters from one carving. He used "blackletter" as the general letter style.

He also went on to develop ligatures ( two characters designed to work together as a single unit) and fleurons (typographic elements that are decorative in a page).
His invention of a mechanical movable type printing is recognized as the most  important event of the modern period.