Margaret Calvert
South African typographer and graphic designer Margaret Calvert, along with Jock Kimneir, designed many of the road signs used in Great Britain. The signs feature simple pictograms to inform people, such as using a cow to denote farm animals. She also created fonts for Linotype, including the eponymously titled Calvert.
1960s
Psychedelia and Pop Art
Culture went pop in the 1960s as music, art, literature and design became more accessible and reflective of everyday life. Purposely obvious and throwaway, pop art developed as a reaction against abstract art.
The psychedelia counter culture that developed during the same period fused different genres and mediums, breaking down traditional boundaries. Pictured is a Milton Glaser poster that features a Marcel Duchamp style silhouette combined with calligraphic swirls. Over six million were printed.
1961
Letraset
The creation of Letraset dry transfer lettering allowed anyone to become a typesetter. Rubbed directly onto artwork or virtually any substrate, it was often used to headlines and display type while body copy was supplied via a typewriter.
1976
Frutiger
Typographer Adrian Frutiger is prominent in the pantheon of typeface designers due to the grid numbering system he developed for Univers. Frutiger completed the expansion of the Frutiger font family in 1976, a project he began in 1968 while designing signage for the Charles de Gaule airport in Paris. Pictured is the character set of Frutiger that demonstrates the rounded forms and low stroke contrast of the font.
1977
I Love New York
Created by Milton Glaser, the iconic 'I Love New York' is one of the most famous and recognisable examples of a rebus. Its simplicity, balance and dramatic burst of red, combined with a rounded slab serif typeface, ensured its success.
1981
Bitstream
Founded in 1981 by Matthew Carter and Mike Parker. Bitstream was the first digital type foundry. The production of digital fonts further separated the type design from type manufacturers. The company developed Charter, which had open letterforms for low-resolution printers and created Verdana for screen use, with its curves, diagonals and straight lines rendered in pixel patterns, rather than drawn.
1981
The Face
Graphic designer Neville Brody revolutionised magazine design with his unabashed love of typography. This was nowhere more apparent than one the pages of The Face, a style magazine covering music, design and fashion. Old and contemporary type was exaggerated in scale and proportion, was exploded and distorted, and complemented with Brody's own computer-generated fonts as he challenged the notion of legibility.
1982
Completion of The Vietnam Veteran's Memorial Wall, Washington
The Vietnam Veteran's Memorial Wall is a monument that honours members of the US armed forces who served in the Vietnam Way. Comprising three parts, the wall is carved wih the names of all those that were killed in the conflict, and is the most recognised part of the memorial.
1984
Apple Mac
The 'Mac' revolutionised the personal computer by making computer screens user-friendly and hiding the operational programming from the user. Control in type production migrated away from professional typesetters to designers, and extended to amateurs as we as industry professionals. The low resolution of early personal computers called for new fonts to ensure legibility.
1985
Fontographer
Typeface customisation became available to anyone through the advent of the Fontographer design program, which allowed existing fonts to be manipulated and reshaped. Cheap Fontographer-produced fonts entering the market initially caused concerns for traditional typography companies, although this was tempered by the amount of work required to create an entirely new typeface.
1984
Emigré
American graphic design magazine Emigré was one of the first publications to use Macintosh computers, and influenced graphic designers to shift to desktop publishing (DTP). The magazine also served as a forum for typographical experimentation.
1990
New Wave
As the 1990s began, graphic designers reacted to the international style and sought to break away from the constraints of grid patterns in favour of experimentation, playful use of type and a more handmade approach. Type use became more subtle and expressive - to be part of the message rather than just its conveyor.
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