The History of Typography: From 11th Century China to the Digital Age

Discover how, throughout history, typography has been used to communicate more than just the words it spells out

Typography is sometimes easy to take for granted: you’re reading these words, absorbing their meaning, but probably aren’t paying close attention to the letterforms that compose them.

Other times typography can be impossible not to notice, like when a wedding invitation is written in Comic Sans, or a sign is hard to read because of an unfortunate font choice.

The history of typography is about more than how easy something is to read or write. It reveals how the design of letterforms has shaped societies and transformed the meaning of the written word.

So, where did typography come from and what do typefaces have to tell us?

In 1440, Johannes Gutenberg introduced Europe to the printing press and moveable type, kicking off a printing revolution that changed the world. But he wasn’t the first person to use typography.

In fact, ceramic moveable type was first invented in China during the 11th century. Previously, Chinese printers had used woodcuts, carving each individual page out of a piece of wood, a highly laborious and time consuming process.

And Gutenberg wasn’t even the first to use metal moveable type. Over 200 years before Gutenberg’s press, in 1234, a Korean civil minister named Choe Yun-ui was commissioned to print Sangjeong yemun, a book outlining the customs of Korean court from antiquity till that point. By altering a method used for minting bronze coins, Yun-ui was able to create individual characters in metal.