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Johannes Gutenberg
Invented movable typefaces, giving the world a cheaper way to obtain the written word. Up until this point, all written materials were done by hand, and were very costly to purchase. Guttenburg also created the first typeface, blackletter – it was dark, fairly practical, and intense, but not very legible.
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Nicolas Jenson
Created Roman Type, inspired by the text on ancient roman buildings. It was far more readable than blackletter, and caught on quickly.
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Aldus Manutius
Created italics – a way to fit more words onto a page, saving the printer money. Today, we use italics as a design detail or for emphasis when writing.
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William Caslon
Created a typeface which features straighter serifs and much more obvious contrasts between thin and bold strokes. Today, we call this type style ‘old style’.
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John Baskerville
Created what we now call Transitional type, a Roman-style type, with very sharp serifs and lots of drastic contrast between thick and thin lines.
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Firmin Didot & Giambattista Bodoni
Created the first ‘modern’ Roman typefaces (Didot, and Bodoni). The contrasts were more extreme than ever before, and created a very cool, fresh look.
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Vincent Figgins
Created Egyptian, or Slab Serif – the first time a typeface had serifs that were squares or boxes.
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William Caslon IV
Created the first typeface without any serifs at all. It was widely rebuked at the time. This was the start of what we now consider Sans Serif typefaces. During this time, type exploded, and many, many variations were being created to accommodate advertising.
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Frederic Goudy
Became the world’s first full time type designer, developing numerous groundbreaking typefaces, such as Copperplate Gothic, Kennerly, and Goudy Old Style.
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Max Miedinger
Created Helvetica, the most loved typeface of our time. This was a return to minimalism, and many other simplistic typefaces such as Futura surfaced around this time period.
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