Why Is It Important?

For historians it is important for them to know events and people in history. For authors it is important for them to be well-read and educated in literature and for designers it is important to know how different elements of design came to be. Any good designer knows that a font choice can make or break a design. But why is that? How does typography have the ability to dictate the success of a piece of art work? I believe that as a designer it is very important and beneficial to learn about ancient scripts and how the alphabet has evolved.

It is important to understand the development of written language because it broadens your views on what design is really all about, communication. Language has always been the main form of communication and therefore learning about how to communicate can greatly improve your designs. It is also very helpful to know the background of different font families because through studying them you develop an eye for what fonts go well with other fonts and what fonts look terrible together. As a designer it is critical that you know and can recognize these things.

Another reason it is important to learn about the history of the written language it because it grows an appreciation in you for the alphabet we have today. In my entire life the alphabet has never changed forms or lost letters, but imagine what it must have been like back in the day when people were shaping the alphabet still. Through learning about the stages of development I have grown in my appreciation for the one we have today. It is incredible to see how each stage a letter was re-worked and re-written into the letters that we have today.

I think that this knowledge and appreciation for type has and will continue to greatly influence my work. I am constantly trying new fonts in my designs. It is important to realize and understand that a font can drastically change the entire meaning of your design. I love to see how my design changes with each font I choose until I find the one that my design was made for. I have grown to appreciate how many different types of fonts there are in the world today compared to the past. I love letters and how they really illuminate my design work.