historic ornament type — Typophile archive

phuongdesign20 Oct 2008

hi all,

first, take a look with my work! The idea of my work is: renew a modern typeface by historic elements. I used the Helvetica, then drawn again, apply ornament and it became like this.
May i have a question that : How could contemporary designer, especial typographer use historic elements and why they must care about history?

thanks!

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Quincunx20 Oct 2008#

>> How could contemporary designer, especial typographer use historic elements

Although not as literal as your example; alot of modern typefaces have a historic element to them, actually. Especially alot of serif faces. A large portion of them have influences that come from a certain historic typeface. Be it Jannon, Garamond, Fell, Baskerville -- to give a few examples -- or just a more generic style such as 'Dutch', 'English', 'Didone', etc. Either as a revival, or just as an influence. I think this is the main historical element that is used in modern typography/type design.
Why care? I think because typography and type design are crafts that have a very significant and long history behind them, so there is alot of work that can inspire modern type designers.