Type design

Type design is the art of designing typefaces. Although the technology of printing text using movable type was invented in China, and despite the esteem which calligraphy held in that civilization, the vast number of Chinese characters meant that few distinctive, complete fonts could be afforded by Chinese printers. The applied art of designing pieces of type thus became primarily a Western practice whose market increased with the coming of mass advertisement and steam-powered printing in the nineteenth century. With the advent of desktop publishing (and internet web pages, which use different technologies), the marketplace has demanded ever more varied typefaces merely for the purposes of variety to get the customers' attention. Finally, the ease of this new technology has resulted in the hobby or money-saving option of amateur type design.