A general overview of the history of type design and typography in the West from the birth of printing with moveable metal type in the mid-15th century until the current era of digital fonts. This class will explore the influence of scribal styles of writing on early typographic forms; the impact of technologies of typefounding, typesetting and printing on the form and use of typefaces since 1800; and the effect of the shift from the book as the locus of typographic development to advertising, posters and other ephemera since the early 19th century. With this online version of the course we will pay special attention to the development and form of type specimens from broadsides to thousand-page catalogues to digital PDFs.