Black Plague and Typography

Ever wonder why and where different fonts had their origin? Very few do... Being an editor and writer, however, I find it fascinating to see how such things like fonts that we take for granted have their origins... Okay, so what does the Black Plague have to do with fonts?

According to DT&G Magazine:

From the 1200s through the early 1300s the civilized world was enjoying a rise in art, literature and education. Society was moving away from the chaos of the feudal structure, settling ever growing cities.

This was a time of rapid expansion for the written word. The ever growing demand for books for common people drove the development of paper, and the rise of a scribe class. Lettering and the early dawns of typography was expanding rapidly throughout society -- as scribes strived to keep up with demand.

But you're probably asking yourself what's the Black Plague got to do with typography? Besides being a fitting topic for our October issue, the Black Plague is probably one of the most important events in the letterform.

In 1347, the Bubonic Plague began to spread across Europe. For more than thirty years it killed without warning -- sending more than forty percent of the population to the infernos of the funeral pyres. It became known as the "Black" plague because within four days of contracting the disease, the victim would die and the corpse would quickly turn black. Most unsavory.