Types of Letterforms

Most modern designs today follow a clean, simple yet stylish design with varieties of sans serif fonts. It has a minimalist style to it and examples of this can be seen on magazine covers with curvy and vibrant typography.

Modernism refers to the broad movement in Western arts and literature that gathered pace from around 1850, and is characterised by a deliberate rejection of the styles of the past; emphasising instead innovation and experimentation in forms, materials and techniques in order to create artworks that reflected modern society. Modernism in graphic design uses legibility and has more of a minimalistic design to most of its art.

The International Typographic style, also known as the Swiss Style, is a graphic design style developed in Switzerland in the 1950s. The style was legible and had a clean and straight-forward appearance about it, making it get the message across of any design. The style was developed through a mathematical grid which gave accurate measurements and sans serif typefaces. The style was improved at two design schools in Switzerland.

Swiss Style poster

Helvetica is a widely used sans serif typeface developed in 1957. It became one of the most popular typefaces of the 20th century. Its use became a hallmark of the International Typographic Style that came from the work of Swiss designers from the 50s and 60s.

A modern typeface.

Typesetting is the structure of text by means of arranging physical types or the digital equivalents. Stored letters and other symbols are retrieved and ordered according to a language's orthography for visual display.

Postmodernism is a late 20th century movement in arts. It separates itself from modernism in graphic design. This movement was more of a playful and expressive time for designers who had their own creative ideas which would go against the system. Postmodernism doesn’t pay attention to legibility and can be as untidy as it wants to be. They created works beginning in the 1970s without any set adherence to rational order and formal organization.

Pictograms convey its meaning through its pictorial resemblance to a physical object. There are signs which makes use of this such as public toilets.

A modern typeface.

A digital typeface.

In typography, a sans-serif typeface is one that does not have the small projecting features called "serifs" at the end of strokes.

In typography, a serif is a small line attached to the end of a stroke in a letter or symbol. A typeface with serifs is called a serif typeface

A comparison between the serif and sans-serif typeface.

Pictographs are a pictorial symbol for a word or phrase. Pictographs were used as the earliest known form of writing, examples having been discovered in Egypt and Mesopotamia from before 3000 BC. It represents pictorial drawings. Its modern uses are now depicted as charts.