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Even with a small sample of 100 typefaces, a timeline shows quite accurately the acceleration and proliferation of type design during the 20th century.

Click on a typeface name to find out more.

The scale changes increment (x3) from 1900 onwards to show the number of types produced; the important manufacturing innovations that fuelled this increase are shown in red. Although the traditional categories of type (like old style, transitional etc.) are based on historical developments, in a diagram like this all styles appear to co-exist without any clearly defined boundaries.

Fontographer
font editing software

Altsys Corporation 1987

The pantographic
routing machine

Linn Boyd Benton 1885

timeline