Digital Typography in the Late 20th Century: Opportunities and Challenges

There is no doubt that technology plays a key part of almost every improvement in different sciences nowadays. As a case in point, digital typography is considered as one of this advancement achieved constantly through solving the technology limits, reinforcing its possibilities, and sometime innovating in it. However, there was less concern for these opportunities and challenges, and Very few researches have been done in digital typography chronology, documentation and even in translated Persian resources. Considering all of above-mentioned aspects, the author aimed to understand and access to the opportunities and challenges of the late 20th digital typography in its early appearance. To this end, this paper gathered data from library sources in order to employ descriptive-analytical method for scrutinizing the history of type design in that period. Thus, it addressed two following questions: first, what opportunities and challenges did early digital devices present to digital typography? The second is what potentials and limitations diverse digital formats have for type design?
Regarding to the publication and display of digital typography in monitors and printers, the first hypothesis is that the impact of early display devices and printers' developments–processing due to the improvement of some pivotal limitations and sometimes as a result of reinforcing potentials and innovating in these devices–put forward some pivotal opportunities and challenges to digital typography. Furthermore, digital formats–nearly ten of which are divided into two groups named raster and vector–varied to make digital devices appropriate for utilizing type design potentials, and sometimes mitigate inferiorities of devices. Consequently, the second hypothesis is that the variety of raster and vector formats formed to adapt type design potentials with digital device inferiorities–resulted in bringing constantly some substantial opportunities and limitations to digital typography.
In order to realize these hypotheses, this paper started with the statement of the problem, and then in the second part, it opened the discussion on research literature by reference to four main available sources. In the third part titled “opportunities and challenges of digital technology in the 20th type design” it attempted to answer to the paper's two research questions in two separate subtitles named “possibilities and limitations of type design in digital devices” and “possibilities and limitations of type design in digital formats”. Moreover, based on the hypotheses, each subtitle was organized into two specific parts so as to analyze the role of digital devices and digital formats in type design. Ultimately, in the part titled “Results and suggestions”, presenting two lists of challenges and opportunities (one for digital devices and another for digital formats), it reached a conclusion that digital devices have always had some significant possibilities and limitations for type design containing compatibility with display and printing features, scalability to small and large sizes, the quality of representation and image resolution. In addition, the use of the 20th digital formats have continuously generated fundamental possibilities and limitations for type design consisting of putting letters into geometric precise grids, economizing storage space, and inspiring from calligraphy traditions.