The Term 'Typography'

To educate myself a little more than just lectures, I thought the best way to start would be to look at the initial readings so that I can really get my head around the term 'Typography'.

The first article i looked at was 'What is Typography' by Peter Bilak via Typotheque

Something that stood out when reading was that no one has the exact same definition when they think of Typography. Dictionary and Encyclopedia definitions tell us that.

"Typography is concerned with the determination of the appearance of the printed page"

- Encyclopedia Britannica, 2007

"The art, craft or process of composing type and printing from it"

- Collins English Dictionary, 2004 

However both of these definitions relate to printed type, such as books and documents, and doesn't account for any of the types used before the printed page and after, including screens that digitally produce letters.

To avoid connecting to a specific medium, Bilak believed that a more useful definition would be:

"Typography is writing with pre-fabricated letters"

-Gerrit Noordij

This definition does not connect to any medium specifically, because typography does not just connect to a specific medium, it stretches across all of them and has been around since many years before the printed page.

I thought this reading was helpful for me to understand the term typography, and helped me discover that typography is everywhere, and has always been used in a variety of different ways.
I also believe that this will help me to understand when researching into the history of typography, so that i can gain a decent background before specifying for my research.