Young, Graham.

Based on extensive research into the development of Roman text typefaces from the middle of the incunabula (circa 1475) to the end of the 17th Century when the second major wave of Roman text types began, this thesis will document the design and production of a text typeface using many of the developments of the period. Because the incunabula saw the bringing together of the miniscules and majuscules (upper- and lowercases) for use on a single page and because for the first time in Western history the exact same letter form could be used in many printed works at once, we have, now frozen in our visual language, letter forms conforming to set but often contradictory rules of rhythm and order, size and proportion. I will explore these rules and contradictions in the development of a typeface and will, on occasion, break them, developing rules of my own.