Italic characters are rooted in the handwriting of fifteenth-century Italian scribes, who wrote in a style developed by manuscript scribes to save space and paper. Try tracking down a copy of Kathryn Akins Masters of the Italic Letter for more details.

As for your design teacher, is your school hiring people who never went to design school or something?

to save space and paper

A myth.
They wrote like that because it looked good.

“My design prof taught me that creating a italic and bold faces is simply a matter of skewing the shape or using a heavier outline on my vector shapes”

Don’t believe a word of it! I wish it were so simple! It takes me twice as long to design the italic cut of a typeface than it does to do the upright roman. Even slanted roman fonts require considerable clean up to be reasonable. True italics are more than slanted, They are designed as a form to be comfortable enough a sibling to stand next to their roman brother but distinct enough to be clearly understood as something different. Traditionally, italics were based on calligraphic early scripts but that is not a requirement. The point is to be able to distinguish a title or quote within text while maintaining a similar weight.
If you have ever attempted to draw a bold weight for a regular weight, you would know that it is no simple task either. People have come to think of computer software as bone simple and infallible—not true for type design. There is one heck of a lot of work involved—think months, not minutes.

ChrisL

My speculation is that the originators of italics valued the lowercase forms much more than capitals, perhaps because they are used with such greater frequency in body copy? Whatever the reason, the letters look different because they are intentionally fancier.

An italic alphabet is simply a different creature than a regular upright roman style, much like a blackletter face has letters that look different because they just do. Since italics are nice to read, and can vary well in weight, they became so intermingled that they are often thought of as just variants of a regular face. Speculating again, I think this trend was accelerated by the word-processing programs of the 80’s that encouraged bolding and italicizing in every typeface, even when that wasn’t good looking.

And yes, your prof is very wrong. I wonder what he designs. The differences between “regular” and heavier or lighter faces is complex and subtle. Often, using a heavier outline is a starting point for making a new weight, but it is just something many people put in a guiding layer, to assist with the new design.

Skewed fonts are generally called obliques, which some big-name type designers prefer for typeface families that exploit geometric or modern design principles. Obliques still commonly have some hand-tweaking done afterwards to make them feel better. Faux-italic is the way a computer generates an oblique face on-the-fly if you don’t have one installed for a particular family.

You may find it interesting that here are also a few “upright italics”. The have vertical stems, but share forms with the Italic alphabet.

I think it is actually the other way around. They did mimic the writing style of the scribes, but I think the savings were a by-product of that.

Which school are you attending? This is sad.

Thanks for the help. I’ll look into vertical italics; sounds like it could be attracive.

My prof. has actually got a background in ceramics, but did some free-lance design work in the 80s. Although they’re not great design classes, our school wouldn’t have any at all without him. So, I’m at least glad for what I’ve got; I wouldn’t even be interested in typography without him.

I have to write a paper related to design, so I guess the history of italics would be a great subject (my prof. and I will both learn something).

Sounds like an excellent plan. Subversive and beneficent!

Yup, per jpad’s suggestion, I just ordered a copy of Kathryn A(t)kins “Masters of the Italic Letter” from aLibris.com

> My prof. has actually got a background in ceramics

Hmmm. I would have thought a background in computer programming. That is where the slanted/bolded fallacy is strongest.

You might introduce him/her to this site, if he/she is interested in learning more about typography.

If you read about Aldus Manutius you’ll find a lot of information about the cursive types.

I’ve begun my little paper and it is coming along nicely. Aldus Manutius was certainly the key here.

However, it raises an interesting question: Bernhard von Mallinckrodt is credited as coining the term ’incunabula’. From what I’ve read, the cut-off date for the term is 1500, which was given arbitrarily. Is that true though? It seems odd that he wouldn’t be aware of Manutius’ 1501 Virgil, which was not only the intoduction of italics into moveable type, but also the octavo format. It seems to me that this was an important move towards democritizing books, as the goal was to make them less expensive and more portable. Is there any documentation to support the theory that 1500 was not an arbitrary date, but rather chosen because of Manutius’ advances?

If you love italic letters like I do,

let us speak about Fournier, Arrighi, Garamond No 3...
Italics are the most female fonts..
and it is for that that they are so beautiful ;-))

Stefan