doesn't calligraphy seem closer to art, and typography closer to design? Seems like they not trying to head in the same direction.

Here's some food for thought:

One of my family members is an engineer. When I was younger, I used to browse through his reference books. One of them was a book on making engineering drawings. This was from the days before everything was done on a computer. The book had a whole chapter on lettering. It was very specific about what style of lettering was to be used. It even did the whole grid-circles-and-ovals thing.

It was essentially a typeface intended to be produced by hand.

My guess is that this discussion is not so much about the nature of a thing, as about the definition of a word: the word "typography", and maybe also the word "calligraphy". If typography is by definition strictly about letterforms produced by machine, and calligraphy strictly about letterforms produced by hand, then the answer to the original question is self-evident.

Here's some more food for thought:

I read somewhere that the traditional method for producing a Japanese font was for a calligrapher to write each character separately, and these handwritten characters (calligraphy) would become the font (typography).

Okay, maybe it's not so self-evident...

Leroy

That seems way too broad a definition of calligraphy. Isn't InDesign a specialized tool?

Typography has advanced so much in it's own direction, and calligraphy in it's own other direction, that they're not even in the same dimension anymore. this is like saying graffiti is a branch of typography, it'd be silly.

maybe the thread should be called "Is type design a branch of calligraphy"

While it is true that type design should not limit itself to what can be achieved by traditional calligraphy, in one respect type design and calligraphy are inextricably connected.

The basic letterforms - or the characters, in a non-alphabetic writing system - are limited to what can be written by hand. A "writing system" composed of a repertoire of characters so complicated that they could only be uttered by a phototypesetter or a laser printer - which is the case for some typefaces, of course, but that is a property of the specific typeface and not of the basic character repertoire - would be of significantly limited utility.

And, thus, since type design translates to a printed form characters which were originally designed to be written, it's not surprising that writing remains influential.

"it's not surprising that writing remains influential."

Yes, but people do so much less writing today and so much more typing that the influence now becomes only a historic one. I can see a time in a couple of generations when writing by hand will be almost unheard of in all but third world societies. Handwriting will soon be a novelty. Calligraphy will still survive in the same way that horseback riding survives, as an art form or recreation but not as a continuing dominant force. The current generation of youth communicates with one thumb typing on a mobile device. Imagine what the next generation will see?

That seems way too broad a definition of calligraphy.

It is. It also happens to be etymologically correct.

typography is assembly and arrangement of prefabricated elements.

And calligraphy is assembly and arrangment of predetermined stylistic elements.