Typography as a term can first be traced back to ancient civilisations where they used hammer and chisel to carve letterforms out of stone.
Due to the chisel having to have a starting mark on letters, the letters of that day and age were all what is known as, serif, meaning they have tails and foots on the ends of the bases and tops. This is where the chisel would be first dug in.
Type classifications: Humanist, Old Style, Transitional, Modern, Slab Serif and Sans Serif (without serif).
Print in mass production began in 1450 when the first 'gutenberg' printing press was invented. Before this pages in books would need to be printed individually by hand and was a very time consuming matter. It also meant when this printing press was invented that the price of literature could drop allowing books to be more readily available for the lower classes.
A humanist typeface is where the stroke widths of the lines is allowed to change from letter to letter giving it a more hand rendered aesthetic.
Old style is a term referring to modern serif fonts such as 'garamond' or 'times new roman' which are made to emulate the old chisel carved stone letterforms.
Slab serifs are chunky bold letters which have their roots in woodblock printing and letterpress. Probably most associated with the style of old west in America.
Type itself and the choices used can inflict certain feelings on the viewer. For example a script handwritten font is seen as more personal where as I said earlier a slab serif is seen as a cowboy old west heritage.
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