Typography is art of creating sets of letters to be printed on a page, and as this short film demonstrates, was originally based on the writing technique of monks who would have laboriously copied books by hand.

When the printing press emerged as a far more efficient way to copy books it took a while for publishers to realise that the font could be redesigned to make the new books easier to read.

This started a completely new industry of producing fonts of particular designs for publishers. This film, produced by the graphics director of Canada’s Globe and Mail Ben Barrett-Forrest tracks the evolution of the font to the present day.

A labour of love, the stop-motion film reputedly used 2,454 photographs, 291 paper letters and 140 hours of work.

The creator also completed a second project, this time using Kickstarter to produce a beautiful set of playing cards that feature lessons on graphic design, which comprehensively beat its target.