REVERSE CONTRAST TYPEFACES

A reverse contrast or reverse stress is a letterform design in which the stress is opposite of the standard, traditional letterform design. Which means the typeface has the thickest horizontal lines. Traditionally, in the Latin alphabet, all vertical lines are thicker or the same width as horizontal lines, commonly in printing. The result of this type of design takes a dramatic effect where, at a glance, the text seems to appear backward.

This style emerged in the early 19th Century as an attention-grabbing display design. Many posters, advertisements, and type designs were competing for attention during this time. Due to the bold serifs, these letterforms can be considered a slab seri design and are often characterized as a part of that genre. This typeface design is most commonly used as a display face, avoiding usage in body copy. This design element has been extended into other typefaces, like san serifs. This concept is unrelated to color contrast printing, where light text is printed on a dark background.

The way handwritten letterforms take shape is the vertical lines become slightly thicker than the horizontal lines. Many traditional 'Roman' styled fonts follow this standard, placing the thirteenth pints of the forms diagonally and creating the down stroke heavier than the upstrokes, emulating the handwritten style with quills. From 1475 to the late 18th Century, most fonts were similar in design and were based on the Italian humanist handwriting tradition. At the beginning of the 17th Century, the movable type's founders developed the transitional type, later known as the 'Modern' or Didone Type. These new letterforms have much more contrast and a more contrasted difference in the thicks and thins. This development of type design paved the way for more experimental type design to draw the most attention to whatever poster or ads these forms were used on. At this point, many new types of letter forms primarily categorized as 'Display Types' began to emerge.