Once upon a time, if a digital designer wanted to illustrate a story that was comparable to the epic tale of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, tell a story of historical grandeur that it seemed as if it were translated from ancient Roman literature itself. Trajan is the perfect example of a classic style typeface. Trajan is a serif typeface whose design is directly influenced by the imperial letterforms that were carved in stone as early as 43 BC American designer Carol Twombly worked as a professional type designer at the age of twenty-nine and created or helped create many fonts and typefaces we still see today. She was a graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design where she earned a master's degree in typographic design. With this, she was soon hired by Adobe in 1988 and was immediately tasked with creating new and eye-catching typefaces for the digital design software that was becoming increasingly popular among corporate media buyers. In her work, Carol Twombly studied ancient historical literature to inspire her illustrations for digital type and typography. She managed to transcribe the first inscriptions from one of the stone columns of the Roman emperor Trajan, after which her first widely known font was named. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay Trajan uses an all-caps typeface because the Romans did not have a lowercase writing system at the time, but this was remedied with Adobe's release of "Trajan Pro 3" which featured a lowercase in small capitals. Twombly's digitization, adding more uniformity and balance to its original counterpart, has maintained its legibility and handmade calligraphic beauty very well. Professional typographers typically use Trajan for its elegant appearance, its combination of distinct proportions and geometry. It had successfully positioned itself as an "Old Modern" design choice, but its stoic appearance gave way to a visual cliché as more and more productions used it in subsequent advertisements and media illustrations. With the advancement and demand of printing and design technologies that led Trajan to 1989-1990 Adobe Systems, which coincidentally was part of the software that designers were also starting to use to make branding projects especially for corporate logos and clothing, magazines, movie posters, DVD covers and more. It boasted itself as the next big thing. James Mosley, a renowned historian whose work specializes in the history of letter design, once said, “Trajan is the new Helvetica.” Although its popularity never surpassed that of Helvetica, its rebellious use began to grow exponentially after it appeared on three movie posters. which featured box office hits that debuted in 1993, a few years after its digital start. Since then, it has gone from being a typeface that beautifully captured the essence of Roman history and literature, then gradually moved away from that concept to become a near-standard font for film branding appearing everywhere, reaching its peak in 2007. If you happened to be a digital designer in the mid to late 1990s and were tasked with creating several posters within deadlines, you could almost guarantee that most would turn to Trajan for its distinct readability and familiarity. Additionally, as the popularity of this typeface took off, larger film productions arose.