Sig Process Book

A Æ B C D E F G H I J Ĳ K L M N O Ø Œ P Þ Q R S T U V W X Ethan Cohen Type & Media 2018–19 SigY Z А Б В Г Ґ Д Е Ж З И К Л М Н О П Р С Т У Ф Х Ч Ц Ш Щ Џ Ь Ъ Ы Љ Њ Ѕ Є Э І Ј Ћ Ю Я Ђ Α Β Γ Δ SIG: A Revival of Rudolf Koch’s Wallau Type & Media 2018–19 ЯREthan Cohen ‡ Submitted as part of Paul van der Laan’s Revival class for the Master of Arts in Type & Media course at Koninklijke Academie von Beeldende Kunsten (Royal Academy of Art, The Hague) INTRODUCTION “I feel such a closeness to William Project Overview Morris that I always have the feeling Sig is a revival of Rudolf Koch’s Wallau Halbfette. My primary source that he cannot be an Englishman, material was the Klingspor Kalender für das Jahr 1933 (Klingspor Calen- dar for the Year 1933), a 17.5 × 9.6 cm book set in various cuts of Wallau. he must be a German.” The Klingspor Kalender was an annual promotional keepsake printed by the Klingspor Type Foundry in Offenbach am Main that featured different Klingspor typefaces every year. This edition has a daily cal- endar set in Magere Wallau (Wallau Light) and an 18-page collection RUDOLF KOCH of fables set in 9 pt Wallau Halbfette (Wallau Semibold) with woodcut illustrations by Willi Harwerth, who worked as a draftsman at the Klingspor Type Foundry. Source Material In addition to being one of the preeminent type foundries of the early 20th century, Klingspor had a high caliber in-house printing opera- tion. I supplemented the Klingspor Kalender with several specimens of Wallau printed by Klingspor, including a robust 55-page Wallau catalog from 1939, a small Wallau catalog from 1935, a catalog of blackletter types from sometime before World War II, and Karl Klingspor’s 1949 compendium of the history of the Klingspor Type Foundry, Über Schönheit von Schrift und Druck. I visited the Klingspor-Museum in Offenbach and found sketches, Koch’s calligraphic studies for Wal- lau, and printed ephemera. Lastly, I received high resolution scans of Wallau templates and matrices from the Hessisches Landesmuseum Darmstadt, which has a large collection of Klingspor and Stempel matrices, templates, punches, and type. 5 HISTORY & CONTEXT “The Germans are the only nation Rudolf Koch who retains blackletter with a Rudolf Koch (1876–1934) was one of the most influential figures in tenacious energy, not always German typeface design, calligraphy, and lettering during the first half of the 20th century. A faithful devotee of William Morris and his understood by other countries... Arts & Crafts movement, Koch emphasized craftsmanship and manu- al labor in his work and wished to experience and be involved in ev- from an artistic point of view ery step of the production process. Through his long association with it would be a matter of regret if the Klingspor Type Foundry and in his own workshop, the Offenbach- er Werkstatt, Koch produced a tremendous quantity of designs and blackletter was sacrificed to the objects ranging from typefaces, handwritten manuscripts, and logos to tapestries and church bells. The common thread through all of his craze for uniformity and a output was that he focused on typography and various kinds of hand- beautiful individual trait thus crafted letterforms. In addition to his work as a maker, Koch was a prolific teacher. Warren Chappell, Fritz Kredel, Berthold Wolpe, and lost to the world.” Herbert Post were all students of Koch and worked in his Offenbacher Werkstatt. Koch’s 1924 instructional book, Das Schreiben als Kunstfer- tegeit (Lettering as Artistry), was highly influential in Germany, much like its British equivalent, Edward Johnston’s Writing, Illuminating, JULIUS RODENBERGER and Lettering, was in England. Rundgotische & Other Blackletter Styles Rotunda (or rundgotisch) is a genre of blackletter that evolved from the carolingian hand. It is characterized by rounder, more open forms than the other blackletter hands. Rotunda continued to be one of the main bookhands of Southern Europe until humanist minuscules and italic rose to prominence as printing types during the renaissance. 7 HISTORY & CONTEXT HISTORY & CONTEXT Though the prevalence of blackletter declined throughout the rest of About Wallau Europe, it continued to be used widely in German printing, lettering, and design until it was banned by the Third Reich in 1941. During the Rudolf Koch began working on Wallau in 1925. Wallau Halbfette was interim blackletter became closely associated with German national initially released by the Klingspor Type Foundry in 1931. By 1935, had identity. For Rudolf Koch, blackletter was intrinsically German; it was been expanded to a light (in 6–16 pt), a semibold (in 6–72 pt), a bold a symbol of his identity as a nationalist (but neither antisemitic nor (in 6–72 pt), and a condensed (in 8–84 pt in metal and larger sizes in fascist) German. wood). Each style came with both ‘German’ capitals (i.e., blackletter capitals) and ‘uncial’ capitals (i.e., antiqua capitals). 8–12th century Carolingian 12th century Protogothic 13th–15th century Textura 14th century Gothic Cursive 14–15th century Rotunda 15th century Bâtarde 16th century Fraktur 17th century Civilité Timeline of the major blackletter hands (adapted from a chart by Claude Mediavilla, with a couple of additions and replacements) The range of Wallau styles from a 1939 specimen catalog. 8 9 HISTORY & CONTEXT HISTORY & CONTEXT Wallau was named after Wilhelm Heinrich Wallau (1852–1925), a Context for Wallau’s Design printer from Mainz who once proposed the idea of designing a con- temporary typeface based on 14th century Italian rotunda. According During the 19th and early 20th centuries there were many attempts to Georg Haupt, who wrote the definitive German language biography to create a hybrid blackletter typeface that borrowed from antiqua. of Rudolf Koch, Rudolf Koch der Schreiber, the design of some of the Due to its juxtaposition of round, humanistic shapes (like o) and an- letterforms in Wallau was inspired by a page from a 14th century Ital- gular blackletter shapes (like n), rundgotische served as an effective ian missal that Koch owned and kept hung on a wall at the Offenbach- means of achieving this hybridity. Wallau and various other rundgo- er Werkstatt. The rotunda types of William Morris’s Kelmscott Press tische such as The Bauer Type Foundry’s Weiß-Rundgotisch (1938, de- (i.e., the Troy Type and the Chaucer Type) were also an inspiration. signed by Emil Rudolf Weiß) and J.G. Schelter & Giesecke’s Rundgo- tisch (1903, designed in-house) were hybrids between blackletter and antiqua. Like Wallau, Weiß-Rundgotisch came with both blackletter and antiqua capitals. William Morris’s Troy Type in The Floure and the Leafe, Kelmscott Press (1898) Weiß-Rundgotisch with gothic capitals (above) and antiqua capitals (below) J.G. Schelter & Giesecke’s Rundgotisch Italian rotunda manuscript 10 11 PROCESS “Suddenly everything changed First Digitization steps when, in 1935, I visited Rudolf My first step in the process of digitizing Sig was to scan the 19-page Koch’s memorial exhibition in portion of the Klingspor Kalender set in Wallau Halbfette in high resolution and convert the scans into bitmaps. In order to achieve bit- my hometown Nuremberg. map renderings with a color consistent to that of Wallau I created bitmaps at a range of 8 thresholds, recreated a spread from the Kling- I was so impressed by his work spor Kalender, and printed each bitmap on aged-looking paper that that I decided on my future resembled the paper in the Klingspor Kalender. I selected one with a slightly darker color than the original so that Sig would not become career to become a calligrapher.” too much lighter than Wallau when I started cleaning the outlines. HERMANN ZAPF Character set from Klingspor Kalender 13 PROCESS PROCESS Source Material Source Material mahl ein. Die Speiſen trug er in flachen Schüſ- Rough Autotrace Rough Autotrace ſeln auf. Reinecke erlabte ſich an den ſchmack- haften Dingen und beobachtete voll Liſt ſeinen Feigenbaum mahl ein. Die Speiſen trug er in flachen Schüſ- Refined Autotrace Refined Autotrace ſeln auf. Reinecke erlabte ſich an den ſchmack- Feigenbaum haften Dingen und beobachtete voll Liſt ſeinen Early Bézier Drawing Source material at actual size (9 pt) and stages of autotracing Feigenbaum Next I used the GlyphCollector application by Gábor Kerekes to col- Source material enlarged 400% (36 pt) and stages of autotracing lect every instance of each character, sorted them into contact sheets, reviewed the contact sheets, and narrowed them down to no more than 10 options ranging from light impressions to deep impressions. through the character set again and draw the outlines of the letters From these I selected one of each character that seemed to be a mid- very roughly with tiny straight segments instead of curves while mak- range impression, autotraced them, and copied the outlines into my ing as few decisions as possible about how curves should be rendered font editor. and without focusing on weight or shape inconsistencies between let- I used scans of a few words containing consecutive control char- ters. This was followed by another round of proofing the recreated acters (such as the combination ‘enne’) to recreate the sidebearings spread on aged-looking paper to make sure I had not altered the color of the control characters. Once I had established the sidebearings of of the text. Finally I started replacing the tiny straight segments with n and o, I used that to recreate the sidebearings of all letters that curves, still trying to avoid making substantive design decisions.

Load more