preface is a series of marks that we use to represent sounds, and they haven’t always been the way they do. Throughout the centuries, alphabet has continuously changed and evolved, up until the way they are today. Studying the history of letters has taught me that the way letterforms are now, may not be the way that they’ll always be, and through this book, I will be talking about some of the major that the current alphabet has evolved from.

Evolution, as it is defined by the Oxford Dictionary, is the process by which different kinds of living organism are believed to have developed from earlier forms during the history of the earth; or the gradual development of something. However, to encapsulate the massive word into one: an evolution is a change. Now — a change, especially those that happened through a long period of time, can be visualized in many different ways: charts, compar- ison, the gradient between the two (or more) subjects. Yet, that is not how I envisioned this book to be. I perceive the change as a form of movement, and I would like to bring that movement into the alphabets to be discussed, as well as the way to indicate the evolution.

Additionally, in the last section, I will be discussing 24 type- faces that have been prevalent in the history of type, and for the purpose of this book, I will start the book with the study of alphabet — not writing. Type Ancestry Years in 87

Phoenician Alphabet 02 Jenson 89 03 Garamond 91 Hebrew 07 Fournier 93 Nabataean 11 Bell 95 97 15 Akzidenz-Grotesk 99 Glagolitic 17 Copperplate Gothic 101 Cyrillic 21 Franklin Gothic 103 Centaur 105 Wilhelm Klingspor Schrift 107 Frozen Letters 109 Gill Sans 111 Etruscan Alphabet 25 Peignot 113 27 Mistral 115 Runic 35 117 119 ITC Avant Garde Gothic 121 Roman Development ITC Bauhaus 123 Trajan 125 Capitals 41 Template Gothic 127 Roman 45 Mason 129 Uncial 49 Base 9/12 131 Carolingian 53 Gotham 133 57 Whitney 135 Serif 61 Egyptian Serif 65 Sans Serif 69

Pixel Type

Dot Matrix 73 Segmented Type 79 Bitmap 83 01 — type ancestry

The Phoenicians were a group of Semitic people, comparatively small by modern standards who occupied a number of towns; Byblos, Sidon and Tyre, amongst others, on the coast of the eastern Mediterranean in 11 BCE. The Phoenician is also linked to the color purple. Although the Phoenicians called themselves Kena’ani, or Canaanites, the Greeks have also called them the “purple people” and their country, Phoiniki — the Greek word for purple or crimson being phoînix. The Phoenicians travelled, and did tradings throughout the Mediterranean (the sea in the middle of the world), and their alphabet went with them, and it got noticed.

A major difference between our and that of the Phoenicians is that each letter had a meaningful name. A was called (which also meant cow), because the letter evolved from a simplified drawing of a cow’s head. However, the A that we know, just means A. The letter names are extrapolated from ancient Hebrew, with a key source being the alphabetic listing used in the Bible book Lamentations. The Phoenician alphabet is also the precursor of modern day Hebrew and Arabic.

02 arabic

/phoenician 01 — type ancestry 01.01/arabic Introduction to

The origins of the Arabic alphabet can be traced back to the writing of the semi-nomadic Nabataean tribes, who inhabited southern Syria and , Northern Arabia, and the . Surviving stone inscriptions in the Nabataean , a descendant of Phoenician alphabet, show strong similarities to the modern Arabic . Like Arabic, their written texts consisted largely of consonants and long vowels, with variations on the same basic letterforms used to represent a number of sounds.

Arabic is written and read from right to left, and their upper and lowercase letters do not have any distinctions. However, shapes of letters usually vary depending on whether they are in an initial, medial, or final position in a word. marks were not adopted until the 20th century. Short vowels are represented by a set of marks below or above the letters, which helps in the pronunciation of a word. These marks are usually only written in the Qur'an, where correct recitation is really important.

04 ب ج ح اteh beh alefت thehث ha jim خ ر ز س dal khaد dhalذ sin zin ra ش ص ض ع ta dad sad shinط dhaظ ain غ م feh ghainف qafق kafك lamل mim ن و ي heh nunه yeh 05 06 01 — type ancestry 01.02/hebrew Introduction to

Hebrew is a member of the Canaanite group derived from Semitic languages. It was the language used by the early Jews, but from 586 BC it started to be replaced by . By 200 AD, the use of Hebrew as an everyday language had largely ceased, but it conti- nued to be used for literary and religious functions, as well as lingua franca among Jews from different countries. During the mid-19th century the first efforts were made to revive Hebrew as a everyday language. One man who played a major role in these efforts was Eliezer Ben Yehuda (1858 – 1922), who was the first to make exclusive use of Hebrew in his home, encouraged the use of Hebrew among others, as well as its use in schools.

Today, Hebrew is spoken by some 5 million people mainly in Israel, where it is an official language along with Arabic. and a further 2 million people speak the language in Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Palestinian West Bank and Gaza, Panama, the UK and USA.

The first alphabet used to write Hebrew made its presence during the late second and first millenniaBC . Hebrew alphabet is closely related to the Phoenician alphabet. The modern Hebrew alphabet was developed from an alphabet known as Early Aramaic. hebrew /phoenician

07 אבגד הוזחט יכךלמ םנןסע

10פףצץ קרש 09ת 01 — type ancestry Introduction to 01.03/nabataean Nabataean Alphabet

Nabataean alphabet is the writing system used between approx- imately 150 BC and 150 AD in the of in the Arabian Peninsula. Used by the to write the Aramaic language, this alphabet was related to the (a direct descendant of Phoenician alphabet), one of nabataean the major Semitic scripts. /phoenician The Nabataean script gave rise to the neo-Sinaitic alphabet, the ancestor of the Arabic alphabet. Just like its Semitic forerunner, Nabataean had 22 letters, all representing consonants, and was written from right to left. Nabataean inscriptions have also been found in Egypt and Italy and on coins from Petra.

A bilingual inscription in Nabataean and Greek scripts was discovered on the Aegean Island of Kos. The Nabataean script did not look like the distinctive and dynamic shapes of Arabic, but it’s naïve and doodle forms performed the important role of breaking from the visual lexicon of Canaanite and Aramaic lettershapes, leaving a tabula rasa for Arabic letters.

12 From left to right: h, z, w, h, d, g, b,

(, s, n, m, l, k, y, ţ, t, š, r, q, Ş, p

13 14 greek alphabet

16 01 — type ancestry

Herodotus (c. 484 – 425 BCE), a Greek historian, referred to Greek letters as phoinikeia grammata, or better known as Phoenicians letters. Although the Greek alphabet today has a modest number of users, it is the oldest alpha- in continuous use (dating back to the 8th century BCE) and Greece is the channel by which all of Europe became literate and gained the alphabet, including where the alphabet gained its name, alpha-beta. Proto-Sinaitic, North-Semitic and Phoenician scripts have been mentioned thus far as alphabets; yet this is not strictly true. They are consonantaries, or , which are alphabets without vowels. The Greeks are the ones who then expanded the alphabet with symbols for vowels when they finally acquired them from the Phoenicians.

The Greek alphabet eventually came to contain seven vowel letters: A, short E, long E, I, short O (omicron), long O (omega) and U. The Greeks changed the direction of writing, and developed a style of writing called ‘boustrophedon’. meaning how the ox ploughs, which meant that lines of text-read alternately from right to left and left to right. As they changed the direction of reading, the Greeks also changed the orientation of the letterforms.

16 glagolitic 01.04/glagolitic /greek 01 — type ancestry Introduction to Glagolitic Alphabet

Glagolitic alphabet is a script invented for the Slavic languages approximately during the 860 CE by the Eastern Orthodox Christian missionaries St. Cyril and his brother St. Methodius. The two missionaries originated in Thessaloníki, Greece, on the southern edge of the Slavic-speaking world. They were sent from Byzantium to “Great Moravia” — likely centred around present day Moravia in the Czech Republic. The language they used, though not identical with that of the Moravians, was usable by the latter. This is now called Old Church Slavonic, or Old Church Slavic.

Their mission in Moravia lasted only a few decades. The mis- sionaries’ disciples then went to South Slavic regions, more specifically Bulgaria and Macedonia, where they constructed a new script for Slavic in the 900s, based on capital Greek letters, but with some additions. This alphabet became later known as Cyrillic. Although dissimilar to Glagolitic in letter- form, Cyrillic had approximately the same number of letters as Glagolitic and identical sound values for those letters.

Old Church Slavonic was written in Glagolitic for around 300 years, and then Glagolitic gradually gave way to Cyrillic, which is still used for Church Slavonic service books in the Orthodox Christian churches and also for certain modern Slavic languages. Glagolitic gave way almost completely to Latin letters, though a few Croatian church communities went on to use the service books into the 1900s, and Glagolitic is respected as part of the Croatian cultural heritage.

17 a .b .v .g .d

e .Ž .3 .y .z E (est), Ž (živite), (zelo), Y, Z (zemla) . . . . Ï i j k L Ï (iže,) I (i), J (je), K (kako), L (ljudi) . . . . m n o p r M (mislite), N (naš), O (on), P (pokoi), R (rci)

A (az), B (buki), V (vidi), G (glagole), D (dobro) . . . . E (est), Ž (živite), (zelo), Y, Z (zemla) s t u f h Ï (iže,) I (i), J (je), K (kako), L (ljudi)

M (mislite), N (naš), O (on), P (pokoi), R (rci) (ot), C (ci), Č (črv), Š (ša), Ja (jat) . . . . S (slovo), T (trdo), U (uk), F (frt), H (hir) w c Ç Š É (ot), C (ci), Č (črv), Š (ša), Ja (jat) 20 cyrillic 01.05/cyrillic /greek 01 — type ancestry Introduction to Cyrillic Alphabet

Cyrillic alphabet is a writing system developed in the 9th– 10th century for Slavic-speaking people of the Eastern Orthodox faith. It is currently used exclusively as one of the several alpha- bets for more than 50 languages, notably Belarusian, Bulgarian, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Macedonian, Montenegrin (also called Serbian), Russian, Serbian, Tajik, Turkmen, Ukrainian, and Uzbek.

The Cyrillic alphabet was an indirect result of the missionary work of the 9th century “Apostles of the Slavs,” St. Cyril and St. Methodius. However, their mission to Moravia lasted only a few decades. As mentioned in Glagolitic section, their dis- ciples went to South Slavic regions of the first Bulgarian empire, now known as Bulgaria and the Republic of Macedonia, and they constructed a new script for Slavic based on capital Greek letters, with some additions, which became known as Cyrillic. Saints Naum and Clement, both of Ohrid disciples of St. Cyril and St Methodius, are sometimes credited with having devised the Cyrillic alphabet.

As the Slavic languages were richer in sounds than Greek, 43 letters were originally provided to represent them; the added letters were modifications or combinations of Greek letters or (in the case of the Cyrillic letters for ts, sh, and ch) were based on Hebrew. The earliest literature written in Cyrillic was trans- lations of parts of the Bible and various church texts.

22 АБВГДЕ ЁЖЗИЙК ЛМНОПР СТУФХЦ

а (A), б (B), в (V), г (G), д (D), е (E)

ё (YO), ж (ZH), з (Z), и (I), й (Y), к (K) л (L), м (M), н (N), о (O), п (P), р (R) ЧШЩЪЫЬ с (S), т (T), у (U), ф (F), х (KH), ц (TS)

ч (CH), ш (SH), щ (SHCH), ъ (—), ы (Y), ь (') э (E), ю (YU), я (YA) ЭЮЯ etruscan alphabet

26 02 — frozen letters

The Etruscans lived on the Italic peninsula before the Roman Empire, in an area called Etruria. A great amount of Roman culture was informed by the Etruscans. Much of the Greek culture that the Romans imitated was trans-mitted via them. Ironicaly, the famous icon of Rome, the Lupa Capi- tolina, is an Etruscan artefact. The Etruscan language was not Semitic like the Phoenicians, and not Indo – European like Greek, it was, in fact, barely related to any other language. One peculiarity is that it did not contain any voiced stops (b,d, and g) so it would not be possible to say the words: bad dog, it would sound more like pat tok.

Nevertheless, they still kept the letters for these sounds in their alphabet. We know more about the Etruscan alphabet than the language, as the speed of assimilation of the alphabet was rapid at this time in history. The modern Latin alphabet does not have useful Greek letters like long E and long O, as the Greek alphabet had already been taken for use and development by the Etruscans before the Greeks had developed them. Similarly, although the Etruscans used their alphabet for about 800 years, it passed to the Romans within about a century.

26 ogham 02 — frozen letters 02.01/ogham /etruscan Introduction to Ogham Alphabet

Ogham, also known as the ‘Celtic Tree Alphabet’, is estimated to have been used from the fourth to the tenth century CE. It is believed to have been possibly named after the Irish God Ogma, however this is debated widely. Ogham actually refers to the characters themselves, the script as a whole is more appropriate- ly named Beith-luis-nin after the order of alphabet letters B, L, F, S, and N. The script originally contained 20 letters grouped into four groups of five. Each of these groups was named after its first letter. There are around four to five hundred Ogham inscriptions that is surviving throughout Britain and Ireland with the largest number appearing in Pembrokeshire. As for the origin of Ogham, there are four popular theories discussing. The differing theories are unsurprising considering that the script has similarities to ciphers in Germanic , Latin, , as well as the Greek alphabet. These differing theories will be shown on the following page.

27 The first theory is based on the work of scholars such as Carney and MacNeill who suggest that Ogham was first created as a cryptic alphabet designed by the Irish. They assert that the Irish designed it in response to political, military and/or religious reasons so that those with know- ledge of just Latin could not read it.

The second theory is by McManus, who argued that Ogham was invented by the first Christians in early Ireland in a quest for uniqueness. The argument maintains that the primitive Irish language were too difficult to transcribe into Latin.

The third theory states that the Ogham script was invented in West Wales in the fourth century BCE to intertwine the Latin alphabet with the Irish language, to serve as a response to the intermarriage between the Romans and the Romanized Britons. This would account for the fact that some of the Ogham inscriptions are bilingual; spelling out Irish and Brythonic–Latin.

The fourth theory is supported by MacAlister and used to be popular before other theories began to overtake it. It states that Ogham was invented in Cisalpine Gaul around 600 BCE by Gaulish Druids who created it as a hand signal and oral language.

29 30 First theory: Fourth theory: This theory is based on the work of scholars such as Carney The fourth theory is supported by MacAlister and used to be and MacNeill who suggest that Ogham was first created as popular before other theories began to overtake it. It states a cryptic alphabet designed by the Irish. They assert that that Ogham was invented in Cisalpine Gaul around 600 BCE the Irish designed it in response to political, military and/or by Gaulish Druids who created it as a hand signal and oral religious reasons so that those with knowledge of just Latin language. MacAliser suggests that it was transmitted orally could not read it. until it was finally put into writing in early Christian Ireland. argues that the lines incorporated into Ogham represent Second theory: the hand by being based on four groups of five letters with This theory is formed by McManus, who argued that Ogham a sequence of strokes from one to five. However, there is no was invented by the first Christians in early Ireland in a quest evidence for MacAlisters theory that Ogham’s language and for uniqueness. The argument maintains that the sounds of system originated in Gaul. the primitive Irish language were too difficult to transcribe into Latin. Mythical theories for the origin of Ogham also appear in texts from the eleventh to fifteenth centuries. The eleventh Third theory: century Lebor Gabala Erenn tells that Ogham was invented This theory states that the Ogham script from invented soon after the fall of the tower of Babel, as does the fifteenth in West Wales in the fourth century BCE to intertwine the century Auraicept na n-eces text. The Book of Babymote also Latin alphabet with the Irish language in response to the includes ninty-two recorded secret modes of writing Ogham intermarriage between the Romans and the Romanized written in 1390 – 91 CE. Britons. This would account for the fact that some of the Ogham inscriptions are bilingual; spelling out Irish and Brythonic – Latin.

29 30 ᚆᚇᚈᚉᚊ ᚐᚑᚒᚓᚔ

Ailm hÚath

Onn Dair

Úr Tinne

Eadha Coll

Iodhadh Quert

31 32 ᚁᚂᚃᚄᚅ ᚋᚌᚍᚎᚏ

Beith Muin

Luis Gort

Fearn nGéatal

Sail Straif

Nion Ruis

33 runic /etruscan

02 — frozen letters Introduction to 02.02/runic Runic Alphabet

The word rune comes from the Norse rún which means mystery or secret. Little is known about the origins of the Runic alpha- bet and no one knows exactly when, where or who invented it.

Runes are the characters of the earliest written alphabet used by the Germanic peoples of Europe called Futhark. The runic alphabet was used within Germanic languages but primarily in Nordic countries. Inscriptions have been found throughout northern Europe from the Balkans to Germany, Scandinavia, the British Isles and Iceland, and were in use from about 100 to 1600 AD.

Runic inscriptions have even been found in North America, supporting claims that the Vikings arrived in the Americas long before Columbus. These days English and other Northern European languages are written using Latin letters, but they used to be written using “Runestaves.” The oldest known runic inscription dates to 160 AD and is found on the Vimose Comb reading simply “HARJA”.

36 ᚠ. ᚢ. ᚦ. ᚫ. ᚱ. ᚳ ᚷ. ᚹ. ᚻ. ᚾ. ᛁ. ᛄ

The Runic alphabet is known as Futhark after the first six runes, namely f, u, th, a, r, and k. It consisted of 24 letters, 18 consonants and 6 vowels, and was a writing system where each character has a certain sound. Runes could be written in both directions . . . . . and could also be inverted or upside down. The earliest runes consisted almost entirely of straight lines, arranged singly or in combinations of two or more. Later runes took on more complex forms ᛇ ᛈ ᛉ ᛋ ᛏ ᛒ and some even resemble modern day letters of the English alphabet.

With the resemblance to Mediterranean writing, it is thought that Futhark was adapted from either the Greek or Etruscan alphabet and its origin begins further back than the pre-historic Northern Europe. The earliest Futhark inscriptions don’t actually have . . . . a fixed writing direction, but instead it was written left-to-right or right-to-left, which was a feature of very archaic Greek or Etruscan alphabets before the third century BC. ᛖ ᛗ ᛚ ᛝ ᛟ

One theory is that the runic alphabet was developed by the Goths, a Germanic people. Two inscriptions, the Negau and the Maria Saalerberg inscriptions, written in Etruscan script in a Germanic language and dating from the first and second centuriesBC , give credence to the theory of Etruscan origins.

37 38 roman alphabet

40 03 — roman development

Latin alphabet, also called Roman alphabet is the most widely used alpha- betic writing system in the world, the standard script of the English language and the languages of most of Europe and those areas settled by Europeans. Developed from the Etruscan alphabet at some time before 600 BC, it can be traced through Etruscan, Greek, and Phoenician scripts to the North Semitic alphabet used in Syria and Palestine about 1100 BC. The earliest inscription in the Latin alphabet appears on the Praeneste Fibula, a cloak pin dating from about the 7th century BC, which reads, “MANIOS MED FHEFHAKED NUMA- SIOI” (in Classical Latin: “Manius me fecit Numerio,” meaning “Manius made me for Numerius”).

The classical Latin alphabet consisted of 23 letters, 21 of which were derived from the Etruscan alphabet. In medieval times, the letter I was differentiated into I, J, and V into U, V, and W, producing an alphabet equivalent to that of modern English with 26 letters. Some European languages currently using the Latin alphabet do not use the letters K and W, and some added extra letters (usually standard Latin letters with diacritical marks added or sometimes pairs of letters read as one sound). In this section, the development of the Roman alphabet will be explored.

40 03.01/capitals 03 — roman development

capitals /roman

Introduction to CAPITALIS were the letters that were used to present the text of a monument in Rome, from Capital Letters CAPITELLVM, meaning the head of column. Romans had another name for their big letters: MAIVSCVLVS (majuscules), which means “quite big”, and we still use the word majuscule to define the letters that are comparatively large, sitting in between two lines. The name we now use to define the refined letters used on monuments is called the CAPITALIS QVADRATA, or Square Capitals, because some feel they were modeled on base characters like O which were proportional to a square. Similar as their epigraphic models, the letterforms of square capitals have serifs added to the finish of their main strokes. The variety of stroke width was achieved by the use of a reed pen which was held at an angle of approximately 60 degrees off the perpendicular.

41 SENATVS POPVLVSQVE ROMANVS

IMP CAESARI DIVI NERVAE F NERVAE POPVLVSQVE TR AIANO AVG GERM DACICO PONTIF MAXIMO TRIB POT XVII IMP VI COS VI P P

ADDECLARANDVM QVANTAE ALTITVDINIS ROMANVS MONS ET LOCVS TANT...IBVS SIT EGESTVS

44 cursive 03.02/cursive /roman 03 — roman development

Introduction to Both Square and Rustic Capitals were typically reserved for formal documents of some intended permanence. However, for everyday transactions, they were typically written with a cursive hand, in which forms were simplified for speed. These are then retrospectively divided into two styles: Early or Majuscule cursive, and Late or Minuscule cursive. Majuscule cursive was in use from the 1st century BCE to the 3rd century AD. From this point, the development of the Roman alphabet is greatly informed by this practice, quickening the writing speed and encouraged changes in the order,number, and direction of strokes, and led to changes of the letter shapes within the grid lines — 2 or 4 — of the letters. Starting with Majuscule Cursive and Rustic Capitals, we could see first hints of small letters or minuscules. Following roman cursive is what we know as Uncial letters.

46

ꞅ ̴ ꞃ̹ o

Text in Roman: On the left, you'll find an excerpt from the beginning part of “The Aeneid”, Arma virumque a Latin epic poem written from about 30 to 19 BCE by Virgil, who was a cano, Troiae qui Roman poet. Composed in hexameters, about 60 lines of which were left primus ab oris unfinished at his death, The Aeneid incorporates the various legends of Aeneas and makes him the founder of Roman greatness. This work is

ı̻𐌴 quı organized into 12 books that relate the story of the legendary founding of Lavinium, which is a parent town of Alba Longa and of Rome). The town is founded by Aeneas, who was informed as he left the burning ruins of Troy that it was his fate to found a new city with a glorious destiny which was located in the West. o ̹ͅꞃ̵̼q̵ � ꞃı̵̼ꞅ ̰𐌱

48 ̰ꞇ̼ c̰̽o tꞃ ̀ 03.03/uncial Introduction to 03 — roman development Uncial Letters

Uncials incorporated some aspects of the Roman cursive hand, especially in the shapes of A, D, E, H, M, U, and Q. ‘Uncia’ is Latin for a twelfth of anything; as a results, some scholars think that uncials refer to letters that are one inch (1/12 of a foot) high. It might, however, be more accurate to think of uncials simply as small letters. The point for the scribe, after all, was to save expensive parchment, and the broad forms of uncials are more readable at small sizes than rustic capitals. A further formalization of the cursive hand, half-uncials marks the formal beginning of lowercase letter- forms, replete with ascenders and , 2,000 years after the origin of the Phoenician alphabet. Due to politics and social upheaval on the European continent at the time, the finest examples of half-uncials come from manuscripts produced in Ireland and England.

uncial /greek

49 YAAA EXEIK

APOIA HACIA

XAWP AWCß

51 52 03 — roman development Introduction to 03.04/carolingians Carolingian Letters

The first unifierof Europe since the Romans, Charlemagne, issued an edict in 789 to standardize all texts which were ecclesiastical. He entrusted this task to the Alcuin of York, Abbot of St.Martin of Tours from 796 to 804, under whose supervision a large group of monks rewrote virtually all the ecclesiastical and, subsequently, secular texts which were in existence then. Their ‘print’, which included both majuscules (upper case) and minuscules (lower case) — set the standard for for a century, including punctuation and capi- tulation. These texts were then renewed and safeguarded until the invention of printing With a new literary revolu- tion underway and books being scanned into huge digital archives, it is worth reflecting that this is only possible due to the foresight of the Carolingians. carolingian /roman

54 ᛁ̽fi̽o do

Known as a masterpiece for Carolingian alphabet, the Moutier-Grandval Bible finds its place in history as the product of Charlemagne’s desire to represent himself c̰pıtvl̰ as an heir to the great Scholarly heritage of the Roman Empire, and to lift it out of what we would call today 'The dark ages'. One of the people he brought was Alcuin of York, who made books from the Vulgate translations of the Bible in Charlemagne’s scriptorium. The Moutier- Grandval Bible was not made in Alcuin’s time however, it was made under the Abbot Adalhard. Nonetheless, it gives one the idea and impression one could receive from t𐌴 mpo͂ 𐌴 a Vulgate Translation completed under Alcuin. ͂𐌴l ̹c t̹s

o ccu͂͂ıt 56 blackletter 03.05/blackletter /roman 03 — roman development Introduction to Blackletter

Regional variations on the Alcuin’s script came upon with the dissolution of Charlemagne’s empire. In northern Europe, a condensed, strongly vertical letterform known as the black- letter, gained popularity. In southern Europe, a rounder and more open-handed blackletter known as ‘’, prevailed. In northern France, England, and the Low Countries, a hybrid of the two, called 'batarde', was predominant. In the north, the blackletter style remained the standard for almost 500 years. In southern Europe, particularly in Italy, the scholars were rediscovering, analyzing, and popularizing both Roman and Greek texts.

Their sources were written in Alcuin’s Caroline miniscule, which they mistakenly believed to be that of the ancient authors. Scribes adapted the rotunda style to the Caroline as they copied the manuscripts, calling it the ‘scrittura humanistica’, — humanist script.

57 Rotunda 59 traditions. local on based was blackletter of type This states. German the and Switzerland Bohemia, 1480, After scripts. book these of Both Europe. southern with latter the and Europe northern are scripts blackletter basic The , the former primarily associated with with associated primarily former , the Schwabacher Schwabacher script appeared in in appeared script Textura and and many letters. many distinguish that curves broken the from derived is name Its I. ofMaximilian reign the during hands Chancery Imperial from developed style, , Textura type bastarda-influenced another Rotunda Schwabacher Fraktur 60 03 — roman development 03.06/serif Introduction to Serif Letters

In fifteenth-centuryItaly , humanist writers and scholars rejected gothic scripts in favor of the lettera antica, a clas- sical mode of handwriting with wider, more open forms. Lettera antica was the preference at the time as part of the Renaissance (rebirth) of classical art and literature.

Nicolas Jenson, a Frenchman who had learned to print in Germany, established an influential printing firm in Venice around 1469. His typefaces merged the gothic traditions he had known in France and Germany with the Italian taste for rounder, lighter forms. They are considered among the first — and finest — roman typefaces.

Italic letters, also introduced in fifteenth-century Italy, were modeled on a more casual style of handwriting. While the upright humanist scrips appeared only in expensively produced books, the cursive form thrived in the cheaper wri- ting shops, where it could be written more rapidly than the carefully formed lettera antica. serif /roman

62 PUBLII VIRGILII

MARONIS BUCOLICA, Baskerville's Virgil of 1757 was his first publica- tion, a project which he began in 1754, and some authorities consider it Baskerville's finest work. The edition became famous for its typography, and overall design. Though book historians draw attention to the first use of wove paper in the first Baskerville edition of Virgil, there is no evidence that Baskerville was especially interested in this innovation in paper. Most of his later books were G E O R G I C A, printed on the traditional laid paper. Besides the innovative typography and book design involved, Baskerville's first edition of Virgil was also known for the "glazed" surface of the paper. ET AE N E I S.

BIRMINGHAMI AE:

Typeis JOHANNIS BASKERVILLE.

MDCCLVIL

63 egyptian serif 03.07/egyptian /roman 03 — roman development Introduction to Egyptian Serif

With the rise of industrialization and mass consumption in the nineteenth-century came the explosion of advertising, a new form of communication, which demanded the creations for new kinds of typography. Type designers created big, bold faces by embellishing and engorging the body parts of classi- cal letters. Typefaces of astonishing height, width, and depth then appeared — expanded, contracted, shadowed, inlined, fattened, faceted, and floriated.

Serifs abandoned their role as finishing details to become independent architectural structures, and the vertical stress of traditional letters canted in new directions. By the mid of nineteenth-century, another subset of the Slab Serif class of types began to emerge — the Clarendons. They were an attempt to reign in some of the extravagences of the Fat Face display types, making them fit for use as text faces. Contrast was then reduced, the serifs thinned somewhat and up with the x-height for legibility at those smaller sizes.

65 67 1809 Description de l'Égypt adopted by French and German foundries, where it became it became where foundries, German and French by adopted then was Egyptian term The typefounders. American and British by used term the so England, in types sans-serif describe to used been previously had Egyptian term the However, Egyptian. designs their producing typefounders led which century, nineteenth early the in America North and Europe in artifacts metonym common The Memphis. and Karnak, Cairo, subject: for the named are ones early many and Egyptians, called being often serifs slab to led confusion honest or marketing shrewd either types, serif slab and systems writing Egyptian between no relationship was there While followed. Egyptian things all with fascination cultural intense an like publications via descriptions and Following Following Napoleon ’s Egyptian campaign and dissemination of images ofimages dissemination and campaign ’s Egyptian “Egyptian” Slab Serifs is derived from a craze for Egyptian for Egyptian acraze from derived is Description de l’Égypte (1809) l’Égypte de Description after after Figgins’ ‘Antique’ Egyptienne work to call call work to was

. 68 sans serif

/roman 03 — roman development 03.08/sans serif Introduction to Sans Serif

One could argue that the sans serif existed as far back as ancient times — by their means of execution early chiseled faces were constructed from strokes with unadorn- ed endings. But in reality, it was the late 19th century when type designers deliberately decided to design faces that were without serifs. Type designers balanced the letters by using variable stroke weights (much as serif letters are balanced).

At first, sans serif's letterforms followed the proportions of the Classical Roman Capitals. However, later sans serifs got their influence from geometric and modernist trends. From the Linotype essay by Adrian Frutiger, “the first sans serif font to appear in a type sample book was by William Caslon IV in 1816. This new form of type caught on quickly and began to appear all over Europe and the U.S., known as Grotesque and Sans Serif.”

70 A C E N Q R S 1 2 3 7 W T JJ 4 5 6 J Z B D F V M

For years, the signs in the New York City subway system were a bewildering hodgepodge of lettering styles, sizes, shapes, materials, colors, and messages. The original mosaics (dating from as early as 1904), displaying a variety of serif and sans serif letters and decorative elements, were supplemented by signs in terracotta and cut stone. Over the years, enamel signs identifying stations and warning riders not to spit, smoke, or cross the tracks were added to the mix. Efforts to untangle this visual mess began in the mid-1960s, when the city tran- sit authority hired the design firm Unimark International to create a clear and consistent sign system. We can see the results today in the white-on-black signs LL QJ throughout the subway system, displaying station names, directions, and instructions in crisp Helvetica. pixelated type

74 04 — pixel type

With the advent of desktop publishing, type design and manufacturing entered a new era. The “analog” letterforms of metal and photo type were converted to a variety of digital formats. The first generation of technology resulted in “bitmap” fonts — comparable to superimposing a sheet of graph paper over a drawn letter and coloring in the boxes (pixels) that fell within the outline of that letter. Bitmapped fonts had the advantage that they could be carefully edited for quality and readability. However, they also had the disadvantage of requiring a separate font for each size and resolution, there- by taking up a relatively large amount of memory.

The current generation of digital font technology provides for “scalable” outline fonts. They are smaller in memory size and faster to process. Analog drawings of letters are plotted with a mouse or stylus to create an outline representation (made up of curves and straight lines). These digitized out- lines are made into a font that is installed in a computer operating system. In this section, I will briefly discuss three of the many current digital type precursors: dot matrix, segment type, and bitmap type.

74 dot matrix 04 — pixel type 04.01/dot matrix /pixel

Introduction to If the design of a letter can be stored as numeric code that can be recreated on demand, there is no Dot Matrix need to store expensive lead type or use the com- plicated mechanicals of a typewriter. This was the principle behind the dot-matrix printer. The design of a letter is broken down to a grid of dots and then stored as a numeric code. Then, a tiny device con- taining a 3-dimensional analogy of this grid, a grid of rods — also known as hammers — passes across an inked ribbon, much like the one in a typewriter, and the hammers that recreate the dot pattern of a particular letter briefly strike the ribbon, pressing it to the paper.

75 1929 Rudolf Hell

Although little known outside Germany, except in specialist circles, Germany Rudolf Hell was very much a man who helped to shape the world as we know it. In 1927, he invented a direction-finder for pilots and in 1929 he invented the Hellschreiber, a precursor of the fax machine. He was also responsible for contributions to scanner technology, television and printing.

Born in the small Bavarian town of Eggmühl in 1901, Hell studied elec- tronics at Munich Technical University. His great idea was to divide letters, numbers and pictures into small points by electronic means, to transmit these by electronic impulses and to directly write images of Hell-Feld characters on paper tape. Already in 1925 the young graduate invented a picture-disassembler tube which was the technical precondition for television. He became famous, however, in 1929, for his Hellschreiber, or teleprinter. This machine was soon being used by the post, press, police and meteorological service. In 1929 Hell gained his doctorate in engineer- Hellschreiber ing for his Funkpeilgerät or radio-beam flight direction finder. 78 04.02/segmented type 04 — pixel type

Introduction to Another grid, well-known to any 1970s child is the segmented display. Quite different to a dot-matrix Segmented Type or bitmap, which use a map of many identical units, the design of the letters was broken down to a grid of seven vertical and horizontal bars, and called the 7-segment display or 7-Seg. The technology was only intended to display numerals but the bored school children at the time soon discovered that when cer- tain numbers were keyed in and the display was in- verted, it could be made to show words. With the desire for such a technology to display alphabetic characters, additional segments were made, and 16-segment display was created. But segmentation didn’t stop at 16, and the 38-segment display was produced. It was made by a grid of fifteen squares, divided by nine diagonal lines, with four curved lines placed at the corners to create a grid of 38- segments. The 38-segment display was created for seg-type use in public information displays. /pixel

80 alphabet new the

In 1963, Wim Crouwel was one of the founders of the design studio Total Design (currently named Total Identity). From 1964 onwards, Crouwel was responsible for the design of the posters, catalogues and exhibitions of the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. In 1967, he designed the typeface New Alphabet, a design that embraces the limitations of the cathode ray tube technology used by early data display screens and phototypesetting equipment and thus only contains horizontal and vertical strokes. Other typefaces from his hand are Fodor and Gridnik. In 1970, Wim Crouwel designed the Dutch pavilion for Expo '70 (Osaka, Japan).

A design of Crouwel that is well known in the Netherlands is that of the Number Postage Stamps for the Dutch PTT. According to Wim Crouwel, New Alphabet was ‘over-the-top and never meant to be really used’. However, as unreadable as it was, it made a comeback in 1988 when designer Brett Wickens used a version of the font on the sleeve of Substance by Joy Division.

81 82 04 — pixel type 04.03/bitmap

Introduction to As mobile phone screens drive the demand for greater visual sophistication in the display of Bitmap Letters alphabetic characters, and LCD technology has become less expensive, the principle of represent- ing alphabetic characters with a grid of dots or pixels has returned to information and consumer technology. With the ever increasing screen resolution and anti-aliasing, a method of placing intermediate grey or colored pixels around the outline of a letter is improving, meaning that our letter shapes on screen are going to look better and better. Within the machine ring, a reduced 5x5 black or white pixel grid demonstrates how this method might be used in the austere visual medium of a low resolution screen.

bitmap /pixel

83 Lo-Res family by Zuzana Licko

The Lo-Res family of fonts is a synthesis Lo-Res family replaces the preexisting , Emperor, Oakland and Universal families and groups these related bitmap designs under one of pixelated designs, including Emigre's family name in the font menu, thereby simplifying their naming. The Lo- Res fonts also offer technical improvements, including a more complete earlier coarse resolution fonts, as well character set, more consistent character shapes among styles and weights, as well as improved alignment among the various resolutions. as bitmap representations of Base 9. Currently, bitmaps are also gaining popularity due to their continued use in electronic gadgets other than PCs. While computer developers strive towards faster performance and higher resolution in high-end devices, respectively lower resolutions remain more affordable, portable and efficient and therefore continue to be implemented in such devices as cell phones, pagers and microwave oven panels.

Whatever the stylistic, cultural or functional reasons behind the adoration of bitmapped type, the result is an increased need for bitmap typefaces which are fine-tuned for the computer's display grid; which has prompted this reworking of Emigre's bitmap font offering into the Lo-Res family.

86 05 — years in typefaces

years in typefaces

There are countless more typefaces that have made their marks in the history. However, in this section, I will only be discussing 24 typefaces out of the hundreds, since that will require, and deserve, another book. For each typeface, there will be paragraphs, set of words, or just a phrase that will be set in them. But they are not just any arbitrary choices of words; every single page that is set in the typeface will have some sort of correlation with it. Along with showcasing the letters, I will also be discussing the origin of the typeface, its classification, and the designer.

87 05 — years in typefaces & & & & & & & & & & & & & & & & & & & & & & & & Whitney Gotham 9 & 12 Base Mason Gothic Template Trajan Bauhaus ITC AvantITC Gothic Garde Helvetica Univers Mistral Peignot Gill Sans Futura Schrift Wilhelm Klingspor Centaur GothicFranklin Gothic Copperplate Akzidenz-Grotesk Clarendon Bell Fournier Garamond Jenson top left: From discussed: be Typefaces to

87 4 EUSEBIUS 4 05.01/Jenson DE EVANGELICA PRAEPA- ratione à Georgio Trapezuntio è Græco in Jenson (c. 1470) Latinum traductus, opus cuique fi- deli non folum utile, uerum- etiam iucundum & perneceffarium,

fummáque Country of origin: Made in the Renaissance period, Nicolas Jenson’s typeface is one Italy of the very first typefaces with roman letter shapes. It is called a diligentia Venetian serif, distinguished from other Humanist serifs by its emeda- Classification: obviously calligraphic construction and its angled, beaked “e”. Venetian Humanist Serif There are many interpretations of Jenson’s work, but Adobe’s is tum. one of the most visually appealing and functional. It has four Designer: complete subfamilies (called “optical sizes”) to emulate the size- Nicolas Jenson specific designs of the original metal type. Among these, Caption is dark with sturdy serifs and low stroke contrast for small text, whereas Display is light and delicate, with fine details and long extenders for lovely titles. Good for: Any text, short or long, that calls for a rich, flowery perfume.

PARISIIS. Ex officina Antonii Augerelli fub figno D Iacobi, uia ad S. Iacobum. 1534.

Vænit Antonio Augerello, & Simoni Colinæo.

89 90 05.02/Garamond Quia nouerai mores hominum ;tumetiam pertentare te prprfusuolui, q recte ifta fentires. Sed omittamushaeciam tan dem Garamond (c. 1532) fili; atq; ad ehm partem fermonis, ex qua egreffi fumus, reuertamur. B. F. Immo euro pater nec reuertamur: quid enim afpluis nobiscum platanis illis ? de iss enim loquebamur. Sed (fi placet) ad Country of origin: Refined and readable, Garamond is probably the most popular Aetnam potius, de qua fermo aberri coeptus France of the Humanist serifs. Longtime users of Adobe will be familiar with Robert Slimbach’s first crack at this classic typeface, which eft, properemus. Classification: is Adobe Garamond. However, Garamond Premier is a major Old Style Serif improvement of it. The most important difference is that Robert B. P. Mihi hero pérplacet; ita tamen, Slimbach drew separate subfamilies (optical sizes) correspond- Designer: ing to different sizes of metal type. This lets Garamond’s delicate uta ne feftines: tibi enim ego omnes has Claude Garamond beauty stretch out in headlines but not break apart when small. Despite a subdued character in Caption and Regular (Text) sizes. pomeridianas horasdico, Sed quondam me Garamond is never dull by any means. Use with care; since it has a formal personality that might not fit more casual topics. This impellente nimium iam extra Aetnac typeface is good for infusing a document with some importance, reverence, or poetry. terminou prouecti fumus, non comittam, ut te interpellem faepius; nifi quid erit, quod deea ipfate rogem. B. F. Sanèmonsip fe fitu, forma, magnitudine, feritate, incendiis mirus; demum tota fui qualitate acfpecie longeconfpicuss, et fibi uni pareft. Ab aurora mare Ionium bibit; et Ca

91 92 Nº. LV. 53 05.03/Fournier G ROS-TEXTE SERRÉ

Fournier (c. 1742) CE que l'on appelle proprement le Génie , eft toÛjours accompagné

d'une forte d'audace, & Country of origin: Although it’s a contemporary interpretation, Fournier ODP France maintains the spirit of Fournier’s original design successful- ly and offers much more than Monotype’s single digitized cette audace , regardée Classification: weight, based on its earlier 1925 interpretation of Fournier’s Transitional Serif designs. Interestingly, Fournier cut the roman and italic styles with a fairly significant difference in x-height — the par le vulgaire comme Designer: italic is smaller — and this feature was faithfully carried Pierre-Simon Fournier over by Monotype. For that reason, if one is using Monotype Fournier, mixing roman and italic in one line can create the un mouvement de la va- impression that the italics are set too small. This will not bother everyone but it’s something to look out for when set- nité, eft un certain effor ting up your text styling. de l'ame , qui caractèrife les hommes d'un merite fupérieur. C'eft un fecret preffentiment qui les a- vertit de ce qu'ils doivent faire ou entreprendre.

93 94 GOODY TWO-SHOES. ₁₉

more ignorant than herfelf. She found, that only 05.04/Bell the following Letters were required to spell all the Words in the World; but as some of these Letters are large, and some small, me with her Bell (1788) Knife but out of feveral Pieces of Wood ten Sets of each of these :

a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z

Country of origin: Bell was first cut in 1788 by Richard Austin for the printer and And six Sets of these: United Kingdom publisher John Bell. Born in London, Austin had trained as wood engraver before he joined Bell’s type founding operation as a Classification: punch cutter, and after spending ten years with the firm he went A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O Rational Serif on to cut Scotch Roman for William Miller’s Edinburgh foundry around 25 years later. This typeface is particularly useful for P Q R S T U V W X Y Z. Designer: evoking an American feel, given its runaway success in the US Richard Austin following its first release in 1788. However, as an alternative you may like to take a look at Austin from Commercial Type. And having got an old Spelling Book, she made her Companions fet up all the Words they wanted to spell, and after that she taught them to compose Sentences. You know what a Sentence is, my Dear; I will be good, is a Sentence ; and is made up, as you fee, of several Words. The usual Manner of Spelling, or carrying on the Game, as they called it, was this : Suppose the Word to be spelt was Plumb Pudding (and who can suppose a better ?) the Children were placed in a Circle, and the first brought the Letter P, the next l, the next u, the next m, and so on till the Whole was spelt; and if any one brought a wrong Let- ter

95 96 05.05/Clarendon

Clarendon (1845)

ENGLISH CLARENDON ON GREAT PRIMER BODY. Cast to range with ordinary Great Primer, the Fitures to En Quadrata.

PIRACY is the great sin of all manufacturing communities:—there is scarcely Country of origin: When one thinks “slab serif,” Clarendon is often the first thing United Kingdom that comes to mind. Its sturdy structure, punctuated by ball any Trade in which it prevails so generally as among TYPE FOUNDERS. terminals, has made it one of the most popular faces of the last Classification: 50 years. The versions we know today are generally derived Messrs. BESLEY & Co. originally introduced the Clarendon Character, which Grotesque Slab from mid 20th-century modernizations of styles from the early 1800s. Unlike the type that inspired Giza, Clarendon has an they registered under the Copyright of Designs’ Act, but no sooner was the Designer: increased contrast that opens up the counters. This lets it to Robert Besley be used for short passages of text. Serifs are also lighter and time of Copyright allowed by that Act expired, than the Trade was inundated bracketed — still heavier than a book serif, but less imposing than Giza’s. There are a variety of alternatives for Clarendon with all sorts of Piracies and Imitations, some of them mere effigies of letters. that either improve its readability (Ingeborg, Eames Century Modern), or enhance its expressive qualities (Farao). Notwithstanding this, nearly all the respectable Printers in Town and Country who claim to have either taste or judgement, have adopted the original Founts, and treated the Imitations with the contempt they deserve.

97 98 82 640 cps 56 Min. ca. 18kg 05.06/Akzidenz Grotesk Dampfschiffahrten Akzidenz Grotesk REEDEREI STERN (1898)

Country of origin: It is relatively unusual for a typeface with no designer to be 82 641 cps 68 Min. ca. 22kg Germany accredited, but Berthold Akzidenz was developed from 1898 onwards by staffs at Berlin’s Berthold as a face Classification: for general use. The styling of Akzidenz-Grotesk stems from Grotesque Sans typical mid 19th-century display faces. Originally known as Accidenz-Grotesk, its name derives from the German word Designer: Akzidenzschrift, which can be translated variously as ‘display H. Berthold AG Staff type’ or ‘jobbing type’. Looking at Akzidenz-Grotesk today, it Carte d'Identité is difficult to reconcile with the fact that it was designed almost 120 years ago. It still looks very Modernist, and contemporary, and in fact, and most significantly, it is credited as the inspira- tion for Neue Haas Grotesk, which later became Helvetica. PARIS/ROUEN

82 642 cps 76 Min. ca. 24kg Radiumbäder IM RUNDBAU

99 100 AMERICAN 05.07/Copperplate Gothic INSTRUMENTS OF UNUSUAL EXCELLENCE Copperplate Gothic (1901)

Country of origin: Copperplate Gothic is one of the earliest designs by Frederic W. Endemann United States Goudy. Despite its name, this typeface is actually not a Gothic at all. A cursory glance may fool you into thinking that it is a sans Classification: serif, but tiny chiseled serifs make this a Glyphic, meaning a face Glyphic that appears to have been carved in stone. Copperplate Gothic has the distinction of being the all-time best-selling type ever Designer: released by American Type Founders, which is quite a significant Pianos Frederic W. Goudy achievement, considering the output of ATF at its height. Other near-identical faces were marketed by Monotype and Stephenson Blake namely Spartan), Ludlow (as Lining Plate Gothic) and the Italian type foundry Nebiolo (as Atalante).

ON DISPLAY AT THE MUSIC SHOW HARMONY HALL NEXT WEEK

Endemann Piano Company 422 east roberts avenue Pittfield, PA.

101 102 05.08/Franklin Gothic

Franklin Gothic (1902 – 1912)

Country of origin: Franklin Gothic is the modern-era version of American Gothic; United States it’s an Akzidenz-Grotesk for the United States. The use of the word ‘Gothic’ for typefaces drawn in this style is known as an Classification: Americanism and should not be confused with the European Gothic Sans usage of the term when applied to blackletter typefaces. Gothic was traditionally used in the US to denote a sans serif typeface Designer: and probably derives from the fact that sans serif faces were so Morris Fuller Benton closely associated with Germany. The equivalent classification in Europe is Grotesque sans serif. ITC Franklin Gothic is a good

option that sticks closely to Benton’s original design and it also DAUMIER includes a broad range of styles and weights. AND

COROT DAUMIER COROT THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART, 730 FIFTH 730 MUSEUM ART, THE MODERN OF ANNOUNCES CITY, NEW YORK AVENUE, PAINTING OF EXHIBITION LOAN EIGHTH ITS AND SCULPTUREDRAWING BY 1930 23rd, November through 16th October 12 and to 10 from morning, the in Galleries the visit to urgentyly requested is public The is request this service. If elevator the congesting avoid to order in 10 8 to from evening admission. be necessary charge not to will it with, compiled

103 104 FRA . LUCA 05.09/Centaur DE.PACIOLI Centaur (1914) O.BORGO.S.

Country of origin: Centaur has long been regarded as the finest interpretation SEPOLCRO United States of the Humanist serifs of Nicolas Jenson, designed during the second half of the 15th-century. It was designed by Bruce Classification: Rogers, and his original 1914 interpretation of Centaur is Humanist Serif generally regarded as the best ever take on this 15th-century Humanist serifs. A year following his success of creating the Designer: typeface, Rogers used this typeface in a limited edition of B.STANLEY Bruce Rogers Maurice de Guérin’s The Centaur, published by the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Rogers never designed an accompanying italic style for Centaur. Thus, the modified version of italicized Arrighi MORISON was used instead. †THE.GRO. LIER.CLUB NEW.YORK

105 MCMXXX111 106 05.10/Wilhelm Klingspor-Schrift

Wilhelm Klingspor Schrift (1919 – 1925) Wilhelm Klingspor Schrift

` Country of origin: Wilhelm Klingspor Schrift is a blackletter typeface in Textura Rudolf Roch Germany style which means that it belongs to the most calligraphic group of faces used in the earliest books, which take their style Classification: from formal handwriting. Between 1919 – 1925, the typeface Debr. Klingſpor . Offenbach am Main . 1925 Blackletter was designed by Rudolf Koch for the Klingspor Type Foundry of Offenbach am Main. Wilhelm Klingspor Schrift is regarded Designer: as one of the finest 20th-century blackletter typefaces. It is a Rudolf Koch beautiful example of a blackletter that is elegant and not too Incipit epiſtola Sancti iberonimi ad Paulinum pzeſbiterum de omnibus divine historie heavy, with sharp elements of decoration and hairline strokes at the terminals of both uppercase and lowercase. The fine deco- libzis.capitulum pzimum. Frater ambioſius tua midji munuscula perferens detulit simul ration was dialed down to improve its legibility, stroke widths were increased slightly and the x-height was made slightly larger. et suavissimas litteras. que a pzin cipio amiciciarum. fidem pzobate iam fidei et. veteris amicicie noun:pzefeuebant. Dera enim illa necessitudo eft. et drifti glutino copulata. quam non utlitias cei familiaris. non pzefencia tantum cozpozum. non subdola

107 108 05.11/Futura

Bauersche Futura (1927 – 1930) Gießerei

Johann Christian Bauer founded the Bauersche Gießerei Country of origin: Futura is the classic Geometric sans serif that has never really Germany gone out of fashion since its first appearance in 1927. Designed in Frankfurt am Main in 1837. The most important designers for Frankfurt’s Bauer Type Foundry by Paul Renner, Futura was, Classification: in typographic terms, a game changer. Futura is a model of geo- employed by Bauer included Emil Rudolf Weiß, Heinrich Geometric Sans metric simplicity with round characters drawn as near-perfect circles and practically no stroke contrast. Renner’s first design Wieynck, Heinrich Jost, , Imre Reiner, F. H. Designer: used only triangles, circles, and squares, but this proved to be Paul Renner problematic in terms of legibility so he was persuaded to adjust E. Schneidler, Konrad F. Bauer and Walter Baum. In 1972, some glyphs to bring their proportions more in line with classic roman characters. Futura was very successful and, in Europe, it the foundry closed its operations in Frankfurt and moved was licensed to Deberny & Peignot for European distribution. production to a former subsidiary in Barcelona, Fundición Tipográfica Neufville.

109 110 05.12/Gill Sans THE BOOK Gill Sans (1928 – 1930) ¶ The world of 1931 reads daily news-sheets like that one called the Daily Mail; it is brought up on them; it both produces them & is formed by them. We may take it that the Daily Mail represents the kind of mind

Country of origin: Long a standard part of the Mac’s pre-installed fonts, Gill Sans that we have got, and in all kinds of subtle ways books United Kingdom has become known to modern-day users as quite an elegant sans serif option when compared to the other they find on their are expected to conform to the Daily Mail standard. Classification: computer. But in many ways, Eric Gill’s typeface, a follower of Humanist Sans Edward Johnston’s type for the London Underground, Gill Sans Legibility is what the Daily Mail reader finds readable; is an awkward mix of Geometric and Humanist ideas — from Designer: its circular “o” to its dynamic, calligraphic “a.”, and the varying good style is what he finds good; the beautiful is what Gill Sans widths of the uppercase. However, the long-legged “R” causes spacing issues, especially in the lighter weights, and the “g” is pleases him. an odd concoction that even Gill himself fittingly called a “pair of spectacles.” Still, Gill Sans has a lasting charm which has become synonymous with British culture ever since it debuted. ¶ Makers of books, therefore, who refuse this rather low standard are compelled to efface personal idiosyncrasy & to discover, if it be possible, the real roots of good book-making, just as St. Benedict in the 6th century, confronted by the decayed Roman society, was compelled to discover the roots of good living. Good book-making, good living — that is to say not what you or I fancy, but what the nature of books and the nature of life really demand.

111 112 05.13/Peignot

Peignot (1937)

Exposition Country of origin: If there were ever a typeface to symbolize France in the 1930s, France Peignot is the answer. It was designed by Adolphe Mouron Cassandra in 1937 for the Parisian type foundry Deberny & Classification: Peignot, as a commission from the owner, Charles Peignot. Display Peignot benefited from a dramatic launch when it was chosen as the official typeface for the 1937 Paris World’s Fair. It was Designer: applied to everything from exhibition stands to the towers of A.M. Cassandre the Palais de Chaillot, sited at the Trocadéro and opposite the Internationale Eiffel Tower. Cassandra was insistent about the type’s suitability for body text, even though its outward appearance labels it as a decorative display face. Somewhat surprisingly, the origins of PARIS 1937 the typeface stem from medieval calligraphy. MAI – NOVEMBRE

113 114 le Mistral 05.14/Mistral

Mistral (1953)

Country of origin: The genius of Mistral, was conceived by French designer Roger France Excoffon for Fonderie Olive in 1953. By no means was Mistral the first casual script to attempt the emulation of joined-up text, Classification: but at that point in time, Mistral was the most successful script Casual Script type. Creating convincingly fluid script setting in metal was really challenging because of thekerning, or the spacing between Designer: each character. To get around the problem. characters could Roger Excoffon project beyond the edges of the metal bodies of foundry type to overlap the shoulder of its neighbor — these extensions were called kerns. Ligatures such a fi, ffi, fl and so on were also used extensively to alleviate the problem.

115 116

05.15/Univers

75 Black ObliqueBlack 73 Extended Black Oblique 67 CondensedBold Bold Condensed Oblique Univers (1957)

Country of origin: Released in the same year as Helvetica, Adrian Frutiger’s Univers

France is the first multi-width, multi-weight superfamily designed as a

consistent system from the beginning. The release was promoted Classification: by a multicolored tried diagram that is still well-known today. To

Neo-Grotesque Sans achieve the pioneering uniformity throughout the type family, Frutiger created a core design that is quite spare, allowing for the

65 Bold Oblique Bold 63 Bold Extended 57 Condensed Condensed Oblique Designer: extensive variations in weight and width. Univers is therefore a Adrian Frutiger very natural typeface, delivering readable text while at the same time drawing very little attention to itself. Univers Next is the modern reworking of the family that was initially optimized for photo, not digital typesetting. Univers is good for a clear, neutral vessel for unfettered communication.

55 Roman Oblique 53 Extended Extended Oblique 47 Light Condensed Oblique Condensed Light

117 118 45 Light Oblique Light 85 Extra Black Extra Black Oblique 93 Extra Black Extended 05.16/Helvetica Helvetica (1957) Max Alfons

Country of origin: More than 50 years since its release, Helvetica is the world’s Switzerland (Germany) most widely known typeface. This popularity is due to its Miedinger attempt at idealizing construction, minimal contrast, strokes Classification: which terminate at 90 degrees angles; letterforms and widths Neo-Grotesque Sans that are unusually uniform, bucking conventional forms; and the overall texture that is atypically almost homogenous. Designer: The result is useful for logos and graphic display type, where Max Miedinger & Eduard Hoffmann consistency is desired, but not as effective for long passages of After finishing school in 1926, Max Miedinger was In 1954, he created his first typeface design: Pro text. Neue Helvetica is an effort in the 1980s to harmonize urged by his father to complete an apprenticeship Arte, a condensed slab serif. And in 1956, Miedinger the previously incompatible styles. Neue Haas Grotesk refers in typesetting at Jacques Bollmann printing office returned to Zurich to become a freelance advertis- to the original drawings for an even more holistic family, in Zurich. ing consultant and graphic designer, like his brother, unconstrained by various compromises from technologies. Gérard, younger by two years. Eduard Hoffmann, From 1930 to 1936 he worked as a typesetter for head of the Haas Typefoundry, was convinced of various companies and also took evening courses his talent and shortly thereafter commissioned him at the art school in Zurich. to design a new sans serif typeface, the Neue Haas Grotesk. Horizontal was the third and final typeface From 1936, Max Miedinger worked as a typographer he created for Haas in 1965. in the advertising department at Globus, Zurich’s renowned chain of department stores. In 1946, he started a new position as a salesman at the Haas Typefoundry in Münchenstein.

119 120 05.17/ITC Gothic Garde Avant ITC Avant Garde A VA NT Gothic (1970)

Country of origin: ITC Avant Garde Gothic was a response to popular demand for United States the type in the logo of Avant Garde, a groundbreaking magazine of the 1960s. The logo, designed by Herb Lubalin, was lettered Classification: by Tom Carnase. From it the two created a typeface for use in the Geometric Sans magazine only. Later it became ITC’s first offering. Key traits are a large x-height, strict geometry, and the infamous leaning GARDE Designer: letters and ligatures that allow extra tight fitting words. These Herb Lubalin and Tom Carnase glyphs are often abused, leading Ed Benguiat to famously declare, “The only place Avant Garde looks good is in the words ‘Avant Garde.’” There are a few digital version of the typeface. The ITC Pro fonts have many of the alternatives and ligatures, but with merely slanted obliques instead of corrected ones GOTHIC offered by Elsner+Flake. MEDIUM

121 122 05.18/ITC Bauhaus ITC Bauhaus (1975)

Country of origin: ITC Bauhaus was designed by Edward Benguiat and Victor United States Caruso and is based on Bayer’s Universal typeface. Given that there were never any uppercase characters designed for the Classification: typeface Universal, ITC Bauhaus is very much an interpretation Display rather than a revival; it’s the idea of the Geometric structure that has been carried forward by Benguiat and Caruso. There are Designer: a few digital versions of ITC Bauhaus available today. The best Edward Benguiat and Victor Carusso known is published by Linotype, which is available in the usual five weights: Light, Medium, DemiBold, Bold, and Heavy. The letterforms of a version sold by Elsner+Flake look similar to the others but in use the letter spacing seems to be little tidier, making it a good alternative choice. bauhaus museum dessau

123 124 05.19/Trajan Trajan Inscription's Tr anslation Trajan (1989) The Senate and the People of Rome to the Emperor, Caesar Nerva, son of the deified Nerva, Traianus Augustus, Germanicus, Dacicus, Pontifex Maximus, Country of origin: Trajan is synonymous with drama. This association is partly invested with the power of the tribune United States a result of Trajan’s overuse in movie posters — it has become the subject of internet parodies and design conference lectures. seventeen times, hailed imperator six Classification: But these letters are pretty dramatic on their own — from the Glyphic classical capitalist monumental proportions to the long, sweep- times, elected consul six times, father ing strokes and serifs. Carol Twombly’s source was Trajan’s Designer: Column, an early second century AD monument in Rome. While of the fatherland, to demonstrate Carol Twombly the letters were inscribed into stone with a chisel, a recent research mentioned that they were actually first painted with how lofty a hill and (what area of) a brush, which explains their graceful serifs. There are many other interpretations of this style, such as Goudy, Pietra, Waters ground was carried away for these Titling, and Penumbra. mighty works. (based on D. R. Dudley, Urbs Roma. 1967: Aberdeen).

125 126 05.20/Template Gothic Template Gothic (1990) Barry

Country of origin: Template Gothic is dubbed to be ‘the typeface of the 90s’ by United States Rick Poynor, and it has to be said that the face was used to the point of ubiquity during that decade. It was designed by Barry Classification: Deck, a freelance designer who decided to undertake a period Neo-Humanist Sans of study at the California Institute of the Arts in the late 1980s. Deck, influenced by Ed Fella’s fondness for the contemporary Designer: trend for deconstructed ‘grunge’ typography, started drawing Barry Deck experimental face Template Gothic in 1990. Deck showed his ¶If you've spent a few moments with a Coca-Cola, visiting the MoMA, design for Template Gothic to type designer Rudy VanderLans, Deckflipping through a Conde Nast magazine or glancing at MTV, you have the co-founder with Zuzana Licko of digital type foundry Emigre, probably already spent a moment or two with Barry. during a class visit to VanderLans' studio. It was then decided that Emigre should release the face commercially and Template ¶As designer of 20 typeface families, including none other than Template Gothic went on to become one of the most used typefaces in Gothic (called "the typeface of the 90s" by Rick Poynor), Barry has been the decade of 1990s. helping brands find their visual voice since he received his MFA in Visual Communications from the California Institute of the Arts back in 1989.

¶Since then, he has spent nearly two decades pushing edges and lead- ing creative teams in innovative branding initiatives for global consumer brands and extending visual languages across media and platforms from environments to interactive and TV.

¶His work has been published in numerous books, such as History of Graphic Design by Philip Meggs, as well as periodicals including the New York Times Magazine, Wired, Metropolis, Emigre, and Graphis. He has lectured and taught internationally and his work is in the permanent collection of the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum.

127 128 05.21/Mason

Mason (1992)

Country of origin: Mason was inspired by a range of sources including 19th-century United Kingdom Russian characters, Greek architecture and Renaissance bibles, and started out as Manson; somewhat controversially, Barnbrook Classification: decided to name his typeface after Charles Manson, a serial Display killer. He chose the name in an attempt to express the concept of extreme opposite emotions that he’d linked to the feel of the Designer: typeface — love and hate, or beauty and ugliness — but the Jonathan Barnbrook connection didn’t go down at all well in the US. Mason, along with a number of his other faces, helped make Barnbrook one of the highest-profile British designers of the 1990s. Barnbrook then followed up Mason with Mason Sans. BarnbrOok

129 130 JonaThan 05.22/Base 9/1205.22/Base

Base 9/12 (1995)

Country of origin: Base Nine and Base Twelve were designed by Zuzana Licko for Zuzana United States Emigre in 1995 after identifying a commercial need for a set of bitmap screen fonts that would render cleanly and accurately Classification: on-screen, and were accompanied by a companion set of outline Geometric Sans printer fonts. Three operate styles were created; a serif and a sans serif were based on a 12-point screen font and named Base Designer: Twelve, whereas Base Nine was based on a 9-point screen font. Zuzana Licko Base Nine and Base Twelve were certainly trailblazing fonts for their time and have survived intact; all 12 styles can now be purchased in the OpenType format and are great for recalling Licko a 1990s design sensibiity. Born in Czechoslovakia, Licko (pronounced Litchko) emigrated to

the US with her family as a schoolgirl. She studied architecture,

photography and computer programming before taking a degree in

graphic communications at the University of California at Berkeley.

When Rudy VanderLans, her partner, launched Emigre, she began to

contribute fonts to the fledgling ‘magazine that ignores boundaries’.

Rather than replicate (on a dot matrix printer) typographic forms

already adapted from calligraphy, lead and photosetting, Licko used

public domain soft-ware to create bitmap fonts. Emperor, Emigre and

Oakland appeared in the magazine and were soon advertised for sale

when VanderLans and Licko co-founded the Emigre foundry.

131 132 05.23/Gotham GOTHAM, Gotham (2000) AN AMERICAN

VERNACULAR Country of origin: One can’t really describe this Hoefler & Frere-Jones creation United States better than H&FJ themselves: “Gotham. What letters look like.” They typeface is simply self-evident. Each character just feels Classification: “normal” and “right.” Inspired by mid-century architectural Geometric Sans lettering of New York City, Gotham celebrates the alphabet’s most basic form. These qualities made Gotham the most popular Between the two World Wars, a style of sans serif lettering Designer: release of recent years. Gotham is used everywhere, in logos, in emerged from outside of the typographic tradition. These Tobias Frere-Jones magazines, in the very things that inspired it; signs. Gotham’s straightforward, highly legible, no-nonsense letters were simplicity is not merely geometric — like Avenir, it feels more especially popular in architecture (perhaps because they natural than mechanical. In fact, its lowercase shares a lot with satisfied the engineer’s idea of “basic building lettering.”). Avenir’s, despite being much larger. But Gotham’s essence is in the caps: broad, sturdy “block” letters of very consistent width. In 2000, GQ commissioned Hoefler & Co. to design a signa- ture sans serif for them, which gave Hoefler & Co. the chance to explore this style. They began with a long-bookmarked piece of public lettering on one of the city’s most mundane buildings: the Port Authority Bus Terminal on New York’s Eighth Avenue. With the goal of allowing the typeface to exhibit the mathematical reasoning of a draftsman, rather than the instincts of a type designer, they allowed Gotham to escape the grid wherever necessary, giving the design an affability usually missing from geometric faces.

133 134 05.24/Whitney Founding

Whitney (2004) of the Whitney Museum Country of origin: As a base, Whitney is a Gothic — doing much of what Benton United Kingdom Sans does for News Gothic — only it takes the style a big step further into Humanist territory, evolving into a more expressive Classification: sans serif that combines the best of the two categories. The Gothic Sans apertures are very open and stems have a diagonal cut at their ends, adding to the contemporary feel. A bevy of alternative Designer: forms lend even more versatility, allowing the user to tone down The Whitney Museum of American Art was borne out of sculptor Gertrude Hoefler & Co. the personality by swapping out the angled terminals. Whitney Vanderbilt Whitney’s advocacy on behalf of living American artists. At the is not only a great face for texts, it’s also turned for wayfinding beginning of the twentieth century, artists with new ideas found it nearly systems, with a compact design that is still clear from a distance. impossible to exhibit or sell their work in the United States. Recognizing the There is also a very complete set of figures as well as circled and obstacles these artists faced, Mrs. Whitney began purchasing and showing squared “index” numbers to aid in infographics. their work, thereby becoming the leading patron of American art from 1907 until her death in 1942.

In 1914, Mrs. Whitney established the Whitney Studio in Greenwich Village, where she presented exhibitions by living American artists whose work had been disregarded by the traditional academies. By 1929 she had assembled a collection of more than 500 works, which she offered with an endowment to The Metropolitan Museum of Art. When the offer was refused, she set up her own museum, one with a new and radically different mandate: to focus exclusively on the art and artists of this country. The Whitney Museum of American Art was founded in 1930, and opened in 1931 on West Eighth Street in Greenwich Village.

The Museum moved to an expanded site on West 54th Street in 1954. Having outgrown that building by 1963, the Museum acquired its Marcel Breuer- designed building on Madison Avenue at 75th Street, which opened in 1966. Programming at the Breuer building concluded on October 20, 2014. The Whitney's new building at 99 Gansevoort Street opened on May 1, 2015.

135 136 Designed by Monica Hutama