modern typography: an essay in critical history by robin kinross Hyphen Press, 1992 Copyright © Robin Kinross, 1992 Published by Hyphen Press, London Designed and typeset by Tara Matsumura Text output in Adobe InDesign with the typeface Univers, printed on matte white heavy cardstock. ISBN 0 907259 05 7 All rights reserved: no part of this book may be reproduced in any form by print, photocopy, or any other means without permission from the author. 3 an essay in criticalan essay history Modernism in twentieth-century typography was, in its ‘heroic’ period The phrase ‘new typography’ is adopted here as the descriptive term from the end of the First World War to the National-Socialist seizure of for the phenomenon, following contemporary usage, most notably in Jan power in Germany in 1933, a phenomenon of the European continent. Tschichold’s handbook of the movement, Die neue Typographie (1928). modern typography Britain played no part in it, and the USA was significant mainly as a distant emblem of modern life. Germany was the centre, and the meeting ground for an international In this book the historical perspective of new typography was exchange of experiments and ideas. A outlined: what came before the new was dealt with in one chapter, full analysis would entail the separate entitled ‘The old typography (1440-1914)’1. Tschichold found some examination of contributions from post- sense of confirmation for new typography in the work of the earliest revolutionary Russia. German printers (the practice of setting in two columns, a sense of contrast rather than balance) and in the ‘modern’ printers of the It would also take up the special case of the eighteenth century (especially the Didots). Netherlands, and also more distant and obscure developments in Poland and Czechoslovakia, as well But he was otherwise prepared to consider the as contributions from Austria, Switzerland and Italy. history of typography up to 1914 as just a pre- history. Signs of change had begun to be evident in the nineteenth century, when typography France would be rapidly passed escaped from the book, new letterforms over even in a more detailed were developed (sanserif especially) and new y account of new typography. means of reproduction introduced (lithography, Just as the country lacked any photography). William Morris’s reaction to the revival of printing movement, a degradations of nineteenth-century typography so France was very little was a false one, in its rejection of the machine. affectedr by Central European modernism in typography: The Jugendstil designers did at least attempt some harmonization of art and life, but, in choosing to imitate national forms, they went up a blind alley. The ‘book artists’, as e Tschichold described them (often in ironic quotation marks), who had taken their g initial inspiration from English private press printing, had also become stultified. At their simplest and best (in the case of C. E. Poeschel) their work was a kind of zero point between the old decorated its typographic modernism was largely confined to typography and the designing (‘gestaltend’) new typography. nstylistic expression, as an aspect of ‘l’art decoratif’. m typography new 1 2 an essay in criticalan essay history dada Tschichold then went on to provide a history of new typography It is clearly true that much of the impulse for the new turning first to the ‘new art’, ‘for the laws of this kind of typography came from people outside the printing trade typographic design represent nothing other than the practical and from outside the larger world of typography. application of the laws of design discovered by the new painters’.2 modern typography It is also true, and less often noticed, that if these Abstract art was an art no longer dependent on imitation people were ‘artists’ they were also intent on and private sentiment; rather it was constructive and undermining or demolishing the very notion of belonged to a collective sphere. The old era emphasized art as then conceived. That is the common link individuality and uniqueness; the new era was one between the otherwise disparate motivations of of reproducibility and of the dissolution of art into the Italian Futurists, the Russian Constructivists, architecture and publicly available forms. the Dutch Stijl group, the international Dadaists. The immediate steps leading to the present new typography were then constructivism outlined: the interest in sanserif early in Rejecting the bourgeois the century; the Futurist manifesto of confinement of art to the framed 1909 (‘Les mots en liberte futuristes’); easel painting, the drawing room Dada; De Stijl; Russian elementarism. and the sale room, they looked for This account of the origins of new de stijl forms of production that escaped The more positive or utopian elements–the those shackles. typography, as essentially artistic, has Constructivists and the Stijl group–went beyond become orthodox; and by extension, the rejection, producing models for a new art, in which movement itself as it developed during distinctions between art and life had been dissolved. the 1920s and early 1930s has been regarded as also an artistic phenomenon. The ideas and approaches of these futurism movements coalesced around 1923 into Their interest in graphic and typographic design thus took its place as part of a what then became the new typography. concern with the whole of the humanly constructed world. Also, having strong ideas, they were led to publication–typically, little magazines and, being visually oriented, they wanted the form of these publications to correspond to their content. This is the most immediate explanation for the interest taken in typography by these artists. 3 4 an essay in criticalan essay history The formation of some of the leading ideas of the new typography can be By 1925, the essential theory of the movement has been articulated. In this year traced in the manifestos and articles published by, most notably, El Lissitzky the first summarizing anthology appeared: ‘Elementare Typographie’, a special issue and Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, and, less centrally, Kurt Schwitters. of Typographische Mitteilungen, the magazine of Bildungsverband der Deutschen Between 1923 and 1925 they published summarizing statements on the nature Buchdrucker (educational organization of the German printing trade union). modern typography and aims of a new typography, each one picking up ideas formulated by the other. The statement ‘Topographie deer Typographie’ by Lissitzky, from 1923, The guest-editor of this issue was Jan Tschichold, may stand as a representative of this early, visionary phase of new typography, who thus, with this his first publication, embarked in which every convention was open to question: on a mission to explain and diffuse avant-garde ideas in the world of everyday printing. The issue i. The words on the printed surface are taken in by reproduced a selection of work by those who had seeing, not by hearing. emerged as practitioners of the approach, and it ii. One communicates meanings through the convention contained explanatory and programmatic texts, of words; meaning attains form through letters. including the following statement by Tschichold: iii. Economy of expression: optics not phonetics. iv. The design of the book-space, set according to the constraints of printing mechanics, must correspond to the tensions and pressures of content. v. The design of the book-space using process blocks elemental typography which issue from the new optics. The supernational reality of the perfected eye. i. The new typography is oriented towards purpose. vi. The continuous sequence of pages: the bioscopic book. ii. The purpose of any piece of typography is vii. The new book demands the new writer. Ink-pot and communication (the means of which it displays). quill-pen are dead. The communication must appear in the briefest, viii. The printed surface transcends space and time. simplest, most urgent form. The printed surface, the infinity of books, must be transcended. The electro-library.3 5 6 an essay in criticalan essay history iii. In order to make typography serviceable to social ends, it requires An extraordinary economy could be achieved through the exclusive use of small the inner organization of its materials (the ordering of content) letters–the elimination of all capital letters; a form of writing and setting that is and their outer organization (the means of typography configured recommended as a new script by all innovators in the field. See the book Sprache in relation to one another). und Schrift by Dr. Porstmann (Beuth-Verlag, Berlin SW 19, Beuthstrasse 8. Price modern typography iv. Inner organization is the limitation to the elemental means of 5.25 Marks). typography: letters, numbers, signs, rules–from the typecase and Through the use of strongly differentiated sizes and forms, and the composing machine. without consideration for previous aesthetic attitudes, the logical arrangement of printed text is made visually perceptible. In the present , visually-attuned The unprinted areas of the paper are as much a means of design as world, the exact image– are the visually appearing forms. photography–also belongs to the elemental means of typography. Our script loses nothing through writing in small letters only–but becomes, The elemental letterform is rather, more legible, easier to learn, essentially more economical, for one the sanserif, in all variations: sound, for example ‘a’, why two signs: A and a? one sound, one sign, why light, medium, bold, and from two alphabets for one word, why double the quantity of signs, when a half condensed to expanded. achieves the same? Letterforms that belong to particular style-categories or which bear definite national characteristics (Gothic, Fraktur, Kirchen- Slavisch) are not elementally designed, and to some extent limit v. Outer organization is the forming of the the possibilities of being understood internationally. Mediaeval- strongest contrast (simultaneity) through the Antiqua (roman) is the most usual form of typeface for the use of differentiated shapes, sizes, weights (which majority of people.