TECHNOLOGY & TYPE
Featuring Rudolf Koch & House Industries
Design name: Carla Bellido Typefaces: NeutraFace, Kabel Project: Typographers Book Design Course: Typography 3 Faculty: Francheska Guerrero College: Corcoran College of Art + Design
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European Rudolf Koch (early 20th Century) and American House Industries (late 20th Century) During the 20th century the evolution of typography took an important role in graphics and printing materials; new methods and techniques allowed to obtain that position and as this innovation grew over the years, as well did the contribution of the type designers involved. In the early 20th century, avantgarde artists began working to re-invent the way in which words were presented on the page, so that their arrangement became works of art themselves. Calligraphy, black letters and roman alphabets led to a common style in graphic design during that period. At the end of the 20th century more organic and geometrical creation of letters evolve as part of some type foundries specialization setting new standards for the emerging technology of desktop typography. Rudolf Koch and House Industries belong to each of these periods.
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Rudolf Koch
was a german calligrapher, type designer, and teacher considered a major influence on decorative arts in early 20th-century in Germany. Koch’s formal education ended when he finished high school and decided to move to Hanau, where he attended evening
art classes while serving as an apprentice in metalworking. After an unsuccessful effort to become an art teacher, he moved to Leipzig, an important printing centre, where he freelanced as a graphic designer. In 1906 he became an in-house type designer at the Gebr.Klingspor type foundry in Offenbach and spent the rest of his working life there.
Industries
on the other hand, is a type foundry and design studio based in Delaware. The company was created in the 1990s by co-founders Andy Cruz and Rich Roat. It is best known for its typeface creations, which have appeared on television, in film, and on commercial products. House Industries formed when corporate excess and a digital euphoria of letterers, illustrators and production designers became considerably important in any type of design process.
During the peak of his career, Koch designed a three-volume book of wildflower illustrations, Das Blumenbuch (The Flower Book�) between 1929-30 which was printed from woodcuts. He also produced a large volume of elaborately detailed, traditional German calligraphy. His book on calligraphic instruction Das Schreiben als Kunstfertigkeit is still one of the best works on the subject ever printed in the German language, and is worth a look for non-German readers as well, even though it is almost entirely focused on Black letterhands. After the war Koch and a few of his students formed a workshop community in which many outstanding calligraphers, artists, and typographers, including Fritz Kredel, Berthold Wolpe, Herbert Post, and Warren Chappell, were trained. The workshop produced decorative items in various media like metal, textiles, woodcuts, as well as manuscript books. Similarly to House Industries, the immersion relationship with their typefaces packaging later evolved into defining trait as future releases, producing themed collections distributing them in highly elaborate and expensively produces kits. Inside these packages are carefully constructed typefaces specific to a time or culture that House Industries revitalized through collaborations or by mining their vast archive of source material, which ranges from the lettering of artists like
Eg Roth and Chris Cooper to revivals of Ed Benguiat’s work and more. House Industries also develops original merchandise ranging from modest T-shirts to funky pillows to an ambitious reproduction of Richard Neutra’s Boomerang chair. Both typographers not only demonstrate ability in creating typefaces but also the constructed the relation between type and product as it is perceived in Koch books and House Industries tangible market materials.
Koch designed both blackletter and roman alphabets being his great passion infused by the opulence of Baroque forms with the raw energy of the Romantic. Koch fought as an infantryman on both the western and the eastern fronts during the first World War. It was also during these war years that Koch became increasingly devout. Being strongly Christian as well as an exponent of German
nationalism in the arts, Koch had an affinity for the Arts & Crafts movement created by William Morris, an English textile designer, artist and writer. Some of Koch art, as well as his typefaces, have a strongly Art Nouveau flavor.
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We are type designers, punch cutters, wood cutters, type founders, compositors, printers, and book binders from conviction and with passion, not because we are insufficiently talented for other higher things, but because for us the highest things stand in close kinship to those ends
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Rudolf Koch
House Industries also influenced his work on typographical elements and bold typefaces previous designed for posters during the early 20th century but making a distinction with modern type structure. The elaboration differ in terms of printing processes and techniques. Printing with
the use of moveable type to create letterforms was initially used by Koch in order to achieve precision on the trace. There were other factors which stood in the way of perfection by early twentieth-century designers was the standard line (Normallinie) and later adopted by Linotype and
Intertype. Even though House Industries maintained some of the traditional techniques of tracing, the evolution of technological resources was impossible to avoid being computers and modernist machine-like letterforms implemented to their industrial construction of typographical elements.
Rudolf Koch contribution to modern typography can be regarded as a celebration of the old calligraphic style. Not only was he a typographic artist and teacher, but he was a calligrapher and author as well. His book entitled "The Book of Signs", published in 1955 by Dover Publications, Inc. included 493 old world symbols, monograms, and Runes. After he began teaching calligraphy at the Technische Lehranstalten der Stadt Offenbach. His courses developed into a type of special studio, called
the Offenbach Workshop. In addition to calligraphy, students at the workshop produced everything that could have lettering on it, including tapestries and metal work. Like the Bauhaus, the workshop developed an international reputation during the 1920s, attracting students from foreign countries. Being part of the Offenbach as an employee of the Rudhard Typefoundry, he produced almost 3 decades of exquisite work that has had an influence on type designers and letters that is still with us today. House Industries is also not considered a typical type foundry. Unlike most foundries and typographers that strictly focus on type
design, House take things one step further. Their fonts become inspiration to new ideas and products that are often integrated into themed experiences complete with lushpackaging and slick catalogs. A great example of this is their work on the 2004 release of Neutraface. They created a reproduction of Richard Neutra’s Boomerang chair and pillows to coincide with the release of the font collection. In addition,they created limited edition packaging with die cuts andmetallic inks to accompany the hard copy of the fonts.
Rudolf Koch designed his first typeface, Maximilian, shortly before World War I. He eventually designed about 30 typefaces for Klingspor, the best known being Neuland (1923) and Kabel (1927). Some others include The Deutsche Schrift family also kown as Koch Schrift, Maximillian, Wilhelm Klingspor Schrift, Neuland, Jessen, Wallau, Koch Antiqua, Fr端hling, Holla, Zepelin, Prisma, Offenbach, Marathon, Koch Kursiv, Eva Antigua, Geometric 231, Informal 011, Jessen Schrift, Kuenstler 165, Locarno, having these the balance between elegance and raw energy. After the Klingspor foundry closed in the late 1950s, the foundry assumed the rights to the designs and continued the distribution of the commercial successful ones. His most significant achievement during this time, Neuland, was one of the one that stands out as being part of the Sans Serif movement of the last 1920's, a very black lino-cut sans serif that pointed to some of the more expressionistic types. Kabel is also a Sans Serif font with four main styles: Kabel Light, Kabel Book, Kabel Heavy, and Kabel Black. Variations of the four main styles include Zeppelin, which was created in 1929 and is a shadow Kabel. Prisma, which was created between 1928-1931 is another variation of Kabel. It is an eye catching display face using fine parallel lines. Koch wrote that he enjoyed the challenge of his first Sans Serif by saying,
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I was very tempted by the exercise of using a compass and straight-edge to create a typeface since, because of my lively interest in type form, I otherwise end up with very personal solutions, and I hoped for once to be free of this. People always think I am looking for a personal style, but this is not true. I avoid it whenever I can but not with any success. And I have no succeeded here either. May be that is why this typeface has not been given the same recognition as others in Germany because it projects a character in contrast with the spirit of the current style
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Andy Cruz and Rich Roat with the addition of a third member to House Industries, Allen Mercer, produced its first mailer announcing the release of ten typefaces produced through 1997. The most popular sans serifs are Neutraface and Chalet as well as innovative OpenType families like Studio Lettering and Ed Benguiat fonts. House Industries brings uses linear geometry to Neutraface without sacrificing the humanist feel to it. The final Neutraface Display family includes five weights in regular and alternate variations and a unique titling font. Due to the International succes, Neutraface supports over two dozen languages including Central European writing systems.
Rudolf Koch contribution to modern typography can be regarded as a celebration of the old calligraphic style. Not only was he a typographic artist and teacher, but he was a calligrapher and author as well. His book entitled "The Book of Signs", published in 1955 by Dover Publications, Inc. included 493 old world symbols, monograms, and Runes. After he began teaching calligraphy at the Technische Lehranstalten der Stadt Offenbach. His courses developed into a type of special studio, called the Offenbach Workshop. In addition to calligraphy, students at the workshop produced everything that could have lettering on it, including tapestries and metal work. Like the Bauhaus, the workshop developed an international reputation during the 1920s, attracting students from foreign countries. Being part of the Offenbach as an employee of the Rudhard Typefoundry, he produced almost 3 decades of exquisite work that has had an influence on type designers and letters that is still with us today. House Industries is also not considered a typical type foundry. Unlike most foundries
and typographers that strictly focus on type design, House take things one step further. Their fonts become inspiration to new ideas and products that are often integrated into themed experiences complete with lush packaging and slick catalogs. A great example of this is their work on the 2004 release of Neutraface. They created a reproduction of Richard Neutra’s Boomerang chair and pillows to coincide with the release of the font collection. In addition, they created limited edition packaging with die cuts and metallic inks to accompany the hard copy of the fonts.
Today's technology makes the ]creation of fonts a very simple task compared the earlier years and now fonts can be seen as more of a digital simulation of previous technologies. Carefullyengineered typography and professionally-drawn lettering are however going to always be influenced by traditional typography in some way.