Type on the Page by Donald Sauve

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Typical Type: A Review by Sara Sklaroff

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Good Typography Lures the Learner by Burton L. Stratton

Constructivism and the Modern Poster by Victor Margolin

issue 001

The Posters of Sven Brasch by Victoria Dailey

Something About Book Design by Jan Tschichold

Type On The Page Magazine

Editorial Design by Lao Branding by Donald Design by Max Additional Branding by William

HELVETICA AND THE NEW YORK SUBWAY SYSTEM. The True (Maybe) Story. ----------------By Paul Shaw. MIT Press 131 pp. $39.95

After decades of visual chaos, the typeface Helvetica brought at least the illusion of order to the New York City subway system.

Here’s

a riddle: WHAT IS so ubiquitous and generic that it barely registers in the mass consciousness, and yet so objectionable to some that it’s been publicly denounced as “fascist” and, simply, “crap”? The answer is the typeface Helvetica. Created in 1957 by two Swiss typographers, it is both a modernist icon and a workhorse default, at once retro and still in heavy use. It’s not derided in quite the same terms as typefaces such as Papyrus (think of those hideous Avatar subtitles) or- heaven forbid - the goofy script of Comic Sans. Still, to some graphic designers Helvetica is emblematic of crushing conformity, or, at the very least, a pitiful lack of creativity. American Apparel, Gap, and Crate & Barrel use it to hawk their wares- it has long been a favorite of corporations trying to seem friendly or down-to-earth. To others, Helvetica is typographic perfection, infinitely flexible and exquisitely modern, with a gorgeous interplay of positive and negative space. This tension among the typeface’s many meanings was one of the themes of Gary Hustwit’s excellent 2007 documentary Helvetica, which featured many shots of New York City subway signage. But as design historian Paul Shaw explains in Helvetica and the New York Subway System, Helvetica has not always been the face of the city’s underground rail. Shaw delves into the question of why Standard, the typeface used in the 1960s modernization of the system’s graphics, was replaced by the very similar Helvetica. The book is also a concise history of the New York subway, a visual archive of a century’s worth of underground signs (some of which are still in use), and an impressive study of the conflict between the purity of design and the messiness of the real world. New York City’s first subway line was opened by a private company in 1904. It soon had a rival; neither included the other’s routes on its maps. In 1940, the city bought both systems and merged them with its own. The new system inherited the

Typical Type: A Review by Sara Sklaroff

visual noise of all three: painted terracotta lettering, mosaic station names, porcelain enamel directional signs, and hand-lettered service notices, with no standardization whatsoever. In 1957, New York designer George Salomon sent the city an unsolicited proposal for an integrated (and quite fetching) signage system based on the elegant sans serif typeface Futura and some unmissable fat directional arrows. The city declined to use the overall plan, but adopted Salomon’s color-coded route map, the first to show the entire subway system at once. This would be the pattern for years to come: an acknowledgment that something had to be done about the chaos, but a lack of the wherewithal (money, political weight, courage) to see a comprehensive plan through. During the 1960s, cities such as Milan, London, and Boston redesigned their airport and subway graphics, and New York attempted to follow suit by hiring the design firm Unimark International and beginning an overhaul using the Standard typeface. But the unmanageable sprawl of the subway system – not to mention the city’s financial troubles in the early 1970s – thwarted designers’ best intentions. The only aesthetic constant was an altogether different kind of signage: graffiti. By the 1990s, however, however, Helvetica was everywhere. Why did it eventually trump all other typefaces? In large part because it is the ultimate default choice. Shaw lists the various letter making equipment catalogued in the 1989 Sign Manual, including machines used to produce digital type, phototype, and computer- based letters and stencils. “The only typeface that was available for all of these systems and methods,” he writes, “was Helvetica.” At the same time that advancing technology assured Helvetica’s fate in New York, the personal computer was bringing the typeface to far wider audience. The masses now possess means of typographic production, but there’s guarantee that good design will follow. Helvetica can indeed be a thing of beauty, but only in right hands. Sara Sklaroff is the editorial director of Diabetes Forecast.

HELVETICA DESIGNER’S BEST FRIEND OR WORST ENEMY?

Sven Brasch, a Danish graphic artist of rare talent and genius whose works were

widely praised throughout his career, is today virtually unknown. The standard reference books on posters-and the bibliography is a long one-provide little information whatsoever on Danish posters, and what has been published is cursory and inaccurate.1 While chapters, volumes even, have been written about the posters of France, Belgium, Holland, England, Germany, Italy Switzerland, Russia, and the United States, Denmark has been curiously neglected. The country, in fact, enjoyed a long, successful history of poster design; and Brasch, who won the Gold Medal in this category at the 1925 Paris Exposition des Arts Decoratifs, enjoyed unquestioned stature as a graphic artist. That he has been forgotten by historians, collectors, and institutions is an unfortunate circumstance not uncommon in the annals of art. Sven Brasch was born on 29 January 1886 in Borup, Denmark, the son of a house painter. His early years passed uneventfully, except that he was a friend and classmate of the renowned physicist Niels Bohr. In 1906 he undertook an extended European tour, studying art and working (as a house painter) in Munich until 1908, and in Paris from 1909 until 1913. His first published works, drawings for the humorous journal Le Rire, appeared during his time in France. Brasch’s earliest posters date from his return to Copenhagen just before the outbreak of World War I. From that time on, he was in constant demand as a poster artist. Denmark remained a neutral country during the war, and Copenhagen, its capital, was an active, affluent, early Jazz Age mecca alive with entertainments 1886-1970), Andreasen and amusements, most of which were advertised by poster. Festivals, exhibitions, concerts, and films were all part of everyday life in Copenhagen in the teens and twenties, and posters-which were displayed on kiosks and billboards at railway stations, Tivoli Gardens, and city hall-were used with increasing frequency to promote these events. One of Brasch’s first posters, in fact, was created to advertise Andreasen and Lachmann, a leading lithographic printing company, which was eager to undertake new commissions (fig. 1). The work displays several of what would come to be considered distinct Brasch features: solid, flat colors; unprinted white paper as a design element; and elegant, witty women. Another hallmark was the use of what might be termed decadent, geometric shapes, often for facial features, a device he employed with brilliance and playfulness throughout his career. In this work, straight horizontal lines delineate the woman’s eyes and a triangular form suggests her mouth, while idiosyncratic shapes fabricate the woman’s hat in a typical Brasch tour de force. The composition is broken up by vertical lines of unprinted paper running through the two figures and by a black rectangle at the bottom-all of which creates a bold, dramatic design that underscores the poster’s two-dimensionality. Brasch combined elements of the Danish poster tradition with influences from Germany and France: his works have a stylistic affinity with German posters and the elan and wit of French designs. Yet Brasch transcended his sources and created a highly original body of work. His images are so distinct and so unusual that tracing more direct influences is not easy; links can be seen, however, with Ludwig Hohlwein, Lucien Bernhard, Edward Penfield, and the Beggarstaff brothers. Brasch’s abilities were immediately recognized by his contemporaries; and with a freedom reserved for only the more distinguished poster artists, he produced designs unimpeded by clients’ desires or restrictions.

The Posters of Sven Brasch by Victoria Dailey

This creative license is especially evident in Brasch’s film posters, for he did  not have to bow to the studios’ demands of who or what to include specifications that often compromised the film work of American artists. The only con- straint he grappled with was size, for Danish posters, in order to fit on kiosks or hoardings, had to measure about thirty-five by twenty-five inches. Given this constraint, which denied his posters the added impact that a large scale would confer, Brasch’s graphic accomplishments are all the more remarkable. Consistent in size, his posters are equally consistent in innovation and effect. Of all the Danish poster artists who may have influenced Brasch, Valdemar Andersen (1875-1928) undoubtedly was his chief inspiration during the early years of his career. Poster art in Denmark had stylistically paralleled that of other European countries until after the turn of the century, when a distinct Danish style emerged under the leadership of Andersen, considered the father of the modern Danish poster. His work was characterized by simplified shapes, strong colors, sly wit, and clever juxtapositions. Brasch, however, reinterpreted Andersen’s ideas and images with such compositional audacity and verve that the latter’s work was merely a suggestive starting point. One of Andersen’s posters, a sophisticated, clever design for a 1907 Journalists’ Union evening concert, depicts a woman with yellow hair and a blue dress, the folds of which are represented by the white of the paper (fig. 3). She sings from a songbook to the accompaniment of a male pianist, whose hands emerge somewhat slyly from behind her. Brasch borrowed the idea of a singer and a pianist for his 1918 poster Riddersalen, which advertises an artistic cabaret, but he completely transformed the image (fig. 2). The woman’s skirt has become a field of geometric, planar contrasts; folds are suggested by optical illusion, made even more vivid by the juxtaposition of vertical stripes in the background. The singer’s mouth, a large red oval, matches the color of her stylized hands; and the pianist, with his posturing hands and suggestive profile, is humorous and theatrical. The minimal typography keeps the design simple and effective. In an earlier poster, Pariserliv of 1913 (fig. 4), Brasch utilized the same color palette and vertical striping, with large areas of unprinted paper, and another witty, elegant couple to promote a performance of Offenbach’s Gaite Parisienne at the Casino Theatre. Stylistically, the image is an intermediary between Andersen’s 1907 design and Brasch’s later Riddersalen, when he reached a new level of sophistication and humor. In Pariserliv, Brasch utilized perspective, albeit radically, and created an effect of spatial depth through the use of an empty, airy background. Five years later in Riddersalen, he eliminated perspective and depth; the figures exist on a single plane, that of the paper. Thereafter, he alternated between the two-at times creating figures in space, at other times flattening figures and background into two dimensions to create sharp, bold and unexpected imagery. Brasch developed two primary styles: one, geometric, straight-edged, and densely colored, was usually but not always produced with linoleum blocks; the other, loose and freely drawn, was produced lithographically. During the late teens and early twenties, Brasch started working with linoleum, partly due to the fact that the best lithographic stones were German and thus difficult to obtain during the war. Linoleum also provided a cheaper, easier medium for printing. After the war, when stones were again available, Brasch continued to develop both styles. He ranged back and forth between them throughout the twenties, utilizing both with sureness and skill. The uniform surface of linoleum lent itself to his bold, flat, geometric images, with their unusual shapes and contours. Working in this medium, Brasch usually depicted strong, isolated figures of great visual impact. In contrast, the porous, textured surface of a lithographic stone lent itself to a graceful, fluid style; and in these posters, Brasch often incorporated perspective as well as narration and psychological insight. Brasch also used lithography for his flat, abstract images, however. And he was rare among artists in that he drew his

compositions directly onto the stone instead of having a pressman transfer his drawings.2 In many respects, Brasch was the quintessential man of the twenties (fig. 5). Elegant and dapper, a sought-after dinner guest, he was a dashing figure in Copenhagen, famous for his tango, his wardrobe, and his purebred bulldogs. So great was his reputation as a ladies’ man, many thought him a confirmed bachelor; but, in fact, he was married to Marie Monies from 1924 until 1928, and they had two sons. Artists’ carnivals were popular in Copenhagen, and artists went to great efforts creating fanciful settings and costumes for these parties. Held in February or March, the balls were bright spots in the long northern winters. Brasch’s 1918 poster for one such carnival, Kabaret kunstner karneval (fig. 6), depicts a beautiful young woman, drawn almost exclusively in outline; her figure is unprinted, her essence defined simply by facial features and earrings. The bold, yet simple, background of black, gray, red, and yellow squares is a dramatic contrast to the restraint with which she has been rendered. Another activity that Brasch relished was showing his prize bulldogs. It was thus especially appropriate that he was chosen to create the poster for the twenty-fifth anniversary show of the Danish Kennel Club, a group of wealthy breeders and dog owners. Brasch depicts his favorite breed, the bulldog, in the arms of an attractive “modern” woman, lending both elegance and wry humor to what might otherwise be a banal subject (fig. 8). The canine-for which Brasch’s bulldog Jumbo probably served as a model (fig. 7)-is composed of black and gray geometric shapes; while the woman, with Brasch’s sig- nature red lips and a slightly haughty expression, is rendered in a geometric, yet contoured, manner. Throughout his career, Brasch made posters to promote performances at cabarets and theaters, many specifically for the Casino, one of Copenhagen’s major settings for legitimate theatrical entertainment. Another of his stunning women graces a 1922 poster advertising a production of Kamelia-Damen (La Dame aux camelias) at the Casino (fig. 10). Red lips, a black hat, and a canary yellow background are the defining elements of this restrained, elegant design. In a 1924 poster advertising Filmen, he again shows his mastery at manipulating a minimum of elements to create unexpected effects (fig. 9). A slightly sinister-looking woman, her shadow projected behind her, is suggestively posed in a spotlight, giving the viewer the somewhat eerie sensation that he is watching a scene in production. The text reads “Filmen-Denmark’s most exclusive magazine.” Published during the twenties, the weekly was devoted to Danish and foreign films and was the only magazine of its type in Denmark. After the war, from 1919 to 1921, Brasch spent time in New York on several occasions. These visits were pivotal to his career. His familiarity with the United States, rare among Europeans, gave him a unique perspective into the tone and content of American film-a perspective he used to great advantage in posters advertising American film releases in Copenhagen. He showed a special sensitivity for the depiction of Western themes, especially cowboys Indians, as well as come to dominate t for not only American but also European cinema. Brasch’s film posters constitute a major portion of his oeuvre, which suggests that he was constantly occupied with one cinematic project after another. He was the principal poster designer for MGM releases in Denmark, and since he had no assistants, he created each design himself, as well as helped with its printing. He did not work from stills, so he most likely saw the movies before their release, formulating design concepts from his own impressions – something he must have enjoyed, as he was a film enthusiast and even acted in one Danish production, playing part of an artist (fig 11). He worked quickly, for new films, each requiring a poster, were shown every week. His output was not only vast but varied, from the severe linoleum style of Manden fra Sing-Sing to the lush lithographic style of Tvilling Brodrene. Manden fra Sing-Sing (City of Silent Men, 1922; fig 12) is one of Brasch’s best linoleum works, the saturated colors of yellow and umber making a strong visual impact against black and white, and his face is highlighted with white rectangles. His eye is not drawn but merely sug-

gested by Brasch’s amazing use of color, form, and shadow. The film is about convicts in the penitentiary of Sing-Sing; the feeling of prison, inferred by the black grid, is emphasized by small diagonal crosslines at the intersections of the vertical and horizontal bars., suggesting barbed wire. Tvilling brodrene (Adam and Evil, 1928; fig 13) exemplifies the superb lithographic technique Brash had developed. The figures are drawn with a rich crayon – the black deep and velvety, the red, orange, and green providing brilliant highlights. The psychological undercurrent is strong: the anxiety in the man’s face contrasts with his frivolous party accessories, and his dark figure is juxtaposed with a lightly, yet carefully, drawn woman. Her reprimanding posture enhances the discordant mood, as do the expressive hands of both figures. Brasch treated facial features and expressions in a variety of ways -always to a daring and remarkable effect. The poster for De hemmelige seks (The Secret Six, 1932) is Brasch at his most expressionistic (fig. 14). Wallace Beery’s menacing face is a radical mixture of green, white, and black planes, and the solid black of his coat is a potent contrast to the empty white background. In the poster for Buster Keaton’s film Galopskraederen (Spite Marriage, 1929), Brasch reduces the comedian’s face to a modernistic, mechanical-toy- like image of great power (fig. 15). Despite the severe abstraction, the face is unmistakably Keaton. The piquant image for Min s0n mesterbokseren (The World’s Champion, 1923) shows a highly abstracted face of a boxer with a devilish grin, eyes swollen shut, and spiky, angular hair (fig. 16). The face is composed of geometric shapes; the left side is unfinished, yet because of the strength of the image, the outline is visually inferred. The boxing gloves are reduced to their essential components, and the palette is again minimal: two colors plus black. Brasch loved America and sometimes spoke of moving there permanently. His images of the American West show a particular understanding and sympathy for two American icons, the cowboy and the Indian. While other artists created hackneyed images of the Old West, often copied from movie stills, Brasch consistently illustrated the theme with freshness and power. In 0demarkens sejrherrer (Winners of the Wilderness, 1927; fig. 17), the Indian, composed merely of two shades of red, is portrayed as a monumental and heroic figure, while the cowboy is merely suggested by a saddled horse, drawn in the same purple as the landscape. With minimal use of shading and color (blue, gray, and the white of the paper), Brasch suggests a mysterious moonlight ride in Nattens r’ttere (Riders of the Dark, 1928; fig. 18). The cowboy and horse, rendered in Brasch’s fluid lithographic style, display a mastery of line, rhythm, and contour. The animal’s finely executed head and the figure of the rider are darkly drawn, suggesting the light of a night sky, in contrast to the horse’s sketchy legs and hooves, which are left white, as if bathed in moonlight. His poster for Livet I vesten (Sheriff Nell’s Tussle, 1920; fig. 19) is a brilliant interpretation of the movie’s madcap theme. A sure-shooting, gun-toting female sheriff is depicted with wild orange hair and lips against a solid purple background, her outlined body left unprinted. Brasch’s quick wit, sure line, and control of color make his film posters among the best of the genre. Other film graphics, most of which were stylistically de- rived from circus posters, usually sank to mundane depictions of a particular scene or emphasized some lurid aspect of the film. In general, they are garish, clumsy, and lacking in esthetic appeal, of interest more for history than art. Conversely, Constructivists in the Soviet Union and Expressionists in Germany made film posters that were original and daring in their unexpected methods and images; but very few artists were known for their work in the genre, the major exceptions being the Stenberg brothers in the Soviet Union and Joseph Fenneker in Germany. Even with the best designs, it is the images, not the names of the creators, that endure-as is the case with the 1926 poster for Metropolis, a well-known image in the history of poster design by the artist Schulz-Neudamm, who is otherwise unknown. But Brasch took the film poster into a new realm, creating works of art that exceeded

their value as mere advertisements. His images are always unexpected and vital, giving a movie a singular new dimension. Instead of illustrating actual scenes, Brasch distilled the message or mood of a film to produce one potent image. Just as Cassandre synthesized issues of transportation into bold, creative designs and McKnight Kauffer provocatively pared promotional and advertising messages to their essentials, Brasch daringly abstracted and simplified his imagery to create succinct, eloquent statements. As his reputation spread throughout Europe, Brasch began to enjoy favor- able notices in various publications. In Posters and Publicity, Sidney Jones wrote in 1926: The Danish designer, Sven Brasch, is producing some of the most distinguished posters of today [sic]. In each subject this artist demonstrates his keen appreciation for the requisite essentials that are the very basis of true poster art. Although full of originality his work never runs to extremes; it is always marked by sterling qualities, and merit is revealed in many new ideas, a fine feeling for balance and effect, draftsmanship of a very high order, and color arrangements skillfully devised. It is [his] ability to present an original subject without triteness, to raise a common theme far above the commonplace, that is one of Brasch’s strongest qualities. Brash also received critical acclaim from George Brochner in Commercial Art and Industry: In commercial design, Sven Brash, the distinguished Danish artist, has so obviously found the sphere for which fate had intended him. His style, often possessed of charm and grace, at other times is marked by striking poser, both in line and color, but whatever keynote he may strike, his artistic personality asserts itself. As his reputation grew, Brasch received commissions from several foreign firms, including British Airways. During the thirties, he continued to produce film and theater posters, though he suffered ill health due to an ulcer. Throughout this period, he was a favorite subject in Danish newspapers, regarded as one of the country’s leading artists and personalities. He exhibited in major poster and publicity exhibitions throughout Europe, notably the aforementioned Paris Art Deco exhibition of 1925, the Cologne advertising exhibition of 1928, and both the Munich and Copenhagen poster shows of 1929 In addition, Brasch exhibited at Den Frie Udstilling, the Danish “Free Artists Group,” which was founded in 1891 in Copenhagen as an alternative to salon exhibitions. Three hundred of his posters were shown by the group in 1924. Commissions to illustrate or design books, dustjackets, magazines, newspapers augmented his poster work. World War II had a serious personal impact on Brasch and his family. When the Germans invaded Denmark, many Danish Jews fled to neutral Sweden, which Brasch decided was the safest course for his ex-wife, who was Jewish, and his two sons. He secured their passage in a fisherman’s boat, which managed to make the short, but dangerous, crossing to Malmo without incident. (A boat embarking shortly thereafter was intercepted by the Germans.) The boys and their mother returned to Copenhagen when Denmark was again safe, and Marie Monies Brasch died there in 1953. The postwar years were not easy for Brasch. The mood and artistic climate changed completely in Denmark, and his works became unfashionable as a new generation of artists emerged with a very different esthetic. Folk art, whimsical silliness, and low-brow prankishness began to appear in Danish posters-which was antithetical to the Brasch style. Poster collecting had never been firmly established in Denmark, so there was no preeminent collector or authority to keep the Danish tradition alive. Although the three major museums concerned with posters-the Kunstindustri Museum, the Film Museum, and the Theatre Museum-had large Brasch holdings, none ever mounted an exhibition of his work. The artist soon faded from memory, his prodigious output neglected. Brasch’s death in 1970 was noted in the newspapers, but no retrospective was ever held. The Danes, a self-effacing people, have historically not supported or promoted their own artists, preferring to collect and exhibit French and other foreign works.7 This lack of national

cultural self-confidence has left Brasch, one of Europeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s greatest poster artists, all but forgotten. His permanent place in poster history must now be assured, his name mentioned among the other masters of graphic design.

GOOD TYPOGRAPHY LURES THE LEARNER BURTON L. STRATTON Production Manager, Henry Holt and Company New York City

STUDENTS often like the appearance of a particular textbook without knowing

why. If they are asked to explain their feeling, they may say, “Oh, I don’t know. It’s easy to read, I guess.” What they really mean is that the typography of this book has helped them to digest the text easily and increased their pleasure in study. As far as the users are concerned, textbooks a’s physical things just happen. This storkbrings-them attitude is a failure to appreciate the graphic arts. Few people realize that the visual aspect of textbooks is carefully designed for specific readers. The facts are, of course, that a text goes through a long process of growth from manuscript to book, and that typography can contribute greatly to the students’ understanding of it, or, on the other hand, greatly reduce its usefulness as a teaching aid. If the page of type is composed of elements that please the eye and appeal to the esthetic sense, the author’s intention is promoted, and the learning process stimulated. If the opposite is true, then the task of student and teacher is made more difficult. The designer and his audience. The textbook designer is well aware of the possibilities of display typography as a visual aid, but he will be the first to admit that type has only one purpose - to spread ideas. He knows that by changing the typographic pace, by introducing a smaller or a larger type or one from a different face, he can give the text additional meaning for the reader. The latter can benefit from these typographic tricks while only partially conscious of them. The outline of the books is perhaps the most important thing the designer has to deal with. If the organization of the text is simple and easily discernible, he has greater freedom than he would otherwise have. It is the designer’s job to bring together in typographic harmony all the teaching elements of the book. He must also use type to emphasize or de-emphasize various textual features as the editors and authors require. This implies understanding of the author’s underlying motives and of the purpose of the book. In addition, the book must be palatable to the eye, acting as an appetizer for further reading and study. A textbook designer must subordinate his own feelings in favor of his audience. In that respect he is considerably different from those who design so-called trade books for the adult reading market. Some designers have successfully worked in both fields, but the textbook man works under greater restrictions. The typographic appreciation the teacher may have for a bedtime “who-done-it” should be considerably different from that given to a physics or history text. The textbook designer is confronted with this or similar differences wherever he turns. He designs a book for a child, but it is reviewed and purchased by adults. The typographic flavor objectionable to the teacher might be relished by the student. Knowing this, the designer sets about making the book appealing to different age levels, but he concentrates on the group that will use it most. To overcome adult objection, he may introduce a bit of advertising typography. The appealing design on the outside of a book should not influence the prospective buyer as

Good Typography Lures the Learner by Burton L. Stratton

much as his impression of the interior. The student may like the book with the striking cover, but he won’t like it long if the typography of the text is poor - and the same thing goes for the indiscriminate teacher buyer. How does a visual aid get that way? From a few simple illustrations the reader can grasp how easy it is to introduce visual aids that relate to but are not part of the reading text. For example, a few lines from now you will notice a “line of space” and a little farther on a couple of words are set in capitals. The chances are you noticed these things before you reached this point in your reading and you have subconsciously prepared yourself for them because you are curious about their meaning. If such simple devices were used over and over again, you would accept them as reading aids. On the other hand, if they were merely typographic eccentricities, you would try to fathom out their meaning and very soon would become annoyed. They would be visual hindrances. The italicized side headings in this article are one of the most common visual aids. Good textbook design employs the garden variety of typographic devices. TYPOGRAPHIC SUB- TLETIES have a place, but incorrectly used, confuse the reader. One of the worst offenders in this connection is the use of trick numbering devices for parts and chapters, and sub-divisions thereof. Another is the numbered and lettered outline that continues, page after page, long after the reader has forgotten whether the principal items are numbered E, I, A, (1), or (a), or dozens of other combinations. In the modern textbook one will notice a tendency of designers to “play” with the chapter numbers and headings and the part titles. The reason is simple; there are the main places where a designer can get some of his own personality and mood of the moment into the work. Carefully done, such typographic play can contribute to a feeling of friendliness between the book and the reader. Taken as a whole, the typographic picture is presented for another’s edification and at the same time the principal divisions of the text are dressed up and should invite the student to pursue his work after a little refreshing pause between the long sections of reading text.

Jan Tschichold Something about Book Design (1932)

Since

the end of artistic development along traditional paths is, since the 1870s, one must always remember that the book be envisioned as a unity of type, image, title, binding, so forth. The danger of neglecting this requirement has never been so strong as today. Yet, to tell the truth, today only the most important books are artistic unities. Even large publishing houses with a tradition entrust the individual parts of book production to specialists who work in isolation and carry out their own tasks very well but seldom have an inkling of the total appearance book. When the publisher has no manufacturer of his own, he leaves it up to the contracted printing house to decide on suggestions for type, line length, line spacing, and so forth. The book is then produced. The most the publisher does with the title is to correct or just sketch it because every element determines the style of the book and only the publisher (and not always) knows how the book should eventually look. Aside from this, a binding designer is working on plans for the back and front of the book. The dust jacket often comes from a third artist. This division of tasks with no real artistic supervision, in which complete sections of the book are entrusted to different persons with greater or, for the most part, lesser artistic imagination, can lead to the situation in which the pages of the book with their type, line spacing, page layout, decorations, and so forth, come from compositor A, perhaps initials from artist B, while Miss C is engaged to do vital things “to beautify the book.” So as not to lose the contract and to justify the highest possible payment (which is urgently needed), one person uses ornament and embellished letters - unfortunately, completely different from Miss C’s initials. Since D does not know that the book is being set in French Antiqua type, he unhesitatingly designs a script in medieval style or any other kind. At the same time, the commission for binding design is handed over to another artist, Mr. E, a specialist in baroque-style bindings. He knows neither that compositor A is using baroque-style ornaments by B and cast initials by Miss C, nor that his rival, designer D, has planned a richly “embellished” inner title. He adopts a neutral character for the interior setup of the book and carries out his task by tastefully exploiting a handy antiquarian catalog of “bindings in princely possession.” Unfortunately, he provides a red covering, not knowing that D has chosen brown as the second color of the title. The manager at the publishing house respects the “artistic opinions” of D and E and forgets to consider that vermilion and brown clash. One can easily imagine the outcome. Even if the individual work done by A, B, C, D, and E is, in itself, flawless, lacking any unifying supervision, the outcome must be frightful. The book is no longer a unity; it is not even a conglomeration; it is a rubble heap. If the publisher now needs a colorful illustrated dust jacket (fortunately, seldom the case) he turns to the famous designer F, “the Master of Risque Female Forms.” Then we finally have six persons “collaborating” on the book, simply because the manager of the publishing house, despite his efforts to achieve the best, is a businessman who does not know how to use the available talents correctly, that is, properly integrating them. (This ironic account is not gratuitously invented, but is a true occurrence, one among many!) The next task for the publisher-producer (in the widest sense), who is responsible for every eventuality, consists in eliminating this lack of planning in book production. The publisher should preferably commission the total design of book number I from Mr. D, book number

Something About Book Design by Jan Tschichold

II from Mr. E, and book number III from Mr. A, the compositor (assuming that D and E know enough about typography and that A is proficient in design). Then the choice of type, line spacing, the placement of type-areas, the designation of sections of the book, the titling, the binding design, and if possible, the design for the dust jacket must be entrusted to a single person, if a unity is to be produced. Unfortunately, graphic artists D and E are very unproficient in the ways of the compositor, and compositors who are able to completely design a book are few and far between. Here there are just two approaches: the businessman-publisher employs an artistically cultivated manufacturer who supervises the production of the book and, when he entrusts an artist with the design of the binding, he also takes care that the parts harmonize well. Or one may search out a designer who has more than a vague idea about composition (type, line spacing, calculations) as well as about matters concerning binding-design. The latter then provides the total plan for the book, from the layout of the pages to the binding. Today there are few who could master such a task; for the most part, they are typographers because the book is always composed of type, which is the foundation of all book design. To what should one pay particular attention in designing the book as a unified whole? To simple “little things.” The page should not have a medieval character if the book is set in French Antiqua type. At best one uses the basic type in the same or a smaller size, perhaps even in its cursive form. Only when the page number is genuinely important is it set in large size. If the chapter titles are set in Grotesque, one can repeat this on the page. An emphatic marking of chapter titles then is proper only when the content admits it: one cannot, for instance, set the words “Third Chapter” four degrees larger than the basic type size in thick Grotesque. It is another thing when titles make a genuine orientation possible. Initials are not fashionable. Their most bearable form is the large capital letter, standing more than two lines high. More modern is the capital letter standing out from the line that is the next size larger than the basic type or one size larger still (with a squared- indentation for the section if the beginning is to be indicated by such an indentation). Or one uses no initials and emphasizes the title or the chapter number. Blank space above the beginning of chapters is often an unusually good idea. Any obtrusiveness caused by arbitrary typography is to be strictly avoided. Nevertheless, banal design is also a flaw. Through the choice of typeface (here classical Antiqua type, particularly the “French” style such as Didot or Bodoni or something similar is preferable), the typographer can shape the appearance of each book by using a script that suits the content of the book. I consider it crucial that the selected type (almost always a cast type) be used not only for chapter titles and, it goes without saying, for the book’s title, but it should also be used for the binding. That may be new, but only in this way can one avoid loud clashes between the design of the binding and that of the book. The size of type and the format in which it is arranged are matters of taste, about which one can scarcely write in this limited space. Illustrations can give a better view than long theories. Of great importance is the arrangement of the page following the title page, which should always be considered since it is opposite the opening page. This page is almost always badly neglected because one does not always realize how strong an impact these two pages have on the graphic impression of the book. The dust jacket can also be produced through purely typographical means. Two different colors of ink on tinted paper can produce a good impression. The task of a dust jacket is admittedly very different from that of the binding; the latter is an enduring cover of neutral expression whereas the former resembles a poster, and not just in being ephemeral. For that reason, one uses large letters differently laid out for the dust jacket. Of course, the book should be harmonious in terms of color as well as graphically. Colors also are appropriate for the top edge of the cut pages (one would do better not to color the other sides of the cut pages). Restraint, the use of pale, unobtrusive, yellowish tones, is preferable here to loud colors. Perhaps many of these sentences suggest “carrying coals to Newcastle.” But the real world all too frequently refutes the opinion that their repetition is superfluous. Revolutions are not to be

expected in the various parts of book production, but rather constant modifications. Those who are striving for better results should not forget that the little we can do should be done as well as possible.

ELEMENTS of BOOK DESIGN Tschichold

Constructivism and the Modern Poster By Victor Margolin

In the “Productivist Manifesto,” an early Russian Constructivist document written by

Alexander Rodchenko and his wife, Varvara Stephanova, in 1920, a connection was made between ideology and the constructive organization of materials by the artist. The manifesto posited the necessity “to attain a synthesis of ideological and formal aspects” in order that the artist’s work have some practical application to social life.’ The authors rejected the art of the past and advocated “communist forms of constructive building” based on a systematic manipulation of materials.2 The manifesto pointed both to the end of Russian Constructivism’s “laboratory period” and to the beginning of an applied phase in which artists engaged in the design of graphics, textiles, architecture, stage sets, and functional objects. In 1924, the First Working Group of constructivists, one of several groups that used the Constructivist name, stated in an exhibition catalogue: In rationalizing artistic labor, the Constructivists put into practice- not in verbal, but in concrete terms -the real qualifications of the object: they are raising its quality, establishing its social role, and organizing its forms in an organic relationship with its utilitarian meaning and objective.3 The First Working Group formed cells for the production of many kinds of objects from films and photographs to children’s books and even industrial clothing. One form of design that drew the attention of many Russian Constructivists, not exclusively the First Working Group, was the poster, which was seen as means of reaching large numbers of people with predominately visual messages. In a country where many people could not read, the image communicated more strongly than did the written text and, in the Russian tradition of public communication up to that time, it was the image that dominated. A prominent means of circulating images was the lubok, a form of woodblock print dating from the seventeenth century, which conveyed first religious and then political messages from the walls of peasant cottages throughout the country. Produced in towns for the rural peasantry, the lubok was also a means to circulate instructions for songs and dances and to illustrate well-known stories.4 Following the October Revolution of 1917, the Bolshevik government organized ROSTA, the Russian Telegraph Agency, which continued the lubok tradition through its active poster unit. The ROSTA posters, which were intended to maintain support for the Red Army in the Civil War, narrated current events in sequences of simple pictures that often portrayed the political forces of good and evil in metaphorical terms. In a 1920 poster by Vladimir Maiakovsky, “Mural Newspaper No. 49” (Fig. 1), changes of scale, symbolic uses of color, and simplified portrayals of Bolshevik enemies convey the inevitable Bolshevik triumph. The ROSTA poster artists used intentionally crude stenciled images and the dramatization of conflicts to appeal visually to their largely nonliterate or barely literate audience. There was also a text narration with each poster, but it was not necessary to read it in order to get the message. Despite their simplified depictions, the ROSTA posters possessed characteristics found in the more sophisticated posters by Russian Constructivists in the 1920s. A primary quality shared by the ROSTA and Constructivist posters was a similar relation

Constructivism and the Modern Poster by Victor Margolin

to time. Both were created within the context of seeking a better future. The present was not the place where a unity of values was to be solidified but rather the launching site for a new world. This division of consciousness between present and future created a dialectic, a tension between current conditions of life and those yet to come. As a way to resolve the dialectic, artists interested themselves in dynamic events rather than in static situations. Film had a particular influence on Constructivist poster artists. It unfolded in time and, under the direction of revolutionary filmmakers like Dziga Vertov, it conveyed with urgency the acts of social change. Alexander Rodchenko, who had drawn film titles for Vertov’s Kino Pravda newsreels, was clearly influenced by the film medium. This was evident in his 1928 essay, “Against the Synthetic Portrait, For the Snapshot,” where he posed the opposition of painting and photography as “a battle between eternity and the moments. Using the depiction of Lenin as an example, he claimed that a painted portrait, which was a synthesis of many impressions, could not express Lenin’s true nature as well as a file of thousands of photographs of him in different situations. Rodchenko did not discuss sequences in terms of structured film narrative but rather as collections of moments in time that became events by association. His essay was an attack on ideal representation, for which he substituted a multitude of moments that constituted life. As a Constructivist poster artist, Rodchenko emphasized the event over the static representation, even when making advertising posters. His 1923 poster “Three Mountain Beer. Away with Home Brew” (Fig. 2) focuses not on the appearance of the product but on the consequences of its use. Arrows of force emanating from the Three Mountain beer bottle crack the weaker bottles of home brew just as the fist of the Red soldier in Maiakovsky’s ROSTA poster knocks the priest on the head. The function of objects in time can also be seen in another 1923 poster by Rodchenko, “The Press is Our Weapon,” in which six periodicals are shown rolling off the presses on trajectories that lead them right out of the picture frame. The similarity of these advertising posters to the ROSTA posters is no coincidence, since Maiakovsky collaborated with Rodchenko on most of them. In a brief article on photomontage, published anonymously in 1924 but most likely written by Rodchenko, the claim was made that posters with photographs were more effective than those with drawings. “A poster on the subject of famine composed of starving people,” the author wrote, “makes a stronger impression than one carrying sketches of the same.”’6 Rodchenko used photographic fragments occasionally in his advertising posters of 1923, but by the next year he gave the photograph a prominent role. For a poster announcing Dziga Vertov’s film Kino Glaz (Film Eye) (Fig. 3), Rodchenko constructed a pyramid of levels of vision with a large eye, a metaphor for the new vision made possible by the film camera, poised at the top. Although the photograph was linked with veracity of representation in the photomontage article of 1924, Rodchenko nonetheless continued to think metaphorically. The eye in the Kino Glaz poster is not presented just as a realistic and static image. In the context of Vertov’s intentions as a filmmaker, it becomes an instrument of active use. The eye possesses a new and powerful sight just as the Three Mountain beer bottle contains a new and powerful drink. Another example of a metaphorical object portrayed in the context of an event was provided by Rodchenko’s colleague Anton Lavinsky in his 1925 poster for Sergei Eisenstein’s film Battleship Potemkin. One of the ship’s sailors, perhaps calling his comrades to mutiny, represents the drama of revolt of which the battleship is a part. The victorious outcome of the drama is insured by the imposing frontal view of the ship, particularly the protrusion of its guns. The film poster was an important genre for Russian Constructivist designers in the period between 1925 and 1930. My explanation for this is speculative, but it takes into account several factors: (1) the film as a narrative form gave designers wide latitude to express their proclivity for portraying events; (2) By 1925 it was becoming evident that progressive artists were not to be given a leading role in actual social events, and they may have accepted even uncon-

sciously, the opportunity to portray fictional ones dramatically; (3) They could use sophisticated techniques of depiction because the film posters, unlike those of ROSTA were not geared to the peasantry. My reasoning here is based on the assumption that Constructivist artists wanted to support the goals of the Revolution on their own terms, as progressive rather than plebian artists. Among the leading film-poster designers of the late 1920s were a number who had their roots in Constructivism’s “laboratory period before 1922, either as practicing artists or as students. The brothers Georgii and Vlaimir Stenberg were members of the First Working Group of Constructivists and participated in the exhibitions of the Obmokhu group between 1919 and 1923; Nikolai Prusakov, Grigori Borisov, Alexander Naumov, and Piotor Zhukov were former students at the Vkhutemas, the Moscow design school that had a strong faction of Constructivists on its faculty; Alexander Rodchenko was a member of the First Working Group of Constructivists and a professor at the Vkhutemas; and Anton Lavinsky also taught there. Owing to limitations of the Soviet printing industry, which prevented adequate largescale reproductions of photographs, a number of these artists preferred to draw their images. Since the posters were reproduced by lithography, photographic likenesses could be achieved when desired. The Stenbergs, who worked together on their posters, developed a primitive optical device that could divide a film frame into squares and project enlargements of these on their studio wall. They could also shorten the perspective to distort the image.7 Even though actual photographs were not reproduced extensively, the poster artists drew heavily on the dynamic photographic aesthetic espoused particularly by Rodchenko; examples of his bird’seye and worm’s-eye views and dramatic frontality are evident in many posters. The Stenbergs’ 1929 poster for Vertov’s film Man with a Movie Camera (Fig. 4) depicts the sky- scrapers from the worm’s-eye view, recalling Rodchenko’s photographs of trees in the Pushkino Forest (Fig. 5). Photomontage was the stimulus for the composite narratives of the Constructivist film posters that depict the film contents with combinations of moments represented by images and image fragments. Although some of the representations are metaphorical, such as Semionov’s substitution of steel girders for a man’s body in his 1929 poster for the film Turksib, images were often taken directly from film frames, such as Leonid Voronov and Mikhail Ievstavyev’s 1927 poster for Eisenstein’s October. The film posters of the constructivists heightened the drama of the films they publicized while giving evidence of Constructivism’s formal characteristics. The architectonic qualities of the posters were achieved by an extensive use of straight lines and a sharp separation of figure and ground. The influence of the new photography can be seen, as already mentioned, in the stark use of angular and frontal views and the reliance on real images rather than on abstracted symbols. The Constructivist film posters cannot be called ideological in the sense of expressing a specific political position, but they do reflect an ideological approach to their subject matter in a broader way. They translate film content, even that of films from capitalist America, into a dialectic of dramatic action that emphasizes movement in time rather than static portrayals of persons, objects, or symbols. This dialectic derives from a revolutionary consciousness that incorporates the future into lived experience. Such an analysis suggests that these posters, despite their lack of specifically political content in most instances, fall within Rodchenko’s and Stephanova’s definition of a Constructivist art that unites formal and ideological expression. By contrast, the term “Constructivism” for the Western European avant-garde did not mean an art of formal and ideological union. Rather, it became synonomous with the proposals for an idealized art of elementary forms put forth by Theo van Doesburg, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, El Lissitzky, and others. Lissitzky and the writer Ilya Ehrenburg, both Russians but neither Constructivists, published in 1922 at Berlin a small journal, Veshch, in which they opposed the utilitarian purposes of objects. They foresaw a triumph of the “constructive method” but considered “po-

etry, plastic form, theater, as ‘objects’ that cannot be dispensed with.” 8 Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, the Hungarian artist who had come to Berlin in 1920, defined Constructivism in terms of a pristine formal order. In an essay of May 1922, he wrote that “Constructivism is neither proletarian nor capitalist. Constructivism is primordial, without class and without ancestor. It expresses the pure form of nature, the direct color, the spatial element not distorted by utilitarian motifs.”9 Moholy-Nagy brought his concern for the purity of form to the Bauhaus when he joined its faculty in the Spring of 1923. In “The New Typography,” an essay written for the catalogue of the 1923 Bauhaus exhibition, he called for absolute clarity in typographic communication. The organization of the printed page, according to him, was subject to optical and psychological laws which the designer was supposed to obey. Like Rodchenko, he advocated the use of the photograph rather than the drawing, but spoke only of its precise representation rather than its suitability to portray a particular kind of social truth. For the poster, which he recognized as a primary means of communication, he stressed the use of the photograph, the uninhibited use of all directions for typographic arrangement, and “the combination of all typefaces, type sizes, geometric forms, colors, etc.”10 The consequence of his proposals was a shift at the Bauhaus from such personally expressive lettering as Lyonel Feininger and Johannes Itten used for Bauhaus print portfolios to the functional graphics that Moholy, Herbert Bayer, Joost Schmidt, and others began to produce. Bayer’s 1926 poster for an art exhibition by Wassily Kandinsky in Dessau exemplifies the rational organization, hierarchy of type sizes, and formal play of positive shapes and negative space of which Moholy approved. Bayer’s is the only Bauhaus poster I know of that uses a photograph, but the picture carries no important information; the poster is essentially a typographic statement. A 1927 poster of Bayer’s for an exhibition of European advertising art in Leipzig is exclusively typographic with the letters placed on modular sections of red, blue, and gray, recalling the paintings of Mondrian. The Russians worked with a dialectical notion of time, but the Western European Constructivists worked within that ideal space and time where formal unities could be achieved without the necessity of transformation. Typographic practice could thus be codified into a set of laws for correct usage. This was actually done by the young German typographer Jan Tschichold, who had been struck by the Bauhaus exhibition in 1923 and two years later published his ten principles of “elementary typography” in Typographische Mitteilungen, the leading magazine of the German printing trade. In 1927, Tschichold made a series of film posters for a Munich film theater, the Phoebus Palast. In these, the photograph, usually a segment of a film still, played a modest role compared to that of the typographical organization. This can be seen in Tschichold’s poster for Karl Sternheim’s The Underpants, where the photograph, like that in Bayer’s Kandinsky poster, is subordinate to the other elements. Tschichold featured the image more prominently in his poster for the films The Women without Names (Fig. 6) and Honeger’s Pacifica 231. Unlike the images in Russian Constructivist posters, which were unified into a composite narrative, the images in this poster are all separate. The three frames above the train do give some sense of content but they neither provide a coherent presentation of the film nor dramatize it in any way. The photograph of the engine, too, contributes more to the formal organization of the poster than to an interpretation of the film. Formal organization dominates in the Western European Constructivist posters. Because Conservatism was appropriated in the West as a theory of formal order, its greatest impact was on typographic usage rather than on that of the image. Despite Moholy’s pronouncement that the photograph was “the new storytelling device of civilization,”11 the image played a minor role in the “new typography” of the 1920s. Various uses were made of experimental photographs in advertising posters and other graphics. Lissitzky’s photogram poster for Pelican Inks (Fig. 7) is a good example, although the object, in this instance, is only a means for visual exploration by the artist.

The concept of the event as a context for objects was not a part of Western European Constructivism and, consequently, the Russian dialectic of present and future did not apply; nor did the concern for unity of form and ideology. Constructivism taken out of its original social context became an impetus to clarity as a generic objective but not to the realization of a social vision. It was its very objectivity and clarity, in fact, that led it to become the international typographic style used so skillfully today to avoid the strong emotional response to life that motivated its Russian founders. Notes 1 Alexander Rodchenko and Varvara Stephanova, “Productivist Manifesto,” in Alexander Rodchenko and the Arts of Revolutionary Russia, ed. David Elliott, New York, Pantheon Books, 1980, p. 130. 2 Ibid. 3 “The First Working Group of Constructivists” in Russian Art of the Avant-Garde: Theory and Criticism, 1902-1934, ed. John Bowlt, New York, Viking Press 1976, p. 241. 4 Camilla Gray, The Russian Experiment in Art: 1863-1962, London, Thames and Hudson, 1970, p. 97. 5 Alexander Rodchenko, “Against the Synthetic Portrait, For the Snapshot,” in Russian Art of the Avant-Garde (cited n. 3), p. 252. 6 “Photomontage,” English language type script supplied by John Bowlt. 7 Szymon Bojko, New Graphic Design in Revolutionary Russia, New York, Praeger, 1972, p. 35. 8 El Lissitzky and Illya Ehrenburg, “The Blockade of Russia is Coming to an End,” in The Tradition of Constructivism, ed. Stephen Bann, New York, Viking Press, 1974, p. 56. 9 Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, “Constructivism and the Proletariat,” in Moholy-Nagy, ed. Richard Kostelanetz, New York, Praeger, 1970, p. 185. 10 Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, “The New Typography,” in Moholy-Nagy (cited n. 9), p. 75. 11 Ibid. Victor Margolin is Assistant Professor of Design History at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He is the author of American Poster Renaissance: The Great Age of Poster Design, 1890-1900 and the coauthor of The Promise and the Product: 200 Years of American Advertising Posters. He is the editor of the journal Design Issues.