THE MAKING OF TYPO GRAPHIC MAN
Ellen Lupton
M/M (Paris), 1972 A Film by Sarah Morris, 2008, Paralax Films, Courtesy the artists
The Making of Typographic man by Ellen Lupton | 3
Marshall McLuhan published The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man in 1962.1 No easy read, this rather technical book overflows with opaque excerpts from seventeenth-century poetry and bulWk quotes from pioneering scholarship about print’s impact on the modern mind-readers today are advised to approach this book with a double shot of espresso. Despite its density, The Gutenberg Galaxy helped trigger McLuhan’s own remaking from a Canadian English professor into a global intellectual celebrity. The book uses typography in a remarkably aggressive way, breaking up its soporific pages of academic prose with slogan-esque “glosses” set in 18-point Bodoni Bold Italic.
Bam! McLuhan was using type to invent the McLuhanism. Five years later, he produced the radical mass paperback The Medium is the Massage with graphic designer Quentin Fiore, amplifying his early visual experiments to new levels of bombast. Who is McLuhan’s Typographic Man? The concept of the human individual (an isolated self wailed off from the collective urges of society) was born in the Renaissance and became the defining subject of modern systems of government, law, economics, religion, and more. This individual was, McLuhan argued, both product and producer of the most influential
1
Marshall McLuhan, The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1962). McLuhan popularized the primary research of Harold Innis, Walter Ong, and other deeply original thinkers.
technology in the history of the modern West:
of unique characters, was less conducive
typography. The use of uniform, repeatable
to automation.) Gutenberg’s invention joined
characters to manufacture uniform, repeatable
the phonetic alphabet with oil-based ink, linen
texts transformed the way people think, write,
based paper, the printing press (derived from
and talk and triggered the rise of a money-based
the wine press), and the crafts of goldsmithing
economy and the industrial Revolution. The vast
and metal-casting (Gutenberg’s personal areas
enterprise of modernity all came down to letters
of expertise). Movable type engendered the
printed on sheets of paper.
system of mass production. This new way of making things broke down a continuous
Typography amalgamated past inventions, the
process into a series of separate operations.
most important being the phonetic alphabet
The printed book became the world’s first
itself—a concise set of symbols that could,
commodity.
in theory, translate the sounds of any language into a simple string of marks. (In contrast, the Chinese writing system, with its thousands
Photo·Lettering brochure showing typesetting process, 1960s. Courtesy House Industries
What happened to Typographic Man, and what
cials and cable news shows, while global villagers
is he doing today? The eyeball was this creature’s
in the developing world have discovered SMS
supreme sense organ, supplanting shared audi-
as an indispensable business tool. Meanwhile,
tory experiences of preliterate society. McLuhan
the collective experiences forged by Twitter and
predicted that in the rising electronic age, the
Facebook rely largely on the transmission of text.
individualism of Typographic Man would succumb
The most famous McLuhanism of all, “ The
to the tribal chorus of the “global Village,” whose
medium is the message,” fared no better.3
collective existence was defined by radio and
In today’s world, the medium is often just the
television (dominated by sound) rather than
medium, as content seeks to migrate freely
by private acts of reading (dominated by sight).2
across platforms rather than embody the qualities of a specific medium. “Device independence”
2 “Global village” is one of McLuhan’s most famous phrases, coined in The Gutenberg Galaxy. See pages 21 and 31. 3 McLuhan coined the phrase “the medium is the message” in Understanding Media(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1964).
It hasn’t really worked out that way. Today, our
has become a goal more urgent than the task
lives contain more typography than ever, served
of crafting unique page layouts.
up via text messaging, e-mail, and the Internet. Letters swarm across the surface of TV commer-
The Making of Typographic man by Ellen Lupton | 5
Although typography isn’t dead yet, every good font designer works with one foot in the grave. Typographers feed on past traditions the way zombies lunch on brains. A survey of contemporary typefaces reveals a repetition or replay of the larger history of printed letters. And just as the first typographers were risk-taking entrepreneurs—seeking riches and facing ruin—type designers today are technical innovators and business advocates, building tools and standards for use by the broader type community while testing new markets and experimenting with alternative forms of distribution. Strictly speaking, typography involves the use of repeatable, standardized letterforms (known as fonts), while lettering consists of custom alphabets, usually employed for headlines, logotypes, and posters rather than for running text. During the first hundred years of printing, calligraphy and type fluidly interacted, not yet seen as opposing enterprises.
Photo·Lettering filmstrip for producing headlines, 1960. Courtesy House Industries
Marian Bantjes, I Wonder, 2010. Courtesy the artist
While it is well-known that Gutenberg and other early printers used manuscripts as models for typefaces, it is more surprising to learn that the scribes who were employed in the “scriptoriums” or writing factories of the day often produced handmade copies of printed books for their luxury clientele, using calligraphy to replicate print. 4 Today, a vital collision between the idioms of handwriting and mechanical and post-mechanical processes is shaping our typographic vocabulary. With the introduc4
McLuhan credits this stunning insight to the scholar Curt Buhler, quoting at length from his 1960 work The Fifteenth CenturyBook: the Scribes; the Printers; the Decorators, 153–154.
tion of desktop computing in the 1980s, the design and delivery of typefaces changed from a sequence of discrete processes
requiring expensive equipment (mass production) into a fluid stream managed by a few producers at low cost (cottage industry). Using desktop software, a graphic designer could now manufacture digital fonts and ship them out on floppy disks. Emigre Fonts, founded in Berkeley, California, by Rudy VanderLans and Zuzana Licko, began producing bitmapped typefaces in 1984 that exploited the constraints of early desktop printers. An intoxicating discourse about experimental design sprang up around these fonts, documented in Emigre, its eponymous magazine. By the mid-’90s, the jubilant fascination with high-concept display alphabets (distressed, narrative, hybridized, futuristic) was joined
The Making of Typographic man by Ellen Lupton | 7
by a demand for full-range, full-bodied type
Designers today combine physical and digital
families suitable for detailed editorial design
processes to create letterforms that grow,
(crafted by highly focused typographers in a field
copulate, and fall apart. Vocabularies range
that was becoming, again, more specialized).
from the lush organicism of Marian Bantjes and Antoine et Manuel to the geometric con-
The same technologies that changed the way
structions of Philippe Apeloig, whose bitmapped
designers produce typefaces also changed the
forms suggest an animated process of assembly
way we use them. Graphic designers could now
and dissolution. Letters drip, drag, and spring
manipulate fonts directly, instantly seeing them
into life in the posters of Oded Ezer; they
in their own layouts and testing them in different
morph and metastasize across the CD and
sizes and combinations. As the procedures
LP covers of Non-Format. Handmade letters
of typesetting and layout merged, designers
provide the model for many contemporary type-
became direct consumers of fonts, no longer
faces, from Hubert Jocham’s Mommie (2007)
separated by layers of mediation from the essential
to Laura Meseguer’s Rumba (2006) and
raw material of their craft. In this intoxicating
Underware’s Liza Pro (2009).
new era of instant alphabetic gratification, designers could not only buy, borrow, and steal
Many recent script fonts recall the funky
digital fonts but could crack them open, violating
headlines that flooded the typographic scene
the original designs to create alternate charac-
in the 1950s and ‘60s, when designers such
ters and even whole new typefaces. Designers
as Ed Benguiat used ink, pen, and brush
stirred up the historic confusion between
to create more than 600 original alphabets.
lettering and type in new ways by altering the
The idea of seeking originality in letterforms
outlines of existing characters. Custom lettering
is a product of nineteenth-century advertising
is a powerful current in contemporary design.
culture. Before then, books were print’s primary
Oded Ezer, Helvetica Live! poster, 2008. Courtesy the artist
medium, and book typography sought to define norms rather than seduce the eye with novelty. The neoclassical typefaces of Bodoni and Didot, with their hairline serifs and severe contrast between thick and thin strokes, opened the way to commercial typography by envisioning letters as a set of structural features subject to endless manipulation (proportion, weight, stress, stroke, serif, and so on). Many of the digital era’s most influential typefaces reference the work of Didot and Bodoni, including Jonathan Hoefler’s HTF Didot (1991), Zuzana Licko’s Filosofia (1996), and Peter Mohr’s Fayon (2010). One new arrival to the Didone scene is Questa, designed collaboratively by Jos Buivenga and Martin Majoor. Buivenga began his own career as a typeface designer by committing a typographic abomination: giving Philippe Apeloig, Crossing the Line: FIAF Fall Festival poster. Courtesy Studio Apeloig
away his work online. So-called “free fonts”—which typically consist of poorly designed, badly programmed, incomplete,and/or pirated
The Making of Typographic man by Ellen Lupton | 9
software—are, alas, the source of first resort for
Adelle (2009). Adding another flavor to the slab
many students and clueless amateurs. Some
serif tasting list, Hoefler & Frere-Jones’ Sentinel
people accustomed to free content on the web
takes its roots from the Clarendon faces of the
still find it difficult to pay serious money—or any
nineteenth century, whose slab serifs and meaty
at all—for typefaces. Buivenga, a self-taught
strokes were designed for display. With numer-
type designer new to the field, released several
ous weights in roman and italic, Sentinel works
weights of his Museo family for free download
for both text and headlines.
in 2007. It became hugely popular, and Buivenga soon expanded his free offering to a full-fledged
Adelle, Museo, and other slab serifs have proven
super family available to paying customers.5
especially popular on the web, where their sturdy body parts holdup well to presentation
Museo joins a rich contemporary menu of low
on screen. Type design has arrived surprisingly
contrast slab faces, including Tobias Frere-Jones’
late to written communication’s biggest event
Archer (2000), Henrik Kubel’s A2 FM (2006),
since the Renaissance. Typographic Man was
Ross Milne’s Charlie (2008),and Type Together’s
born in 1450 and fattened up in the candy shops
5
Martin Majoor, who says he will never ever give away a font, admits that the success of his typeface Scala was spurred in the early 1990s by its illegal circulation among young designers. (Amsterdam: Pepin Press, 2010).
Non· Format, Milky Disco Three/To The Stars music packaging, 2010. Courtesy the artists
of commercial printing. Alas, during the opening
The evolution of modern typography is not,
decades of the World Wide Web, his diet was
of course, all about novelty and spectacle. While
drastically reduced to the half-dozen fonts
these classic faces have endured the shifting
typically installed on end users’ own computer
storms of taste and fashion, designers have
systems. This situation has finally begun
sought out ever more subtle shades of basic
to change, as members of the type design and
black. Laurenz Brunner’sAkkurat (2004) has
web communities have agreed on ways to deploy
been heralded as “the new Helvetica,” while
diverse typefaces online without exposing them
Aurèle Sack’s LL Brown (2011) recalls Edward
to shameless piracy. Services such as Type
Johnston’s lettering for the London Under-
Kit, which legally host fonts and serve them
ground. Paying soft-pedal homage to Futura,
to specific sites, have become big players in the
Radim Pesko’s Fugue (2010) flaunts a tentative
omnivorous expansion of web typography.
bravado, like a teenager on a motorcycle. Fugue, writes Pesko, “was conceived as an appreciation of and going back-to-thefuture-and-back-again with Paul Renner.”6
6 Radim Pesko, accessed July 10, 2011, http://www.radimpesko.com/fonts/fugue. 7 McLuhan, The Gutenberg Galaxy, 164.
| The Making of Typographic man by Ellen Lupton 10
Christopher Clark, Web Typography for the Lonely: Triangulate poster, 2011Â Courtesy the artist
The Making of Typographic man by Ellen Lupton | 11
Rounded end-strokes are another common
today’s Typographic Man is an inward-looking
craving among contemporary designers. Soft
loner, wrapped inside a personal cocoon
terminals restore a dash of humanity to the
of digital feeds. Yet Typographic Man has spun
hard edged realism of sans serif typography.
that protective, narcissistic cocoon from the flux
Eric Olson has led the way with his widely used
of public life. Today’s individual is the product
Bryant (2002) and his more recent Anchor (2010),
of his own voracious immersion in the common
a condensed gothic whose plump, sausage-like
watering hole of image/music/text; he is equipped
forms fit comfortably in narrow spaces. The
as never before to bend typography with his own
rounded terminals of Jeremy Mickel’s Router (2008)
means to his own ends.
flare out slightly, recalling the mechanical process employed to manufacture routed plastic signs.
This self-involved creature is connecting to the social world in new ways. McLuhan described
Exploring the freshly cleared frontier of web
typography as an essential medium of exchange
typography, Christopher Clark is inventing
in the modern age: “Typography is not only
surprising uses for SVG (vector graphics for
a technology but is itself a natural resource
the Web), HTML5 Canvas, and other emerging
or staple, like cotton or timber or radio; and,
tools and protocols. Clark’s site WebTypography
like any staple, it shapes not only private sense
fortheLonely.com not only showcases these
ratios but also patterns of communal interde-
startling prototypes but also provides instructive
pendence.”7 As the first industrial commodity,
commentary and free code. At once generous
the printed book was portable, repeatable, and
and estranged, Clark’s “lonely guy” persona
uniform. Unfurling today across the networked
speaks to the Typographic Man of our time,
horizon, text is now mutable, interactive, and
whose open-hearted desire to share and connect
iterative, no longer melded to a solid medium.
undercuts his self-mocking alienation.
Yet as a means of exchange that ebbs and flows through communities, text remains more than
Where is Typographic Man headed as he rides
ever an essential “natural resource” that offers
off with his serifs and spurs into the digitally
access to participation in a world economy and
remastered sunset? He may always keep slipping
a shared public life.
partly backwards, looking for glimmers of black gold in the post-industrial ghost towns and open mine shafts of history. Like the modern individual McLuhan so poignantly described,
Ji Lee Typography I | SP 16 Modular Grid 1