Typography of The
1880-1900s
Table of Contents 1. Typographic Time-line: 1853-1959 2. Arts & Crafts Movement 3. Contributions of William Morris 4. History of the Grid 5. Modern Typography by Jan Tschichold 6. Lettering by Edward Johnston 7. Herbert Bayer: Alphabet
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A Brief History Typography in the 1800s-1960s
There is a broad range of events that shaped the typographic history from the 1850s to the 1960s. In the 1850s we see the volume and variety of printed media changing dramatically as print technology progressed, which broadened the range of type, images, and production methods available to graphic design and typography. During the 1880s, the impulse to return to craft traditions evolved, which is referred to as the “Arts & Crafts” movement. Later in the early 1900s, modernism begins to become popular in design and typography, lead by the new approaches to form. “Modern designers embraces functionalism, geometric formalism, and machine aesthetics.” Jan Tschichold wrote a book on “New Typography,” advocating for a sole purpose of communication when it comes to typography.
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Typography
18501960’s T i m e l i n e
1853 Handbill combining Egyptian, outline, and decorative types
1854 Broadside using elongated Fat Face fonts
1867
1880
Christopher Stoles constructs the first practical typewriter
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Ottmar Mergenthaler invents the Linotype, the first keyboard typesetting machine
Lettering printed by choromolithography chromolithography
1890 Inspired by Kelmscott, Americans; Frederick Goudy and Bruce Rodgers bring renewed excellence to book and typeface design
1897 Will Bradley, title page in his “Chap Book” style, reviving Caslon type and colonial woodcut techniques
1909 Filippo Marinetti founds Futurism, experimentation with typographic form and syntax
1910 Invention of German sans-serif “Block Style”
1925 Herbert Bayer, universal alphabet
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1930 Chrysler Building, an example of Art Deco decorative geometric style
1930 Paul Renner, prospectus for Futura
1959 Gerald Holton creates the “Peace Symbol�
1959 Otto Storch, figurative typography
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1887 Tolbert Lanston invents the monotype
1890 Golden Typeface, by William Morris
1892 William Morris’ Kelmscott Press Launches a revival of printing and typography
1892 Troy Typeface, by William Morris
1893 Chauncer Typeface, by William Morris
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William Morris’ design for “Trellis” wallpaper, 1862
Arts & Crafts Movement Standing for traditional craftsmanship using decorative forms.
B
etween the 1880s and 1910, a new art movement was born out of the industrial revolution and craze of mass production. Industrialism had brought the gap between form and surface and production methods into focus. It has been suggested that the Arts and Crafts movment, in Britain, in particular was inspired by the desire to produce beautiful things and thrive on a hatred of modern civilization. This movement derived from two important sources, that of A.W.N. Pugin and John Ruskin. Each were important to the philosophical elements, Pugin promoted the Gothic Revival in his early writings and Ruskin with his advocation for medieval architecture with great craftsmanship and quality materials. Note that William Morris, who believed that industrialization created a large gap between the designer and manufacturer, found his inspiration through the work of Ruskin. “The Arts and Crafts movement did not promote a particular style, but it did advocate reform as part of its philosophy and instigated a
critique of industrial labor; as modern machines replaced workers, Arts and Crafts proponents called for an end to the division of labor and advanced the designer as craftsman.” According to Alan Crawford’s Ideas and Objects: The Arts and Crafts Movement in Britain, there are two arguments with admirable clarity to describe the design of the movement, “Design serves to express ideas, and that it shifts our perceptions of the world. The other is that design is the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was preoccupied with the experince and modernity.” In time the English Arts and Crafts movement came to stress craftsmanship at the expense of mass market pricing. The result was exquisitely made and decorated pieces that could only be afforded by the very wealthy. So the idea of art for the people was lost, and only relatively few craftsman could be employed making these fine pieces. This evolved English Arts and Crafts style came to be known as “Aesthetic Style.” It shared some characteristics with the French/ Belgian Art Nouveau movement.
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Owen Jones, The Grammar of Ornament, 1865
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William Morris design for “Trellis� wallpaper, 1862
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Morris
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illiam Morris, the speaker on behalf of the Arts & Crafts Movement in Britain. “Apart from the desire to produce beautiful things, the leading passion of my life has been and is hatred of modern civilization,” remarked May Morris. Morris delivered lectures in many British towns and cities in the 1870s, 1880s, and 1890s., which were later published for the first time in 1882 in a collection entitled, Hopes and Fears for Art.
Below is an excerpt from his book, “…sever them from those lesser so-called Decorative Arts, which I have to speak about: it is only in latter times, and under the most intricate conditions of life, that they have fallen apart from one another; and I hold that, when they are so parted, it is ill for the Arts altogether: the lesser ones become trivial, mechanical, unintelligent, incapable of resisting the changes pressed upon them by fashion or dishonesty; while the greater, however they may be practised for a while by men of great minds and wonder-working hands, unhelped by the lesser, unhelped by each other, are sure to lose their dignity of popular arts, and become nothing but dull adjuncts to unmeaning pomp, or ingenious toys for a few rich and idle men.”
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History of The Grid History from 1850s: When Industrial beginning to take over the economy, graphic design was born. With this come the rise of poster, flyer, all kind of advertising, newspaper, magazine‌ Later photographs were included in the design, along with typefaces. This had cause problems for printers and compositions, which were struggling to layout these contents. In the late nineteenth century, artist realized this is a problem. William Morris and the Arts and Crafts movement is the predecessor of this aspect. Morris believed that form and function really go together. The problem sound like the one that Picasso and Braque had, which is presenting 3d object on 2d canvas.
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Designer and artists then created competition based on this work. Early twentieth art movements all had an influence on the development of the grid. Artist and designer aware of the industrialized age, with quicker transportation and faster communication. They started to broke conventional rule of word, by introduce the extreme variation of word, ignore the x and y axis of type. Space was used as one of the component to help with the typography. This idea opened the door to de Stijl , the Bauhaus and Jan Tschichold.
De Stijl, and the Bauhaus. An architect, painter and designer Theo van Doesburg found De Stijl in 1917. The importance of this
movement is that it experience with form with function, and used it in political context. The movement consist rectangular form and limited color scheme. Designers in the de Stijl movement want to use these design principle in real world. In 1919, the Bauhaus was open in Weimar, Germany. Architect Walter Gropius was a director of the school. Gropius believed that all the arts and design principal were related to each other. Long after the Nazis closed the school in 1930s, Gropius’s believe still have impact on graphic and typography design. In an amazingly short time, graphic designers were able to combine analytical skills with abstract forms to mass produced in order to convey ideal political ideal.
“This spread and throw-out is from Jan Tschichold’s seminal work Asymmetric Typography, originally published in 1935. In it Tschichold argued that typographic consistency is a necessary precursor to understanding, and described designers as akin to engineers. His work was nevertheless aesthetically refined and dynamic. Here he explains the parallels between abstract art and typographic layout.”
This is the one from the page of Futurist magazine Lacerba, published in 1914. The work was breaking from the last layout design, by follow the new development from the grid. The page seems chaotic, but it is intentional. This crated opportunity for a better system to develop.
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“Dutch designer Wim Crouwel is known for his exploration and experimentation with grids. In this poster for the Vormgevers exhibition in 1968, he made the grid visible. This device then formed the basis not only for the layout, but also for the lettering.”
“Having started the journal Octavo, designers 8vo edited and designed it from the mid 1980s to the early 1990s. The design often explored systematic and modular approaches, but in issue 7 the designers chose to reveal their methods by giving the grid coordinates, like a map, and printing it as a background to each page.“
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“The ingenuity of the “A” paper sizing system appeals to designers who are interested in modular approaches to design. For the true modernist, working with standard paper sizing is more economic and celebrates mass production. But, for designers who want to usurp the system, there are countless ways to subdivide the sheet sizes to arrive at more unusual formats.”
“The Swiss designer Karl Gerstner’s 1962 grid for the periodical Capital is near perfect. His unit, both horizontally and vertically, was 10pt—the baseline to baseline measurement of the text type. The type area was a square of 58 units. Allowing for intercolumn spaces, this gave Gerstner grids of two, three, four, five, and six columns and fields.”
“Several post-War Swiss designers are the best-known exponents of the grid. This spread is from Josef Müller-Brockmann’s Grid Systems in Graphic Design, in which he explains, in meticulous detail, how multicolumn and field-based grids can be used flexibly to achieve any number of different layouts, in both 2-D and 3-D work.”
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Jan Tschichold The 20th century was greatly influenced by the designer Jan Tschichold. Not only did he introduce new approaches to typography, he set standards for modern design with his books and ideas. Tschichold’s background in calligraphy was very helpful in his upbringing, as well as influences gathered from the Bauhaus movement, and modernism. Although many found Tschichold’s work inspiring, he came across a rough patch in Germany with the Nazi regime however found a way to continue creating typographic and design work. Jan Tschichold was born in Leipzig, Germany to Franz and Maria Tschichold on April 2, 1902. Franz Tschichold’s occupation as a sign painter and calligrapher becomes very beneficial to his son’s future as a designer. Tschichold became familiarized with painted lettering and calligraphy at a young age with the help of his father. Not only was he acquainted with letter painting; he was also familiar with the art of the book. Tschichold spent countless hours studying civilizations of the past and the story of books and lettering at an exhibition of the history of civilization at the Hall of Culture. Although he was skilled in letter painting, and was full of knowledge on the art of the book, his aspirations were to become an artist. His parents were very skeptical about Tschichold’s dream job due to the work field being unstable and uncertain. Compromising with his parents, he would attend the Teacher Training College at Grimma to become a teacher of drawing. Tschichold however did not forget about the study of lettering, he continued it in his free time. Within his studies he realized that there was a need for new typefaces and better letter forms. He then found himself becoming more attracted to the idea of becoming a type designer. Tschichold then received consent from his parents to become a type designer. It was decided that after attending the school in Grimma for 3 years, he would then continue his education at the Academy for the Graphic Arts and the Book Production Trade at Leipzig.
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Jan Tschichold in 1920
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hen attending the Weimar Bauhaus Exhibition, Tschichold came to believe that abandoning the rule that setting must be symmetrical was the only way to recreate interest in typography. Tschichold also thought that san serif typefaces were universal for any type of job. In Jan Tschichold’s manifesto, Typographische Mitteilungen, he stated the following principles of typography in his book.
Single-Alphabet Type Designed by Jan Tschichold in 1929
Jan Tschichold in 1962
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Principles of Typography 1. The new typography is purposeful. 2. The purpose of all typography is communication. Communication must be made in the shortest, simplest, most definite way. 3. For typography to perform its social function, there must be organization of its component parts, both internal (i.e. content) and external (consistent use of printing methods and materials). 4. Internal organization is restriction to the basic elements of typography: letters figures, signs, lines of type set by hand and by machine.
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“Die Neue Typography” Jan Tschichold wrote his first book Die neue Typographie in 1928. This book was written in dogmatic tones that he later regretted. However Tschichold’s book conveyed a strong message, he was insisting on simplicity and purity in design. Tschichold eventually abandoned his rigid beliefs around 1932 and said “Die neue Typographie is too extreme”, then steered back to classicism. He also claimed that modernist design in general was authoritarian and fascistic. In 1933, Tschichold had much of his work seized by the Gestapo during the Nazi regime. The Nazi’s accused Tschichold of creating “un-german” artwork, and were suspicious of him being in collaboration with the communists. Him and his wife were then arrested. After 6 weeks, a police officer got him and his family tickets to Switzerland, and him and his family escaped from Nazi Germany in August, 1933.
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Drawings for Sabon
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an Tschichold is well known for the design of Penguin Books. While working with the c company he standardized practice for creating the covers that were to go on all of the Penguin Books, and color-coded genres. Tschichold oversaw more than 500 books during his career at Penguin Books. Another thing Tschichold is greatly known for is creating the type face Sabon in 1967. He created Sabon to meet
specific technical requirements. The typeface was commissioned by a group of German master printers. The requirements were that it should be suitable for production, it had to be easy and pleasant to read, and wanted the style to be similar to Garamond however 5% narrower. This typeface then became a distinguished addition to the range of modern book faces.
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Edward Johnston Edward Johnston was born in San José, Uraguay on February 11, 1872. Edward Johnston was a type designer, calligrapher, author, and teacher. He studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh. In 1898 he obtains his Ph. D. after which he moves to London and tudies ancient writing techniques in the British Museum. In 1906 Johnston determined “Essential” characters on ancient roman inscriptions while deriding commercial lettering. Johnston accepted the decoration of medieval-inspired forms. Edward Johnston deeply warned against the dangers of exaggeration of type. Edward Johnston was inspired by
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the 19th Century arts and crafts movement. Johnston referred to the renaissance and middle ages for pure, uncorrupted letter forms. He considered this love for pure letter forms as him being “romantically attached to history”. From 1899–1913 Edward Johnston taught at the Central School of Arts and Crafts in London in the new lettering department. In 1906 his book “Writing and Illuminating and Lettering” is published, causing something of a “renaissance” for calligraphy. It is considered the most influential book on calligraphy ever written.
Edward Johnston’s Wrting & Illuminating Lettering.
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Herbert Bayer Herbert Bayer was an Austrian and American graphic designer and artist. He is most recognized as a member of the Bauhaus. In between Herbert Bayer’s time at the Bauhaus and his career in America he spent time as the Art Director of Vogue magazine’s Berlin office. His contributions to the fields of graphic design, typography and advertising were numerous and extremely impacting. A major accomplishment that should be noted was his design for a typeface that consisted of entirely lowercase letters. The German black letter types were overly ornate for his taste and their use of capital letter for every proper noun was annoying. Logically, Bayer developed a sans-serif alphabet of lowercase letters titled “Universal.”
Herbert Bayer’s Univeral typeface
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Bibliography Crawford, Alan. Ideas and Objects: The Arts and Crafts Movement in Britain. MIT Press, 1997. Print. Morris, William. Hopes and Fears for Art. London: Ellis & White, 1882. Print. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Web. 2015. Art, Design, and Visual Thinking. The Arts and Crafts Movement. 1995. Print. Drucker, Johanna.. McVarish, Emily. Graphic Design History: A Critical Guide. 2012. Print. Pioneers of Modern Typography. New York: Hastings House, 1970. Print. Tschichold, Jan. Jan Tschichold: Typographer. Bedford Square: Lund Humphries Limited, 1975. Print. Roberts, Lucienne. â&#x20AC;&#x153;A Brief History of Grids.â&#x20AC;? Graphics. com. Mediabistro Inc., 2008. Web. 09 Apr. 2015. Design Is History. Web. 9 Apr. 2015. <http://www. designishistory.com/1920/herbert-bayer/>. Web. 9 April. 2015. <http://www.linotype.com/733/ edwardjohnston.html> 29