The Good Old Neue
Typografie Paul Rand
The Good Old Neue Typografie
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n the folder titled “Typography U.S.A.,” the Type Directors Club announces: “At last a new form…an entirely new concept in typography has been realized, a typography that is purely American. This new typography, the product of contemporary science, industry, art, and technology, has become recognized internationally as the ‘New American Typography’.” In the light of what has happened and what is happening in this field in America, it is very difficult for me to understand this claim. This is not to say that the statement is deliberately misleading, but, merely that I, personally, am unaware that anything of the sort is occurring. The folder goes on to ask: “What is this new form?” I can only answer that I do not know. And to the next question: “What does it look like?” I can only say that the best of it looks like typography that could have come from Germany, Switzerland, England, Holland, France, etc. Briefly, it is an offspring of the “international style,” which means, as I am sure we all understand, a blending not only of the ideas of different peoples but an interaction of the different arts—painting, architecture, and literature, as well as the so-called applied arts, as exemplified in the ideograms of Apollinaire, the montages of Picasso, Schwitters, and Lissitzky, the paintings of Doesburg and Leger, the architecture of Oud and LeCorbusier, as well as countless others.
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The Good Old Neue Typografie
To deny the fact that American Typography is basically a continuation of, sometimes a retrogradation from, and, sometimes, an improvement upon the “new typography” which was fathered on the continent of Europe, would be to ignore the revolutionary impact on all the arts of Cubism, Dadaism, and all the other “isms” and to overlook the influence of movements such as de Stijl and the Bauhaus, as well as individual pioneers who actually changed the face of traditional typography. If one compares American typographic contributions with those of American illustration or even American motor car or refrigerator design, there is little question that there is such a thing as “American” illustration,” “American” motor car design, or “American” refrigerators. In none of these cases am I discussing relative merits, I am merely pointing out that they are American and not Americanized. On the other hand, I believe the “New American Typography” can more accurately be called the New Americanized European Typography since there can be little doubt as to its origin. This is not to say that there are not individual American designers who have made valuable contributions to typographic design, particularly in the graphic arrangement of the printed page, but, these contributions have been mainly in the nature of variations of basic European principles; not is it to belittle the fact that an American designer, such as Morris Benton, in redesigning such typefaces as Garamond and Bodoni, had done significant work. In his connection, however, it is my understanding that in this symposium we are primarily concerned with formal typographic arrangement, and that while the redesign of typefaces or the creation of new typefaces its vitally important, the typeface is but an ingredient in the overall design complex.
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Paul Rand
Furthermore, it is somewhat ironic to note the very generous use of European typeface in the “The New American Typography.” How many printed pieces use, for example, such faces as Venus, Standard, or Didot, not to mention the classical design—Garamond, Caslon, Baskerville, Bodoni, Bembo, etc., etc—all of European origin? As to the question what effect certain indigenous factors such as the difference in language have on typographic usage, I would say that I believe this to be a rather superficial conditioning factor. As I write this paper, it is difficult for me to think of any single book on American modern typography, which would, for example, equal the Swiss publication, Satztechnik and Gestaltung, let alone such classics as Tschichold’s Die Neue Typografie, Typographishe Gestaltung, or even his later, more conventional book, Designing Books. In 1929 Douglas C. McMurtrie wrote Modern Typography and Layout, a book which contained some good illustrative material as well as some revealing text. The makeup of this book, however, was not only in the modernistic style, but monstrous example of American typography. I would, nevertheless, like to emphasize once again that no fair-minded person, American or otherwise, can deny the influence of such American designers as Goudy, DeVinne, Bruce Rogers, and Dwiggins, not only on American but on European typography as well. However, when we compare the enormous impact on modern typography of just one European designer, such as Jan Tschichold, there is little doubt that the influence of the aforementioned designers has been far more limited.
Bodoni Bodoni
B
Bodoni followed the ideas of John Baskerville, as found in the printing type Baskerville: increased stroke contrast and a more vertical, slightly condensed, upper case.
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Paul Rand
It would seem to me that before we are able to evaluate the “New American Typography,” we must necessarily place it in its historical, political, and linguistic context---a rather complex undertaking for designers people actually engaged in doing rather than philosophizing, to cope with. Furthermore, in all humility, I believe that the present time we are too close to the trees, so to speak, to evaluate the situation. No doubt, in time we can hope to produce a more indigenous kind of typography, one which satisfies our basic needs through original formal solutions, rather than the one which is self-consciously obsessed with style. I am afraid that at the present time, at least for me, it is, therefore, impossible to answer the question— ‘What is new form?” I would like to conclude by saying that good typography, American or otherwise, is not a question of nationality, but of practicality; namely, it is that of resolving the specific problem in adequate formal terms. In the early twenties, when Tschichold wrote his revolutionary book on modern typography he did not call it German or Swiss or French, he called it simply—”Die NeueTypographie.”
Although the f appears in Paul Rand’s original publication of this article in the 1960s, only two years ago was this letter generally accepted as an alternative to the ph in the German word “typograpfie.”
This project was produced as partial fulfillment of the requirements of GDES 311 Typographic Systems in the Graphic Design Department at The University of the Arts in Philadelphia, PA, Fall 2013. Maggie Wu, designer. Rachele Riley, faculty advisor. The essay ‘The Good Old Neue Typografie’ by Paul Rand is an excerpt from Texts on Type: Critical Writings on Typography, edited by Steven Heller and Philip B. Meggs (Allworth Press, NY, 2001). The main text is set in the typeface Adobe Garamond at 10/14 points. The layout was created using Adobe InDesign CS6.