Invisible Ink Critical perspectives in typography by Pam Surz

Invisible Ink CRITICAL PERSPECTIVES ON TYPOGRAPHY Master of Communication Design 2016 The Bowen Street Press 1st Edition

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Published in 2016 by The Bowen Street Press The Bowen Street Press Building 9, Bowen Street RMIT University Melbourne Victoria 3000 www.thebowenstreetpress.com Phone: (+613) 9925 3155 Email: thebowenstreetpress@gmail.com All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or in any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system without prior permission from the publisher. Copyrighted material used in the production of this book is covered under the Copyright Act 1968, Section 40.1: Fair Dealing for the Purpose of Research or Study. This book is not for sale or purchase and will be distributed only to the students involved in the production of the book. The book will also be used for teaching purposes. Copyright text ÂŠ Fiona Bruce, Joanna Tolias, Kesong Yang, Meng Sun, Jess Kneebone, Tomas Xie, Maria Finna, Pam Suarez, Charlotte Scales, Dan Higgins, Matthew Campisi, Rida Abbasi, Beatrice Warde, Walter Benjamin and Jan Tschichold. Copyright in volume form ÂŠ The Bowen Street Press. Cataloguing-in-publication details are available from the National Library of Australia. ISBN: 978-0-9873824-7-4 Edited by Sakshi Bhattad, Christopher Black, Grace Carter, Pia Gaardboe, Alexandra Milne and Amy Smolcic. Cover and text design by Pam Suarez. Typesetting and layout by Pam Suarez. Printed and bound in Australia by Trojan Press.

CONTENTS i. INTRODUCTION

59.

STORM OF THE GLASS by Dan Higgins

PLAYING WITH PENGUINS by Fiona Bruce

65.

THIS IS THE RHYTHM OF THE TYPE by Joanna Tolias

COFFEE TABLE BOOKS ARE FAB by Matthew Campisi

71.

15.

WE ARE FAMILY by Kesong Yang

THE BOOK AS AN EXTENSION OF THE EYE by Rida Abbasi

77. APPENDIX

23.

THERE IS NO SLIGHT DIFFERENCE by Meng Sun

29.

79.

I LOVE DICK by Jess Kneebone

THE CRYSTAL GOBLET, OR PRINTING SHOULD BE INVISIBLE by Beatrice Warde

85.

35.

MIND THE GAP, TYPE AND SIZE by Tomas Xie

UNPACKING MY LIBRARY by Walter Benjamin

95.

41.

THE TEXT WITHIN THE COFFEE RING by Maria Finna

THE PRINCIPLES OF THE NEW TYPOGRAPHY by Jan Tschichold

47.

TYPOGRAPHY SPEAKS LOUDER THAN WORDS by Pam Suarez

53.

REBEL WITH A CAUSE by Charlotte Scales

INTRODUCTION When Beatrice Warde penned The Crystal Goblet, her ideas brought focus to the notion that type well used is invisible. Invisible Ink has taken this idea and run with it, to create an anthology of essays on typography. Invisible Ink was curated, edited and published by The Bowen Street Press (Master of Writing and Publishing). Their vision was for a book that was academic in content and aesthetically exciting. Invisible Ink was meant for those who were passionate and knowledgeable about typography, as well as those with even an inkling of an interest who wished to know the subject better. The essays were written by the students of the Master of Communication Design, who were given the task of taking eminent essays on typography as a primary source and providing their own interpretation of the subject matter. Each writer had to think about where they stood on the question of whether the typesetting of a page affected the telling of the tale. In order to select twelve essays, the team at The Bowen Street Press rigorously assessed each submission for readability, critical engagement and creativity. This ensured a fair selection process and the twelve most appropriate pieces were chosen. Included in the appendix are three critical works that have had a great influence on Invisible Ink. They are highly regarded, essential readings for typography. Walter Benjamin was a contemporary of Beatrice Warde. His piece Unpacking My Library, about the collection and acquisition of books, argues that the quality of a book is not measured by its usefulness, but by the relationship that it has with the owner. Our books do not live in us, we live in our books. The Principles of New Typography by Jan Tschichold came before Beatrice Warde, and his principles are considered to be the building blocks of modern typography. The Principles of New Typography is something of a Rosetta Stone for type.

Not only did the design students prepare the content of the work, they shaped it. They are designers, after all. From thirty submissions, The Bowen Street Press selected one designer who would typeset the work and put together a cover design. Pam Suarez presented to the team at the Bowen Street Press a design that was exciting, engaging, readable and applicable across twelve chapters. The design was creative, without being overwhelming. It was the most practical for the assignment and exactly met the brief. Invisible Ink has been an enormous undertaking for six novice publishers at The Bowen Street Press. The finished product is something that should inspire one to look not simply at the words on a page, but their structure, format and typeface. It should make one stop, the next time they open a book, pause and decide for themselves whether the type of that publication has been well used...is it invisible? Go ahead, look inside and judge for yourself.

PLAYING WITH PENGUINS Typographic Conventions in Penguin Plays and Their Effects on Readability Fiona Bruce In the dark art of typography, there are certain tricks that soothe the reader’s eye and complement the feeling of the text. For most traditional, text-heavy books, the typography (the style and arrangement of type) aims to be as inconspicuous as possible so that the look of a page does not detract from the content. This is what critic Beatrice Warde coined ‘the crystal goblet’ of typography back in 1932. However, this tradition is questioned when we look at different genres of text, such as plays. A quick audit of my bookshelf identifies ten plays published by Penguin. Penguin’s goal is to make quality literature affordable and portable. One of the ways Penguin achieves this is by standardising the size, cover art, typography and typesetting of their books, with only minor variations over time. Some of my Penguin plays were purchased in the seventies by my mother as a high school student. Some were picked up cheap at secondhand bookstores, with the most recent purchased during my days at university. Despite the time that has passed, many elements remain consistent. Looking inside these volumes, it is certainly not the ‘crystal goblet’ that offers a transparent view into the playwright’s world. In fact, some pages appear totally chaotic at first glance. By following the ‘macro typography’ rules that normally make a text readable — such as paragraphs, indents, italics for emphasis, and justification — has Penguin compromised a play’s readability?

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THE TYPOGRAPHIC CONVENTIONS OF PENGUIN PLAYS Graphic designer and typographer Jan Tschichold argues in The Principals of the New Typography, originally published in 1928, that form (how something looks) should come from the most economic expression of function (how it works). Building on this notion in The Elements of Typographic Style, the poet and typographer Robert Bringhurst notes that a larger typographical palette is required for poetry and drama, as these typographical elements take on a similar function as markings in a musical score (1992). For playwrights, a play is a two dimensional instruction manual for creating a three dimensional eventâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;the performance. Thus, a play can be broken down into four main categories of text: headings, character names, dialogue and stage directions, each with their own typographic style. Headings are centred in a large point size and include a page break. They are most often used to define acts or scenes. Character names are written in small capitals, with some additional space between the letters (known as tracking). This replaces any clarity lost by not having the variable heights (called ascenders and descenders) in lower case letters giving shape to words. They appear at the start of dialogue and within stage directions. Dialogue makes up most of the text in a play and is written in a serif typeface â&#x20AC;&#x201D;with the little ticks at the ends of each letter that help the eye track from one letter to another, speeding up our recognition of words and sentences. Dialogue that is longer than one line uses hanging indents, which helps to distinguish dialogue from character names. Line indents only stand out as markers when they visually break the straight left-hand edge of the text. But with so many indents in plays caused by the exchange in dialogue, their function as a marker becomes problematic. As the length of a piece of dialogue can vary from a single word to a whole monologue, the right-hand edge of the text can also appear very ragged, despite attempts to justify the page.

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Furthermore, dialogue that has poetic rhythm, such as Shakespeare, is sometimes offset, causing large gaps to appear between a characterâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s name and their dialogue. It is also common in poetic dialogue for a page to contain both justified and left-aligned portions of text, as the rules of poetic composition and typesetting clash. This causes the eye to jump and occasionally second-guess its position.

Spencer, T (ed) 1996, Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare, Penguin Books, London.

Stage directions look very different to dialogue and can appear anywhere in a play. They are identified by square brackets and italicised, with a double indent that adds to the ragged appearance of the left edge. Contradictory to this rule are stage directions at the top of a scene, which are not indented or bracketed. In traditional books, italics and square brackets are used sparingly; italics should emphasise words and square brackets should denote modified text. However, some playwrights, such as Arthur Miller, have whole pages of stage directions in italics, which affects readability.

playing with penguins

Miller, A 1961, Death of a Salesman, Penguin Books, London.

A suggestion for how a Penguin play could look.

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AREAS OF EXPLORATION Despite issues with readability, the long history of Penguin plays may suggest that this is the best way to typeset plays and any changes will simply add another layer of confusion. Yet the typographer Fraser Muggeridge reminds us that typographic principles are not fixed and should respond to shifting demands. Screenplays, for example, share many of the functional elements of theatrical plays but use different typographic conventions, such as liberal line spacing, and are therefore much clearer to read. As plays are much shorter than novels, their extent (how many pages in total) could easily be doubled by adding space between dialogue. While this may increase production costs, the play’s extent would still be within the limits of a standard Penguin novel. As such, there would be minimal impact on affordability or portability. Additionally, character names could be abbreviated to three to five letters, a technique I’ve seen successfully used in a 1962 Oxford University Press edition of As You Like It. Then a multi-column format could be used to separate character names from dialogue, with character names appearing in a narrow left-hand column and dialogue in a wider right column, spaced by a narrow gutter. This would ensure a straight, left edge for the dialogue, which would improve readability. This technique is already used for unpublished manuscripts in rehearsals. The use of italics for stage directions is problematic only when the directions are especially long. This happens mostly at the start of a scene. Rather than italicising large chunks of text, perhaps a subheading would be more efficient. As headings are usually kept to a minimum in plays, introducing a subheading is unlikely to cause confusion. FINAL THOUGHTS ON READABILITY In the 1931 book An Essay on Typography by typeface designer, sculptor and printmaker Eric Gill, a chapter is dedicated to ‘The Book’, pointing out that in designing a book one should ask ‘who is going to read this?’ and ‘under what circumstances?’ Plays can afford to be more visually complex because of the conditions in which they are read. Unlike novels, which are

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read at the speed in which the brain can process information from the eye, plays are supposed to be read at the pace of human speech, which in most cases is significantly slower. A call for more space on the page may be redundant if the pace of reading is considered. In addition, plays generally only take an hour or two to read from start to finish. Therefore, while the reader may have to work harder to read the text, it is unlikely to be as frustrating or fatiguing as a novel using the same typographical structure. According to Jan Tschichold (1928), our reading style has changed over time to include pre-scanning before a text is read line by line. This is undoubtedly true for plays as cast and crew scan for information relevant to their own contribution to a performance. In this way, character names and stage directions stand out. The typography may not be fluid, but it is functional. Reading a play is the first experience of a playwright’s imagined world before it truly comes to life on stage. As Beatrice Warde points out, if reading becomes tiring or frustrating, those feelings may be associated with the content (1955). What good is a cheap read if one can’t enjoy it? The typographer Anthony Froshaug reminds members of his profession to consider how a text should be set out so that its fullest meaning becomes clear (1967). It is a balancing act between mass production, functionality and readability, but one that is advisable if publishers such as Penguin want to improve the experience for their readers.

‘Reading a play is the first experience of a playwright’s imagined world before it truly comes to life on stage.’

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References: -- Bringhurst, R 1992, The Elements of Typographic Style, Hartley & Marks, Washington, D.C. -- Gill, E 2013, An Essay on Typography, Penguin Classics, London. -- Froshaug, A 1967, ‘Typography is a grid’, The Designer, vol. 167. -- Muggeridge, F 2010, ‘Typography with Words’, Eye Magazine, vol. 19, no. 75, retrieved 5 August 2016, /http://mail.eyemagazine.com/feature/ article/they-work-with-words-1. -- Tschichold J, 1928, The Principals of the New Typography, retrieved 5 August 2016, <http://t-y-p-o-g-r-a-p-hy.org/MEDIA/PDF/ ThePrinciplesoftheNewTypography.pdf>. -- Warde, B 1955, ‘The Crystal Goblet, or Printing should be Invisible’,The Crystal Goblet: Sixteen Essays on Typography, Sylvan Press, London.

THIS IS THE RHYTHM OF THE TYPE Joanna Tolias When you’re travelling that daily commute and go to listen to some Kanye, or whatever you listen to, is the first thing that comes to your mind when you hear that beat, or that bass drop, ‘this song is so Helvetica’? Or when that Paris Hilton song (that you have for some reason) comes up on shuffle, does your mind go straight to (Windings)? Probably not. But think about it, the printed word and music do have things in common. It’s one of those notions that we don’t consider, but when it’s brought to our attention, and we look into it further, it does make sense. Upon approaching the topic of typography and how the role of the printed word has evolved, we can see that it has shifted from not only communicating to us and occasionally providing written pieces with ornamental design; but it also has a way to attach certain emotions and feelings when we read them, much like any genre of music would. Typographer Robert Bringhurst discusses the ways in which ‘typography is to literature as musical performance is to composition: an essential act of interpretation, full of endless opportunities for insight or obtuseness … like music, it can be used to manipulate behaviour and emotions’ (1992, p. 19). Much like music, typography is a factor that takes its time to evolve into something that will influence audiences (readers and listeners alike), and leave a lasting impression — good or bad. The role of the typographer is to ‘interpret and communicate the text to readers. Its tone, the tempo, its logical structure, its physical size, all determine the possibilities of its typographic form’ (Bringhurst 1992, p. 20). A good musician can make a smash

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hit from a few words and a tune that you can’t get out of your head; similarly, a good typographer can transform and create influential typography from textual poppycock (Bringhurst 1992). Do we see some connections between type and music so far? Allow me to continue. Let’s backtrack a bit to 1439, where a German blacksmith, goldsmith, printer and publisher named Johannes Gutenberg became the first European to use the printing press to mass produce printed type. This process blew the minds of many. In fact, print establishments at the time were, in a way, seen as being equivalent to death metal. The people often called print houses ‘printer’s devil’ or referred to mass printing as the ‘black art’. It frightened people, almost like how death metal frightens unfamiliar listeners; but the results were nothing short of impressive and fast paced, as a result of skill and development (like that of a rad guitar solo). Gutenberg’s method of producing type using speciality alloys, inks and the press itself emphasised that letters do in fact, ‘evoke mood and time and have a shape and life of their own outside of legibility’, as highlighted by modern designer and novelist, Martin McClellan (2009, para. 13). McClellan also explains that Gutenberg influenced ‘the birth of typography as a profession, which is akin to the birth of recorded music’ (2009, para. 14).

‘The people often called print houses ‘printer’s devil’ or referred to mass printing as the ‘black art’.’

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Back in the day, music couldn’t be recorded and reproduced. It would be performed and heard by an audience, and lived on in the memories of the people. That’s it. This is also applied to typographic work; it could only be performed by a scribe at an establishment known as a Scriptorium (a place for writing and copying manuscripts), and as a result, the audience base was nothing short of limited. But times changed. Once technology allowed for music to be recorded and distributed, the audience base jumped to the millions. After Gutenberg introduced his printing press technique and provided Europe with a method through which typography could be printed in large quantities, suddenly written works became easier to distribute to the masses. Like a dubstep song that’s fast-paced and electronically produced, printing and typographic work also picked up the pace with the evolution of technology. Technology has clearly made music and type creation and distribution portable, convenient, fast and accurate; but has all this come at the cost of quality? I think it has. Let’s fast-forward to today; society evolved from the age of the CD to the MP3 in a matter of years. But now, we’re beyond that. The people want convenience and no concerns with the consumption of our phone’s memory space. What’s the ‘solution’? Music platforms like Spotify. It brings millions of songs to your fingertips, along with ads aplenty. You can argue that along with the convenience, there has been a removal of quality, in a sense. The music isn’t being heard as it was initially intended anymore; it has lost the quality that comes along with opening the CD cover, pulling out the booklet of images and song lyrics, and waiting for the music to start once you’ve put the CD into the player. Much like Spotify, a similar circumstance has applied to the world of typography in books, through eReaders such as Kindle. The age of Kindle has removed so many joyous qualities that come with reading a book, at the cost of lightweight convenience. The physical turning of the page, the smell of the paper, being able to see how much you’ve read by looking at the book from the top, being able to display it, and the good old ‘dog ear’ makeshift bookmark. You can’t do any of those with an ebook. Putting all this aside, the biggest crime that ebooks have committed is the disregard for typography’s role in each and every book.

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Unbeknownst to most readers, the text in books is carefully considered by a typographer like a producer considering the notes in a song. The typographer works towards making the text effortless to read and ensures that it complements the tone of the book. This includes considering such elements as margins (so your thumbs have room to hold the pages), the segmentation of paragraphs and indents to break up large blocks of text, and the amount of words that run across each line, so you arenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t overwhelmed with text. But no, ebooks donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t seem to care for such things. You can zoom in all you want in an ebook. Do you want four words per line? Sure! Too easy. How much more will technology compromise the essential elements of both music and typography at the cost of convenience? Maybe the future will make a trend out of using Discmans and carrying books around again; just like how DJs work songs from as far back as the 1920s into the modern music scene, because the past is cool. Who knows how things will evolve from now.

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References: -- Bringhurst, R 1992, ‘The Grand Design’, The Elements of Typographic Style, Hartley & Marks, Washington, D.C. -- McClellan, M 2009, ‘Gutenberg and How Typography is Like Music’, McSweeney’s Online, retrieved 27 July 2016, /https://www.mcsweeneys.net/ articles/gutenberg-and-how-typography-is-like-music.

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WE ARE FAMILY Five Rules for Keeping Consistency in Book Series’ Kesong Yang When people browse through books on a shelf, they can easily identify which are single books and which are part of a series just by looking at the covers. The covers of book series’ have a clear and consistent identity. These kinds of books use similar typeface or layout to create a standardised look or theme while just changing the background colour to distinguish one book from the others. But if the covers are taken off, how can anyone identify which books are part of the series? The consistency of the typography, layout and even the captions can provide the audience with some evidence to recognise which books are in the same series in the same way that siblings with the same parents often look alike, though each of them is an individual and has a different personality. The similarity of a book series is presented through consistency. By analysing A5 (Muller & Weiland 2009–14), a series of design books, five rules under the headings of typography, layout and captions are distinctly applicable. These rules can help series’ of design books maintain consistency, showing that they are like siblings from the same family. CONSISTENCY OF TYPOGRAPHY In the series A5, the designer use a same font family across the books, creating a clear and strong identity for this series. Different styles of typeface from the same family create a clear hierarchy on each page: the title is in bold style font and the body text is in regular style font. To make a clear hierarchy in this book the font size also changes, which makes it easy for readers to recognise different information on each page. Thus, there are five rules for using typeface in book design:

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Rule 1 Make a consistent design by using the same font style for titles and subtitles throughout the series. The audience is likely to get a sense of familiarity with the series of books if the same typeface is used. In the same way that using consistent core elements for the series’ cover design allows people to identify a series or an author, the inside of a book also requires a consistency to create an identity that readers will remember and recognise. Rule 2 Just like changing the level of your voice makes your speech clearer, changing the size of fonts makes a hierarchy clearer. Beatrice Warde (1955, p. 13) said, ‘Type well used is invisible as type, just as the perfect talking voice is the unnoticed vehicle for the transmission of words’. A suitable size of font can also make the text more comfortable to read and more relaxing for the reader’s eyes. For example, a small sized font is more difficult to read and the reader’s eyes will feel tired focusing for too long. CONSISTENCY OF LAYOUT AND GRIDS There are several versions of layout throughout the A5 series, even within one book. It is possible that the designer wanted to show many creative ideas in the book by using different layout styles. While the reader might be able to find relevance for some of the styles, the flexible layout also makes it harder for people to read. The changes in layout mean that the eye track is always changing, which could make readers feel uncomfortable.

‘Breaking the rules in order to emphasise some important points or to play with the layout is allowed as long as it is designed in an appropriate way and not over-designed.’

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It could be a great layout design for a single page but not for an entire book or series of books. This is because having a consistent and logical layout plays an important role in the bookâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s design: it provides the audience with a sense of coherency across the book series. Thus, if consistency of typeface is ignored, it becomes difficult for readers to recognise that the books are part of a series.

Muller, J 2014, Hans Hillmanne, A5/01 series, Lars Muller Publishers, Germany

The A5 series uses three columns for the design layout, which means it has a consistent grid so that each page is neat and logical. It is easy to recognise the column layout design from book four to seven of the series, though it is obvious that in books one and two the columns are not always as clear. Having a grid design shows a process of creating a consistency for the book series (Muller & Weiland 2010). Rule 3 Keeping the consistency of the layout in a book, whether a single book or a series, is one of the most important things. The sequence and context of images and text on each page combines to make a book work as a whole system. Some information can be emphasised as a stand-out page, but doing this too often

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would break the whole system of the book. Andrew Haslam (2006, p. 143) said, ‘The functional aspects of page design are those that enable the reader to relate directly to the author’s message. A functional approach to the layout of the page is determined by the nature of the content. Books that consist primarily of text are designed to be read.’ Designers need to have a rule for their layout. This does not mean the designer has to keep and copy one style of layout for the whole series of books; there can be changes for some cases. Breaking the rules in order to emphasise some important points or to play with the layout is allowed as long as it is designed in an appropriate way and not over-designed. Rule 4 In order to make the book easy to follow, logical, readable and looking clear and elegant, the layout needs to have a certain sense of similarity on each page. Jan Tschichold (1995, p. 117) said that ‘Text has a logical sequence … being more logical, asymmetry has the advantage that its complete appearance is far more optically effective than symmetry.’ Setting the text in logical paragraphs and making sure the type is aligned makes the work easier to read. Similarity is the key for keeping consistency throughout the book and grids will help keep the layout neat and tidy. ‘The format of the book determines the external proportions of the page; the grid determines the internal divisions of the page; and the layout determines the position of the elements. The use of a grid gives a book consistency’ (Haslam 2006, p. 144). CONSISTENT CAPTIONS The A5 series contains lots of images; using captions to describe each image is important. When comparing the caption design in books one and two to others in the series, it is clear that the style is totally different. The captions in the first and second book have not been designed in a very logical way; the caption text is centred and set in a unique grid so that some captions are on the bottom left of the images, while some are to the right of the images. This disorganisation makes readers feel a little bit strange. But from the third book to the last, the change in caption design is obvious: the captions consistently stay on the bottom right of each page.

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Muller, J 2014, Rolf Muller, A5/07 series, Lars Muller Publishers, Germany.

MĂźller, J & Weiland, K (eds) 2010, Kieler Woche, A5/04 series, Lars MĂźller Publishers, Germany.

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Rule 5 Captions are usually set to follow the related images. A baseline grid is a fundamental structure that helps organise the vertical spacing of the layout. An image and its caption are grouped together and set using a baseline grid, which enables readers to easily get the information for the picture. Using a baseline grid is also a good way to set several images with their separated captions. It is a good idea for the designer to place each caption in order and to use numbers to distinguish their sequence. It is also important to keep the caption placement consistent within the book as it makes it easier for readers to recognise. CONCLUSION Books in a series are similar to siblings in a family: they have some differences but they are still related and look similar to each other. Consistency of typography, layout, grids and captions plays an important role in keeping each bookâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s coherence within its series. The five rules in this essay outline how a series of design books can maintain consistency from each individual book to the wider series. This gives the audience a strong sense that while each book is different, they are family.

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References: -- Haslam, A 2006, Book design, Laurence King Publishing, New York. -- Müller, J and Weiland, K (eds) 2010, Kieler Woche, A5/04 series, Lars Müller Publishers, Germany. -- Tschichold, J 1995, The New Typography: A handbook for modern designer, University of California Press, USA. -- Warde, B 1955, ‘The Crystal Goblet, or Printing should be Invisible’, The Crystal Goblet: Sixteen Essays on Typography, Sylvan Press, London.

THERE IS NO SLIGHT DIFFERENCE Meng Sun Imagine reading a book where everything is in the same font and size? It must be difficult for you to figure out where to start reading and what information matters most. You may even get lost in the page with the same or similar elements. That is why we need typographic hierarchy in book design or any layout design. Typographic hierarchy is the system of arranging typography that establishes an order of significance within the text, helping the reader easily locate the content they are looking for. Typographic hierarchy creates a contrast between elements, without it, every letter, every word and every sentence in a design would look the same. When building typographic hierarchy, designers can consider the use of different typefaces, sizes, weights, uppercase and lower case letters, bold or italics, orientations and colours. Different combinations of those design elements can achieve beautiful and clear typographic hierarchy. An effective typographic hierarchy should be accessible and transparent, not hidden on a page. No matter what typographic elements you choose to build a hierarchy, I believe when there is a clear typographic distinction, then typographic hierarchy just comes out naturally. Typographic hierarchy is like a pyramid, title on the top which is also the most eye-catching part, then subtitles, text and citations gradually comes further down. This flow of information aids the reading process. Most pages, and most entire documents can be set perfectly well with only one typographic family (Bringhurst, 2004). Using one family of type to build text hierarchy is simple and

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beautiful. The book A Nice Set collects interviews of artists. It uses ITC Century Std Cond font family to build a very straight-forward typographic hierarchy for the content. There are five layers of information, you will firstly notice the introduction of the artist at the first page of each artist’s interview, the use of bold face and large size gives you a sign that a new chapter begins. The interview questions and the artist’s response are in the same font size; typographic distinction is made by using different weights; questions are in bold, and responses are in regular, you can just easily scan all the text and find each conversation shortly. The notes are in an even smaller size compared with the body text, but small title and body text of notes are in different font weights for distinction. Chapter introduction, interview questions, artists’ response, note title and note text: five layers are established in a correct order. This is how we can build typographic hierarchy by using one family of type — creating contrast by applying different sizes and weights to title, subtitle, body text and notes. The bolder and bigger the type is, the faster your eye will be drawn to it. Bold typeface and large sized letters give emphasis to a page, and it is very common to use them for titles and headlines. Reference, notes and captions are always the lowest levels of a layout, make sure they are in the smallest size. Sometimes the use of italics can highlight a word or phrase in a less dramatic and more subtle way than bold face. It works particularly well in the tertiary level of type; you can find both consistency and contrast here.

‘The bolder and bigger the type is, the faster your eye will be drawn to it. Bold typeface and large sized letters give emphasis to a page, and it is very common to use them for titles and headlines.’

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I’ve seen an example of a slight typographic distinction, which is obviously not a good design. The book uses one typography family, the text is in the same size, body text is regular and subtitles are in regular italics, you cannot directly feel the layer because there is such a slight difference. The misleading and blurred message in this spread may make the reader feel lost. Therefore, we always remember to ‘make typographic variations obvious’, for instance, moving from regular to bold instead of regular to medium (Muggeridge, 2010). To ensure a big contrast is to ensure the reader can quickly sense the text layers when they scan the text. Various typefaces give a more dynamic character to book design. When you want to have more than one typographic family in your book design, I think you have to pay attention to combining different types. A good combination of type can clearly organise different levels of text in a layout, but unsuccessful typographic combinations have the opposite effect. To make all typographic distinctions clear, we should avoid combining similar typefaces. Combining slightly different typefaces brings confusion to the readers because you cannot easily distinguish them. As a result, the hierarchy cannot be easily identified. The use of different typefaces reduces consistency, and the use of two slightly different typefaces impedes on both consistency and contrast. When you scan the text with slightly different fonts, you take a longer time to find the information you are looking for, or it is harder for you to distinguish what part of text you are reading. Reading a book is not the time for you to train your observation, what we need is the clarity of hierarchy. One of the most classic ways of combining types is to pair a sans serif typeface with a serif typeface. This method simply embodies the principle of ‘making typographic distinctions clear’. For example, apart from using TC Century Std Cond font family (serif type) for the content, A Nice Set uses a sans serif font for the footer and page number, which makes sure that your eye can recognise and distinguish it as another part of the book and you wouldn’t be disrupted in your reading the content text. Subtle sized footer and page number are like a stabiliser of the layout, the page would be floating without

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them, and the use of combining sans serif typeface with a serif typeface separates them from the content. The combination of serif font and sans serif font could contribute to building text layers by creating a contrast in form, as we always have to ensure the typographic distinctions are clear. All in all, every layer of text has its own characters, like every layer of a pyramid cannot be replaced with other shapes or be moved to other positions. There is no slight difference when you create a typographic hierarchy, the typographic distinctions should be clear.

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References: -- Bringhurst, R 2004, The elements of typographic style, Hartley & Marks Western Australia. -- Muggeridge, F 2010, â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Typography with Wordsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;, Eye Magazine, vol. 19, no. 75, retrieved 3 August 2016, /http://mail.eyemagazine.com/feature/article/ they-work-with-words-1.

I LOVE DICK Jess Kneebone

Friday 5 August 2016 Dear I Love Dick virgin, When I first read I Love Dick, I thought about being a woman in love and the struggle of it all. I did so because the words were powerful, not because of the book’s typography. Even as a design enthusiast, I couldn’t agree more with the notion that ‘type well used is invisible as type’ (Warde 1955). I am referring to the most recent edition, released in 2015. Interestingly, I Love Dick was awarded best cover design for Women’s Fiction at the Academy of British Cover Design Awards in 2016. The book was designed by Peter Dyer, who some say altered the perception of books through cover design. He made ‘publishers realise that paperbacks did not have to be throw-away items but could be precious and collectible items in their own right’ (Mitchinson 1995). However, Dyer is not acknowledged in the imprint pages. In fact, it states: ‘Designed by Hedi El Kholti’, who works as editor for Chris Kraus and Sylvere Lotringer on Semiotext(e). El Kholti designed the words but not the appearance, collecting essays from Eileen Myles and Joan Hawkins to pay tribute to the book. The cover of Kraus’ I Love Dick is simple and challenges convention. First, it is an unusual green. Arguably, this colour was chosen because it is neither wholly feminine nor masculine. I Love Dick pushes the boundaries of fiction and reality, which may play into the colour choice here. It is an unnatural, artificial green and so is memorable. Second, the modernist, sans serif type on the cover is set large—there is no hiding it. Third, the large title is I Love Dick, which is culturally provocative, even in 2015. An author who is comfortable taking perceived pillow talk and shouting it aloud is not something you see

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much. Finally, the author’s name, Chris, could be both a female and male name, adding to the intrigue. The cover hooks you in before you have even opened the book to discover the clever, thoughtful, feminist reading inside. Those who read I Love Dick usually encounter the book a few times before they are brave enough to open it. The intrigue for I Love Dick begins at first sight, much like Kraus’s crazed love for the character of Dick in the book. I Love Dick sits on bookshelves with pride; you sneak a look and blush, then you grow courage and pick it up. From the opening sentence infatuation sets in. Oh, I see! The subject of this book is someone called Dick! At last, a copy is hurriedly stuffed to the bottom of a bag; we don’t want Grandma to see it on the tram. Later, when home and comfortable, Kraus’ genius is revealed. The type setting on the inside pages of I Love Dick is a beautiful collection of letters, phone call transcripts and faxes. This form requires the reader to pause many times throughout the book. The typographical layout is consistent, in what appears to be size 12 or smaller serif type. While Kraus’ character tumbles through states of reality, it feels personal, just like her writing. What we can see from a design perspective is the use of negative space in the layout. This makes me question if Kraus did this intentionally. I would say yes, because the pauses, marked by negative space, are just as important as the voices.

‘I Love Dick sits on bookshelves with pride; you sneak a look and blush, then you grow courage and pick it up.’

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I Love Dick culminates in the perfect crystal goblet where ‘everything is calculated to reveal rather than to hide the beautiful thing which it was meant to contain’ (Warde 1955). The visual cues of the book align with a diary: hard bound, compact in size, dated love letters in serif type and a confessional title. Would it have the same impact as a paperback book? It did not when first released in 1997—Kraus acknowledged it was, ‘more ridiculed than praised’ (Kraus 2014). In Beatrice Warde’s Crystal Goblet she notes that the mental eye, or reading voice, should focus ‘through type and not upon it’ (Warde 1955). While we would not want typographical decisions to compete with the window through which they are seen, either this new edition ignited an I Love Dick rebirth, or social and cultural factors. Kraus comments on the re-release and how after ‘nine years since its first publication, it was received as a new book’ (Kraus 2014). Regardless of influence, the 2015 edition of I Love Dick is one to love. When I finished I Love Dick it felt like I was in a secret club. As if I could walk with my copy proudly because I was in the know. When anyone, male or female, scoffed at the book I thought—one day you will learn of its significance and you’ll feel embarrassed for your reaction. We are in it together now. Love, I Love Dick Fan I Love Dick is a novel about a woman named Chris Kraus who, with a collection of unsuccessful films under her belt, falls madly in love with a critic named Dick. It begins with Chris enlisting the support of her academically accomplished husband Sylvere in a relentless pursuit for Dick’s affection. Through letters, faxes, unanswered phone calls and fierce reflections, Chris transforms her infatuation into raw, philosophical confessions as the protagonist in this literary sensation.

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Kraus has published Aliens and Anorexia, I Love Dick, Summer of Hate, Video Green: Los Angeles Art and the Triumph of Nothingness and Where Art Belongs, through the independent publisher she co-edits with her husband, Sylvere Lotringer: Semiotext(e). An established writer with a solid fan base, Kraus is a Professor of Writing at the European Graduate School. She writes for various magazines and currently lives in Los Angeles. As author and protagonist in I Love Dick, she blurs the lines of fiction and reality. For that reason, for this critical essay on book typography, it seemed fitting to write it as a letter to the I Love Dick virgins. Through the letter I’ve cited Beatrice Warde’s reflections on book typography, published in 1955. Warde talks about how printing should be invisible. She likens the purpose of good book typography to the role of a crystal goblet in wine tasting; ‘they both convey thought, ideas, images, from one mind to other minds’ (Warde 1955) free of obstructions. This letter outlines how I Love Dick is a perfect example of where ‘type well used, is invisible as type’ (Warde 1955).

Kraus, C, 2015, I Love Dick, Profile Books, London.

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Kraus, C, 2015, I Love Dick, Profile Books, London.

References: -- The Academy of British Cover Designs 2016, retrieved 5 August 2016, <http://abcoverd.co.uk>. -- Kraus, C 2014, ‘The New Universal’, Sydney Review of Books, retrieved 5 August 2016, <http://sydneyreviewofbooks.com/new-universal/>. -- Mitchinson, C 1995, ‘The 30 Second Sell’, Eye Magazine, vol. 18 no. 2, retrieved 5 August 2016, <http://www.eyemagazine.com/feature/article/ the-30-second-sell>. -- Warde, B 1955, ‘The Crystal Goblet, or Printing should be Invisible’,The Crystal Goblet: Sixteen Essays on Typography, Sylvan Press, London.

MIND THE GAP, TYPE AND SIZE

Tomas Xie In order to gain skills and knowledge we use educational books for reference. As a designer, I am interested in exploring effective ways to study design. I have discovered a book called Design School Wisdom, which includes tips and advice from various designers. This book aims to help students find the right way to study design. Interviews are included to assist the readers in comprehending the designers’ works. The entire cover of the book is filled with the letter ‘D’ and is attractive, even from a distance. However, the typeset of the book is not ideal. Several problems have occurred in the structure of the layout. As with public transport that we use daily, we take these metal machines to arrive at our destination and must find a way to enjoy our trip comfortably. Poor reading experience, as with uncomfortable public transport, affects mood and efficiency. GAP The ‘gap’ issue is reflected in both book reading and your daily commute. Imagine you are waiting for the train at the station. The train stops on the track, but the gap between the platform and the train is more than an easy step. You need to take a long stride and only just make it on board. This same problem occurs when reading Design School Wisdom. From pages 26–29, 64–77 and 92–99 the space between each paragraph line is too wide, forcing the reader to skim read (Figure 1). As a result, it takes more time and energy to read the paragraph. In contrast, consider Figure 2, a page from graphic designer Ziga Testen’s book Surfing the Black-Yugoslav Black Wave Cinema Yugoslav Black Wave Cinema and its Transgressive Moments. This excerpt shows narrowed spaces, giving the reader a comfortable distance from which to comprehend the content, similar to when you can take a relaxed step onto the train.

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Figure 1: Johnson, B & Pierce, J 2014, Design School Wisdom: Make First, Stay Awake, and Other Essential Lessons for Work and Life, Chronicle Books LLC.

Figure 2: Sekulic, D, Kirn, G & Testen, Z 2012, Surfing the Black - Yugoslav Black Wave Cinema and its Transgressive Moments, Jan van Eyck Academie, Maastricht, The Netherlands.

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TYPE Planning your journey is another challenge you may encounter in your daily travel. Most people must use more than one mode of transportation. The process of transferring from one vehicle to another not only wastes your time, but tests your patience. Searching for the correct route and platform causes the same frustration as when an author uses multiple typefaces in one text. In Design School Wisdom, the editor has used serif typeface Minion Capt Condensed Medium and sans serif typeface FF Kievit to construct the articles. Sans serif typefaces have no thick or thin transition in the strokes and have no serifs in any stroke of each letter. The serif typefaces have serifs in the strokes, which makes it easier for the reader to identify (Kliever 2016). A serif is a slight projection finishing off a stroke of a letter in certain typefaces. Using several typefaces and font versions can cause the reader excessive strain. Picture taking one mode of transport to your destination. You do not need to remember which station to get off and transfer. You can use the time to relax and enjoy the scenery. Using only one type family would have a similar effect on the reader. The book uses black and orange for the colour of the typeface. One typeface family with two colours distinguishes the content. Clarity plays an essential role in the effectiveness of typography (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995). SIZE Another problem with this book is the size of the typeface, especially in the interviews (Figure 1). The intervieweesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;

â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Using several typefaces and font versions can cause the reader excessive strain.â&#x20AC;&#x2122;

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names, are in a smaller uppercase style that is also underlined, which does not fit with the layout. Although this helps readers to distinguish names, it interferes with the reading experience. This is similar to the rush hour train which, when full of people, is claustrophobic and uncomfortable for passengers. In this way, using a smaller size font that is underlined and in uppercase is not unified and distinct. Beatrice Warde in her article The Crystal Goblet suggests that a perfect form of typography should be parallel (Armstrong 2009). The typeface used for interviews in Figure 3 would be more effective. Figure 3 is a page from Tina Henderson’s book Oriana Fallaci: Interviews With History And Conversations With Power. The bold uppercase typeface is used for the interviewer and interviewee’s names. Compared to the confused typefaces in Johnson and Pierce’s book, Henderson’s looks clear and tidy. Where a book provides tips for designers, the design of that book should be carefully edited to be an instructive example to the reader. If an educational book has problems like Design School Wisdom, then it cannot teach or provide knowledge of design to students. An enjoyable reading experience helps the reader understand information. For these reasons, designers should pay special attention to the arrangement of their book design.

Figure 3: Fallaci, O 2016, Interviews with History and Conversations with Power, Rizzoli.

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References: -- Armstrong, H 2009, ‘Graphic Design Theory; Readings From The Field’, in B Warde (ed.), The Crystal Goblet, Princeton Architectural Press, New York, pp. 39-43. -- Johnson, B and Pierce, J 2014, Design School Wisdom, Chronicle Books, San Francisco. -- Kliever, J 2016, ‘Fonts’, Canva, retrieved August 8 2016, <https:// designschool.canva.com/font-design/>. Henderson, T, Oriana Fallaci: Interviews with History and Conversations with Power, Tina Henderson LLC, retrieved August 8 2016, <http://tinahenderson.com/work/ oriana-fallaci-interviews-with-history-and-conversations-with-power/>.

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THE TEXT WITHIN THE COFFEE RING A Study in the Tessellated Relationship between Typeface and Text Maria Finna ‘When the type is poorly chosen, what the words say linguistically and what the letters imply visually are disharmonious, dishonest, out of tune’—Bringhurst INTRODUCTION In this essay I analyse the typographic layout of The DADA Reader: A Critical Anthology. I will analyse the aesthetic effectiveness of its chosen typefaces and whether or not these choices have suppressed, distorted, or effectively and clearly expressed the nature of the content. I will take a look at the Dada history, with an emphasis on Dada typography. I will look for similarities and make comparisons between the typographic layout and design of the publication and Dada typography. In doing so, I hope to gain insight into the tessellated relationship between typeface and content determining how, if at all, this relationship can affect the message. DADA HISTORY Dadaism was an avant-garde art movement in the 20th century. Birthed in 1916 in Zurich, Switzerland, it emerged amid the carnage of World War I as a subversive and revolutionary creative force. Dada was known for its anarchist, nihilistic, anti-rationalistic critiques of society and unrestrained attacks on all formal artistic conventions. The term anti-art is closely associated with the Dada movement. It applies to an array of concepts that reject prior definitions in art.

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Like predecessors cubism and futurism, Dada sought to liberate form from meaning through art, poetry and performance. They did however employ a new tactic: chance. ‘The dadaist artist freed himself from the rule and reason of causality by welcoming chance into the creative act itself. Through chance the artist can destroy old aesthetic habits as well as create new patterns of perception’ (Watts 1955, p. 1). DADA TYPOGRAPHY Dada’s typographic revolution sprouted from the ideology that typeface was to be used as a medium for the creation of meaning. The typography isolated the graphic work from the message. The visual communication stood independently by its subjective aesthetic meaning, with the interpretation being dependent on the viewer. Layouts were designed using different typefaces of different sizes, and assigning layers of ‘meaning’ to different weights of type. They composed disharmonious assemblages with disproportionate amounts of white space and multi-directional typesetting. Dada pushed typography to the limits of legibility and violated the norms of classical aesthetics, using its subversive style to establish the case for emptiness of language and logic. Dada did not want the reader to look ‘through’ words to decipher the meaning of the text. It wanted to compel the readers to look ‘at’ the shapes of typefaces in its dynamic layout. This philosophy went against the grain of typographers like Beatrice Warde whose essay The Crystal

‘Dada pushed typography to the limits of legibility and violated the norms of classical aesthetics, using its subversive style to establish the case for emptiness of language and logic.’

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Goblet is notable for its pragmatic, ‘good manners’ approach to typography. In it she argues that there is nothing simple or dull in achieving the transparent page, that typography should be invisible. ‘The type which, through any arbitrary warping of design or excess of colour, gets in the way of the mental picture to be conveyed, is a bad type’ (Warde 1955, p. 4). THE DADA READER: A CRITICAL ANTHOLOGY First published in 2006, The Dada Reader: A Critical Anthology is a 319 page paperback book, written and edited by Dawn Ades and published by Tate Publishing. There is a lot to decipher in the book. Let’s start with the typefaces. There are two serif and two sans serif fonts. The fonts from both of these type styles come in three colours: black, white and grey. The typestyles include bold, thin, condensed, regular and italic, with just about every variation in use. Some pages have up to nine variants. If your reading were restricted to that one particular page it might not be a problem, but as you continue to flick through the book it begins to feel like you are viewing television static. Dashed lines border the top of each page, also separating the content, splitting the text into titled segments. The type is straight-left ragged-right for the most part, with a wide margin of five cm for the majority of the book. This seems to be a stylistic decision. Although it can be handy to have a bit of extra margin space when holding such a thick book, this space is only advantageous for the right hand. Type on the right-hand side pages creeps into the fold of the book, which forces you to spread the pages open and reposition your grasp. The type on the left pages also runs very close to the edge of the page, which makes it not particularly convenient to hold on to that side either, as the thumb is always concealing text and needs constant repositioning. Structurally, its central axis is askew; there is no true sense of balance to the format of the pages. The majority of pages are single-columned with an average of ten words per line. The text on these pages is generally legible when it is not creeping into the fold. There are a small amount

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of pages with two or three columns, which are legible with good spacing between sentences. The book is divided into twelve parts. The pages that open each part are black and contain diagonal text and dashed lines. Normally, using dark pages for chapters or parts is effective in breaking up content. However, there are a number of dark grey pages within the book and the gradient tone between the black and grey is not distinguished enough. This makes the function of the black pages in the book redundant. There are some anomalies in the book’s orthography. These being: asterisk, bold as well as uppercase text, bullet points, arrows and deep paragraph indents. One would assume that this is a direct interpretation of the literature, but I do not think this is the case. I have a sense that some artistic liberties have been taken in the translation of this content. Tschichold argues that this sort of ‘imagination’ must be used on the basis of actual purpose, if truth in design is to be achieved (Tschichold 2006, p. 23). CRITICAL REFLECTION: THE COFFEE RING Overall I find the layout— with its numerous typographic styles and sizes— lacking in cohesion. They feel forced, superficial and pseudo-modern. Uniformity can be achieved with a myriad of typographic styles and sizes, but it requires more meaningful curating. The typographic design is outshone by the imagery contained within the book. It is a risk to ‘compete’ with a highly stylistic creative aesthetic. The typographic layout made itself known as an identity. Through the language of the design I feel there has been an attempt to express the Dada ethos of randomness, but the way this has been executed feels mechanical. There is a rhythm to it, everything has rhythm, it’s just not a great rhythm, and it is out of tune with the rhythm of the content. How will you receive the rhythmic vibration of structure and type? In my first analysis of the book I noticed a coffee ring stain on page thirty-one and assumed it to be part of the layout. Initially, I thought that it was a good design decision but then I second-guessed myself. I fingered the circumference of the

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ring and felt the texture of dried coffee on paper. The stain bled through to the next three pages. I was disappointed to discover that this was not part of the layout. That could have been an effective design decision. Some of the words that were given emphasis within that coffee ring were great: summits, nature, crystals, lunar light, free, charm, flying, alcoholism! In the spirit of Dada, I interpret my own meaning. CONCLUSION Upon analysing my thought process I realised that it was the nature of the content of the book that influenced my thoughts to accept the coffee stain as part of the publication. There is a power of suggestion, a limitlessness influenced by the messages contained within the pages. The way that content is received by the reader is dependent on their personal and emotional relationship with the content. The coffee ring, albeit a violation, was the most Dada aspect of the book’s design. Even though the aesthetic of the typographic design failed to effectively express the character of the content, I still acted as a receptacle for the spirit of Dada. As far as book design goes, there are many things that can and should be explored. However, I feel that unless you have set out to make an artistic statement, to elicit a desired response, and regardless of your intention, it’s worth keeping Beatrice’s polite, play-itsafe ideology in your back pocket. Design and content is subjective and will evoke myriad responses from the reader. To transmit the message with its originally intended meaning, a measure of transparency in text allowing for content visibility is essential.

References: -- Bringhurst, R 1992, Elements of Typographic Style, Hartley & Marks, Vancouver. -- Tschichold, J 2006, The New Typography, 2nd edn, University of California Press, Los Angeles. -- Warde, B 1955, ‘The Crystal Goblet, or Printing should be Invisible’, The Crystal Goblet: Sixteen Essays on Typography, Sylvan Press, London. -- Watts, HA 1975, CHANCE: A Perspective on Dada, UMI Research Press, Michigan.

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TYPOGRAPHY SPEAKS LOUDER THAN WORDS Pam Suarez The main purpose of graphic design is to communicate ideas or messages in the clearest way possible. Typography plays a very important role when it comes to design because it is the key element in bringing text to life. Text gives a linguistic meaning to the book but typography makes each letter a graphic element that adds alternative information. A good typographic design can make any text achieve the same or greater impact than an image—it can even make the text become the main character in the design piece, elevating its value over imagery. Good typography is created by a range of different factors. Type selection—together with layout, size and hierarchy of text —establishes the most important ingredients of the general typography on a page. The first thing that should be noticed, as Eric Gill (2013, p. 105) mentions in his book, An Essay of Typography, ‘is the act of reading and the circumstances of that act which determine the size of the book and the kind of type used’; in order to determine what type and size should be used for a book we must first know how it is going to be read. For example, reading a gossip magazine that has many type sizes and bold headlines is very different from reading a technical book that has a more structural and organised layout, while a handbook’s main function is to provide clear information so it should be designed in a way that is simple and accessible.

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Wally Olins’ (2008) The Brand Handbook illustrates what happens when function and design are disconnected. An attractive yellow cover with the title in huge, black bold type wrapped around the front and back cover brings to life the saying, ‘don’t judge a book by its cover’. It seems like a fun, easy-to-read handbook, but when open, the book is chaotic and stressful. It is not as digestible as a handbook is supposed to be. Exaggerated size, changes of font, lack of spacing between some paragraphs and the minimum use of margin space creates confusion around the text rather than guiding the reader to the information they are seeking. In Beatrice Warde’s (1955, p. 15) book, The Crystal Goblet, she comments on how typography’s purpose is to not distract the reader from the meaning of the text: ‘the book typographer has the job of creating a window between the reader inside the room and that landscape which is the author’s words.’ When selecting a type, layout and size it is important to always keep in mind the author’s words and how we can transmit their idea by creating a suitably legible typographic composition. A legible typeface is one that is transparent to the reader and does not attract unnecessary attention. There are several ways to make a typeface transparent; wide features make it easier to recognise each character, like open counters that have more aperture between the letters (that is, when letters such as ‘o’ and ‘d’ have an open, rounded space) and ample lower case x-heights (the height of lower case letters, based on the lower case ‘x’). The most legible typefaces are

‘A legible typeface is one that is transparent to the reader and does not attract unnecessary attention.’

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also subtle—they don’t have excessive weight changes (they are not extremely light or bold) and serifs shouldn’t be used for ornamentation or call attention to themselves. Typography is a basic tool used by designers to transmit an idea and it could be the one feature enhancing or destroying a project. Typography’s primary goal is to communicate the meaning of the text, but it can be easily manipulated to communicate tone of voice, gender, mood, personality or an ideology—even accidentally. Choosing the most suitable typography for a project is not easy. Knowing more about the history and the rules of typography can create a book that will satisfy the designer’s sense of aesthetics as well as creating reactions in the readers.

Olins, W, 2008, The Brand Handbook, Thames & Hudson.

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Olins, W, 2008, The Brand Handbook, Thames & Hudson.

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References: -- Gill, E 2013, An Essay on Typography, new edition, Penguin Classic, London. -- Olins, W 2008, The Brand Handbook, Thames & Hudson, London. -- Warde, B 1955, ‘The Crystal Goblet, or Printing should be Invisible’, The Crystal goblet or Printing Should Be Invisible, Sylvan Press, London.

REBEL WITH A CAUSE Charlotte Scales At some point in your life, I am sure you have found yourself reading and re-reading the same line in a book over and over again. Or having read a paragraph and only at its conclusion realised that you have not acknowledged any of its core ideas or concepts. This could be caused by a state of mind such as inattention or boredom. However, it could also be provoked by a particularly blank publication. This blank book looks like any other you have ever read: standard twelve-point text, ordinary margins, everything so inconspicuous that it fails to capture your intrigue and effortlessly allows you to tune out. In 1932 Beatrice Warde delivered a speech on this subject, The Crystal Goblet, to the British Typographers Guild (Ambrose & Harris, 2011, p. 12). It has subsequently been reprinted into The Crystal Goblet: Sixteen Essays on Typography and has become a core text in design. In this address and essay, Warde likens good typography to a crystal goblet holding a rich, deeply coloured bouquet of wine. She describes that as the connoisseur or ‘the amateurs of fine vintages, you will choose the crystal, because everything about it is calculated to reveal rather than to hide the beautiful things which it was meant to contain’ (Warde, 1955, p. 11). This metaphor eloquently describes that it is typography’s duty to exist as a clear and clean vessel so that the printed word provides no obstruction to the author’s content. Working within this principle, unnecessary design and flourish are therefore the crutches of a bad designer. The eye should focus not on type but through it, as if it were a window, and allow the text to come to life in the imagination. Warde posits that type well used should be invisible and act as a transparent vehicle for the transmission of ideas (1955, p. 13). However, drawing back to this essay’s opening statement, does this not sometimes lead to monotony and an ease with which to tune out? Should typography and

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book design instead, subtly and tastefully, convey the messages, tone and mood that the author has set? Warde’s 84-year-old position warrants a ‘facelift’. Richard Hollis, according to Warde’s parameters, would be the young anarchist and rebel of publication design. In 1972 he designed the now famous paperback Ways of Seeing from John Berger’s collaborative four-part BBC television series of the same name. In his layout and typographical choices he broke all the rules—Hollis was the bad boy. His unobtrusive and polite English appearance masking a James Dean character incarnate; one hand nonchalantly shoved into his pocket while the other loosely holds a cigarette a he exhales the smoke in Warde’s direction. He was challenging the hierarchy that she had established. He proposed an emerging dichotomy or generational divide in book design, providing an alternative way in which to set text. Hollis achieved this through the startlingly bold, grotesque, sans serif typeface Univers1 (Sinclair 2012, p. 29). Its unusually heavy weight meant that the type stood out on the page, demanding to be read. It also meant that the text and images became part of a seamless whole, with neither being privileged and both being given equal importance in this abnormal egalitarian solution. Hollis even stated that he wanted ‘equal weight between the images and text so you weren’t distracted and just read on’ (Kristensen 2012, p. 189). This was achieved by setting the images exactly where they were referred to in the text and at the same placement as the first line indent, encouraging a continuous reading. It is also important to note that Hollis used exaggerated first line indents, breaking up the text and creating an ease of reading, making it clear to the reader where a new thought or paragraph began. It also created a rhythm similar to that of a pause in the conversation, applicable when considering its audial origins. While these choices are outside the ‘good’ rules as stipulated by Warde, they are actually a better goblet or glass. This design manages to capture the mood and tone of the television series and translate it into an engaging text. In the television series, Berger uses music and silence in order to create impact and moments of drama. Hollis refines this in 1. A sans serif typeface is one without the serifs, or more simply without the somewhat decorative lines at the end of a letter or a stroke.

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the turn of a page and an accompanying caption. Van Gogh’s Wheatfield with Crows appears on page 27 with a caption above declaring ‘This is a landscape of a cornfield with birds flying out of it. Look at it for a moment. Then turn the page’ (Berger 1972, p. 27).

Berger, J 1972, Ways of Seeing, Penguin Books, London.

On the subsequent page appears the artwork again with, ‘This is the last painting Van Gogh painted before he killed himself …’ (Berger 1972, p. 28).

Berger, J 1972, Ways of Seeing, Penguin Books, London.

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IMAGE In the simple act of turning a page, a moment of shock and horror is deliberately provoked, making the audience read the painting in an entirely different manner. In the above example, the content is informing the design, acting as a magnifying glass. While the design and typographic selections in this text are not the ‘transparent’ goblet (Warde 1955, p. 11), the design choices are much more appropriate as they convey the mood and content, amplifying the author’s decisions. Warde was wholly correct in her assertion that the most important thing about printing was that it conveys thoughts, ideas and images from one mind to another (1955, p. 13). However, diverging from her boundaries of good design, it should be the text’s obligation to highlight and emphasise rather than disguise a text’s meanings and messages. It is, therefore, the ethical responsibility of the graphic designer to create a crystal goblet that mimics and mirrors the vintage of the creation, rather than to contently hold it in a standard wine glass.

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References: -- Ambrose, G, Harris, P 2011, ‘The Packaged Brand’, Packaging the Brand: Exploring the Relationship Between Packaging Design and Brand Identity, AVA Publishing, South Australia, pp. 10 – 50. -- Berger, J 1972, Ways of Seeing, British Broadcasting Corporation and Penguin Books Limited, London. -- Kristensen, J 2012, ‘Making Ways of Seeing: A Conversation with Mike Dibb and Richard Hollis’, Journal of Visual Culture, vol.11, no. 2, pp. 181–195. -- Sinclair, M 2012, ‘When Looking Became Seeing’, Creative Review, vol. 32, no. 5 (May 2012), pp. 28 – 32. -- Warde, B 1955, ‘The Crystal Goblet or Why Printing Should be Invisible’, The Crystal Goblet: Sixteen Essays on Typography, Sylvan Press, London, pp. 11–17.

D H

STORM OF THE GLASS Dan Higgins Un Coup de Dés Jamais N’Abolira Le Hasard is a ground-breaking poem written by Stéphane Mallarmé which bends and twists into a graphic form. It swarms and cascades, projecting words across the page. It translates to; ‘A Throw of the Dice Will Never Abolish Chance’, Mallarmé draws parallels between chance and the act of thinking. He illustrates the event of a shipwreck as an eternal circumstance, forever rendered as a sprawl of clusters of words. Instead of the poem being read to be understood, it is typeset in a way that makes it an experience, consuming the reader. It is a visual representation of thought in itself. First published in 1897 by Cosmopolis Magazine, Mallarmé was still correcting proofs of the original edition when he died in 1898. For this reason, there is no truly definitive version of Un Coup de Dés Jamais N’Abolira Le Hasard’ only interpretations exist. Furthermore, Mallarmé’s masterful French and inventive layout is difficult to render in other languages and so aspects can be lost in translation. I cite the version first published in book form by the Imprimerie Sainte Catherine at Bruges 1914 while referencing the English translation by A. S. Kline 2007. Tschichold, founder of the New Typography, states that ‘as a rule we no longer read quietly line by line, but glance quickly over the whole’ and upon first sighting of ‘A Throw of the Dice Will Never Abolish Chance’, my ‘interest was awakened’ (1955, p. 115). The pages project a musical score of foreign characters, creating constellations of great thought. The first page makes a visual statement with a fragment of the title, ‘Un Coup de Dés (A Throw of the Dice)’ set large in bold Caslon, high and centred on the page. This is followed overleaf by a bare page, the throw resonates in thought and on the following page, ‘Jamais (Never)’ halts the dice in mid-air, set

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lower on the page in the same type as if the previous title was still hovering above. Below, in a smaller and fainter capitalised Caslon ‘Even When Truly Cast in the Eternal Circumstance … of a Shipwreck’s Depth’ is the translation grounded onto the bottom of the page. The following spread could be graphically interpreted as a set of cascading dice. Beginning with ‘Soit que (Can be only)’, set top left on the verso (left) page rolling down and across to the centre gutter, it tips over to the recto (right) page ‘careening from side to side’. The visuals of these pages are manically elevated on the following spread with a bombardment of text and visuals darting from side to side. Some clusters of text are set with such dense white space between that you’re not certain whether to read right over the gutter, left or down, or even up the page. Graphically, you’re disorientated, as if caught in the heart of a storm. Even the title shudders across the book, with fragments appearing in the same capitalised large and bold Caslon on different spreads throughout the poem. In his preface, Mallarmé stated ‘Imagination flowers and vanishes, swiftly, following the flow of the writing, round the fragmentary stations of a capitalised phrase introduced by and extended from the title’. Mallarmé’s use of font size and weight, his use of margins and negative space and his unapologetic use of layout throughout the book is revolutionary and perfectly matches the poem’s contents. Although I found the image of a roll of the dice engaging, is it considered good design and is this ground breaking

‘Graphically, you’re disorientated, as if caught in the heart of a storm. Even the title shudders across the book,’

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approach to layout good practice for readership? Bringhurst stated that ‘typographic performance must reveal, not replace, the inner composition’. He also states that typographers ‘must as a rule do their work and disappear’ (2004 p. 21). Mallarmé was the writer and composer of his work, he was qualified to do with it as he pleased. Only, ‘A Throw of the Dice Will Never Abolish Chance’ doesn’t seem calculated, but organic, as though the words found their own most appropriate place on the page. In my experience, the work of Mallarmé the typographer speaks louder than the content itself. Beatrice Warde stated that typography should be invisible, a crystal clear goblet to reveal its contents and that ‘no cloud must come between your eyes and the fiery heart of the liquid’ (1955, p. 11). Mallarmé not only embraced the cloud, he composed a great storm to resonate beyond the pages themselves. He unveiled the ‘ultimate illustration of a profoundly hermetical philosophy of typography in verbal art according to the symbolist orientation’ (Bruns 1969).

Mallarmé, S 1914, Un Coup de Dés Jamais N’abolira Le Hasard, Imprimerie Sainte Catherine, Bruges.

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Mallarmé stated that ‘it is the job of poetry to clean up our word-clogged reality by creating silences around things’. His ‘A Throw of the Dice Will Never Abolish Chance’ not only achieved this on a figurative level in its reception, but also in its readership and form. The vast white space around words and their placement emphasise their meaning. Marcel Broodthaers processed this quote on a literal level in his interpretation of the book by abolishing all text from the poem. He replaced the lines of the original with solid black bars of varied width. Thus, transforming ‘A Throw of the Dice Will Never Abolish Chance’ into an abstract image of itself. Instead of only accentuating the ‘silences around things’, Broodthaers’ version elevated the musicality of the poem’s form. He stated ‘Mallarmé is at the source of modern art … He unwittingly invented modern space’. Bringhurst stated ‘Typography is to literature as musical performance is to composition: an essential act of interpretation, full of endless opportunities for insight or obtuseness’ (2004, p. 19). ‘A Throw of the Dice’ and Mallarmé’s notes on his proposed typography treatment have been subject to constant reassessment and has been published as many different interpretations. If Mallarmé published a truly definitive edition before his death, his work may not have been recomposed with such insight and obtuseness across so many editions. His poem wouldn’t have the same mystique and energy of its own. Mallarmé even hints that the poem takes on its own life in his preface, ‘Everything takes place, in sections, by supposition; narrative is avoided. In addition, this use of the bare thought with its retreats, prolongations, and flights, by reason of its very design, for anyone wishing to read it aloud, results in a score’. The constant reassessment of ‘A Throw of the Dice’, can inspire us in turn to question our own work, to reinterpret and potentially produce something revolutionary. Tschichold stated ‘If we want to “prove ourselves worthy” of the clearly significant achievements of the past, we must set our own achievements beside them born out of our own time. They can only become “classic” if they are unhistoric’ (1955, p. 116).

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Mallarmé, S 1914, Un Coup de Dés Jamais N’abolira Le Hasard, Imprimerie Sainte Catherine, Bruges.

References: -- Bringhurst, R 2004, The Elements of Typographic Style, Hartley & Marks, Western Australia. -- Bruns, G 1969, ‘Mallarmé: The Transcendence of Language and the Aesthetics of the Book’, The Journal of Typographic Research, vol. 3, no. 3, pp. 219–240. -- Tschichold, J 1995, The New Typography, University of California Press, Berkeley. -- Warde, B 1955, ‘The Crystal Goblet, or Printing should be Invisible’,The Crystal Goblet: Sixteen Essays on Typography, Sylvan Press, London.

M C

COFFEE TABLE BOOKS ARE FAB Matthew Campisi Coffee table books are fab. They are big, solid, almighty slabs of book, beacons of knowledge and beauty. A coffee table book that explores a topic you may be interested in and also happens to be well-designed can be a truly life-affirming experience that may lead you on a journey of self-discovery. If you happen to own a really good one, then you have most likely already attempted to absorb the perfection that lies within it by rubbing the pages of your wonderful book all over your wonderful body. Ettore Sottsass (2014), written by Philippe Thomé and designed by Julia Hasting creative director of Phaidon Press, is a monograph on Italian designer and architect Ettore Sottsass. It is one such book that belongs on your body. It is enormous and heavy. Presumably placed on a marble coffee table, Sottsass beckons with its electric pistachio-green cover and glossy black sans serif text spelling out SOTTSASS. Suddenly, its incredible presence screams, ‘Pick Me Up And Look At The Pictures And Then Put Me Back Down Again When You Have Run Out Of Said Pictures!’ You are powerless to Sottsass and begin to open the book to find its end pages are adorned with blazing high-contrast zebrastriped patterns. You begin to salivate and collapse at the same time. You suffer a mild concussion and when you awake you find yourself surrounded by a sea of Sottsass-designed pieces. They chant in unison to you in their native Italian tongue. Sottsass’ Ultrafragola mirror emerges from the pack, waddles towards you, and says something about spaghetti. You nod politely and proceed to look through the book.

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As you flick through, you begin to realise that Sottsass is quite different from a conventional book. Coffee table books are not designed for dedicated front-to-back reading; rather they are loyal slabs of book that wait patiently for their owners to pick them up occasionally and joyride through their content before laying them back down to rest. Sottsass has been very cleverly designed with this in mind. Although it delivers Sottsass’ life in chronological order, there are frequent changes in paper stock, page colour and type size that work to separate the content into ten themes. These themes are again split up into smaller, bite-size parts and scattered along a timeline. The book has been assembled like a maze: eye catching graphics, colours, layouts, and typography act as crucial way-finding elements throughout. This also applies to the exterior of the book for when you have it on display in your house and you need someone to look at it to find out how rad you are. Stunt typography, that is, a typographic style that favours ornamentation over basic legibility is generally frowned upon in book typography, as in Beatrice Warde’s The Crystal Goblet (1955) which likens this kind of typography to drinking wine out of a solid gold goblet ‘wrought in the most exquisite patterns’. Warde argues that a highly decorative goblet would overshadow and mask the wine contained within, much like an experimental typographic treatment can mess with the delivery of a message. Coffee table books seem to be less

‘A coffee table book that explores a topic you may be interested in and also happens to be well-designed can be a truly life-affirming experience that may lead you on a journey of self-discovery.’

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confined by the rules of good typographic legibility where a greater emphasis is instead placed on the idea of a book as a home accessory. Sottsass is a very bad example of stunt typography, and when I say very bad, I mean very good—in fact, it is a fantastic example of this. You suddenly become extremely fascinated by the typography within the book and feel you must study it in considerable depth. The body text is set in an unusually bold weight, you find this exhilarating. The letterforms are so thick that they appear to blend into one another, forming a gorgeous texture along the paper that looks as if it is protruding outward. You run your fingers along the paper, and to your surprise, it is the smoothest and most incredible paper you have ever felt. You begin to notice that each text within the book is set in a different type size in order to fill the entirety of each page. Long texts are set in a small type size while shorter texts are set considerably larger. You come across a page with the most enormous letterforms you’ve ever laid your eyes on. You are filled with excitement and begin to read, but once you are twelve lines in your eyes begin to strain, your head starts to hurt and you decide to put down the book to take a rest. You rest for eighty-seven years. When you pick up the book again it is just as you remember, it’s like no time has passed. Your heart skips a beat with every page you turn. You begin to cry. Despite Sottsass’ defiance of the rules of typography, you realise some other, very important, decisions have been made by the designer in her use of typography to assist with legibility and create a sense of order throughout the book. Given the striking variations in type size between pages, Julia Hasting has used columns to her advantage. Hasting utilises a single-, double-, or triple-column layout depending on type size to ensure that line length is neither too short nor too long. The placement of page numbers and theme and chapter titles also form an important part of the layout, alluding to the grid-like structure that allows the flexibility of other elements on the page. Additionally, the spacing between lines of type (otherwise known as leading) has been adjusted according to type size. When set large, the lines of text require extra spacing between

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them to ensure room to breathe, this helps to create text that feels lighter and more approachable even when it’s on the brink of exploding off the page and all over your things. Having read just twelve lines of text, you suddenly decide that Sottsass is the single greatest book you will ever own. You will cherish it and the time you have spent together forever and ever. According to Walter Benjamin, for a collector, ‘ownership is the most intimate relationship that one can have to objects’ (1955, p. 67). You suddenly slot your copy of Sottsass between your legs and ride it intimately into the sunset.

Thome, P., Picchi, F. and King 21014, Ettore Sottsass, 1st edn. London.

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References: -- Benjamin, W, Zohn, H, Arendt, H, Wieseltier, L and Benjamin, CSW 1968, Illuminations, 3rd edn, Houghon Mifflin Harcourt, New York. -- Thome, P, Picchi, F and King, E 2014, Ettore sottsass, Phaidon Press, London. -- Warde, B 1955, â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;The Crystal Goblet, or Printing should be Invisibleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;,The Crystal Goblet: Sixteen Essays on Typography, Sylvan Press, London.

THE BOOK AS AN EXTENSION OF THE EYE Rida Abbasi The Medium is the Massage was written by Marshall McLuhan and co-authored by Quentin Fiore. Published in 1967 by Penguin Books, it is a unique paperback that has a producer— Jerome Agel. A cross-disciplinary publisher, Agel worked with Fiore to distill complex ideas of thinkers such as Buckminster Fuller, Carl Sagan, and Herman Kahn into visually absorbing and understandable ideas for the everyday reader. Showcasing media analyst and professor Marshall McLuhan’s foresight regarding the influence of new media, the title of the book is a play on McLuhan’s original saying, ‘the medium is the message’. The term ‘massage’ was adopted to demonstrate the effect each medium has on the human sensorium. As a book, The Medium is the Massage demonstrates McLuhan’s ideas that modern media is an extension of the human senses, allowing us to expand our perception of the world beyond the physical facets. The book opens with a typographic ‘good morning!’ (McLuhan 2001, p. 1) above a black and white photo of an egg stamped with no pressure and no contact. Immediately following this, the book title and colophon are printed vertically against a fullbleed black-and-white image, prompting the reader to turn the book ninety degrees clockwise to read. A subsequent turn of the page reveals another full-bleed photograph of a man cupping his ear with the words, ‘the massage?’ appearing in Helvetica Bold. On the following spread appears, ‘and how!’ stretching across both pages and butting into the right margin. The next spread reveals the book’s prologue, set in Helvetica and forced justified, with captions appearing in bold. Next comes a bombardment

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of statements directed at the reader with full-page images, then presented as thumbnails on successive pages creating a repetitive narrative style that is explored throughout the book in different forms. As the book progresses, sentences are broken up to create emphasis and pace; chapter titles disappear and re-appear; text nestles between spreads of full-bleed images; and words are underlined, either partially or fully, for emphasis. A deliberately designed book, The Medium is the Massage seems to have no beginning or end. The rhythmic sequencing, overlaying, and interweaving of text and imagery allows for non-sequential reading. The readers (or rather, viewers) may dive in at any point to engage with the content, and the dynamic and fluid representation of information allows for the book to be read in a different way each time. While some spreads are covered in full-bleed black and white photography with white text and become overwhelming through repetition, others allow the reader’s eyes/mind to rest on all-white pages with minimum to no text at all. This deliberate pacing through design forces the reader to read typographic print and scan photographic images. Fiore and Agel’s design for the interior of the book matches McLuhan’s ideas perfectly. A unique typo-photographic hybrid, the book’s kinetically composed pages compel the reader to engage with the text and images in new ways. Using the humble paperback book as its foundation, Fiore constructed what would eventually evolve into a version of the ‘information super highway’ (Schnapp and Michaels 2012, p. 17).

‘The rhythmic sequencing, overlaying, and interweaving of text and imagery allows for non-sequential reading’.

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McLuhan, Fiore, and Agel embraced ‘the book’s intrinsic strengths as a site for synthesis and surprise’ (Popova 2012). Their work together created an unconventional model, intertwining form and content in new, cinematic modes of delivery that continue to amaze, more than four decades later. Design critic and art director Steve Heller asserts that Fiore was ‘as anarchic as possible while still working within the constraints of bookmaking’ (Heller 2004, p. 322). The layout and design of the Massage is dynamic and always changing—while some spreads utilize images as chapter titles, other spreads move beyond the typical two-page spread and flow into others, sometimes extending for up to six or even eight pages. In other spreads, the text is mirrored, flipped, or broken. Fiore’s design is a visual metaphor for the evolution of media, the disruptive pages breaking patterns of thought and challenging the conventional rules of typography and book-making. McLuhan writes, ‘Ours is a brand new world of all-at-onceness. “Time” has ceased, “space” has vanished. We now live in a global village, a simultaneous happening… Information pours on us, instantaneously and continuously’ (McLuhan, Fiore & Agel 2001, p. 63). The Medium is the Massage’s interior is reflective of McLuhan’s ideas: massive scale changes juxtaposed with high-contrast photos and typographic pyrotechnics. The interior becomes dynamic—quite similar to a film—and creates an ever-changing pace from spread to spread, mimicking the bombardment of information. In The Electric Information Age Book, Schnapp and Michaels state that ‘by inventorying the effects of change in a playful and accessible vein…the book manages to entertain and to initiate a process of cognitive retooling’ (2012, p. 83). Through form and content, The Medium is the Massage shapes its arguments with Fiore and Agel’s graphic composites always referring to McLuhan’s mantras, and vice versa. As well-suited Fiore and Agel’s vision was to McLuhan’s ideas, not everyone agreed that the design used in The Medium is the Massage was successful. At a talk at the Boston Society of Printers, Fiore found himself shouted down by hecklers: they thought it was superficial, everything a book should not be (Schanpp & Michaels 2012, p. 16). Typographer and designer

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Eric Gill wrote in An Essay on Typography (1988, p. 104), ‘the standard of readableness is dependent on the standard of the reader, & the standard of book-making upon the standards of those who make them and of those for whom they are made.’ Fiore and Agel’s design for The Medium is the Massage constantly reflects the content it represents, allowing the book to become the message it conveys. Fiore’s work, by refusing to conform to conventional bookmaking rules, allows McLuhan’s message to shine through. The book is not just informing the readers of the message but massaging them with its effects. Ultimately, the successful conveyance of an idea is what books are for, and to that effect, The Medium is the Massage is definitely a successful and appropriate book design.

Berger, J 1972, Ways of Seeing, Penguin Books, London.

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Berger, J 1972, Ways of Seeing, Penguin Books, London.

References: -- Gill, E 1988, An Essay on Typography, Godine, Boston. -- Heller, S 2004, Design Literacy: Understanding Graphic Design. Allworth Press, New York. -- McLuhan, M, Fiore, Q and Agel, J 2001, The Medium is the Massage, Gingko Press, Corte Madera, CA. -- Popova, M 2012, How McLuhan, Agel, and Fiore Created a New Visual Vernacular for the Information Age, Brain Pickings, viewed 28 July 2016, <https://www.brainpickings. org/2012/02/10/the-electric-information-age/>. -- Schnapp, J and Michaels, A 2012, The Electric Information Age Book, Princeton Architectural Press, New York.

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APPE N

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NDIX THE CRYSTAL GOBLET, OR PRINTING SHOULD BE INVISIBLE by Beatrice Warde Warde, B 1955, ‘The Crystal Goblet, or Printing should be Invisible’, The Crystal Goblet: Sixteen Essays on Typography, Sylvan Press, London.

UNPACKING MY LIBRARY by Walter Benjamin Benjamin, W, Zohn, H, Arendt, H, Wieseltier, L and Benjamin, CSW 1968, ‘Unpacking My Library’, Illuminations, 3rd edn, Houghon Mifflin Harcourt, New York.

THE PRINCIPLES OF THE NEW TYPOGRAPHY by Jan Tschichold Tschichold, J 1995, The New Typography, University of California Press, Berkeley.

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THE CRYSTAL GOBLET or Printing Should Be Invisible Beatrice Warde Imagine that you have before you a flagon of wine. You may choose your own favourite vintage for this imaginary demonstration, so that it be a deep shimmering crimson in colour. You have two goblets before you. One is of solid gold, wrought in the most exquisite patterns. The other is of crystal-clear glass, thin as a bubble, and as transparent. Pour and drink; and according to your choice of goblet, I shall know whether or not you are a connoisseur of wine. For if you have no feelings about wine one way or the other, you will want the sensation of drinking the stuff out of a vessel that may have cost thousands of pounds; but if you are a member of that vanishing tribe, the amateurs of fine vintages, you will choose the crystal, because everything about it is calculated to reveal rather than hide the beautiful thing which it was meant to contain.

Bear with me in this long-winded and fragrant metaphor; for you will find that almost all the virtues of the perfect wine-glass have a parallel in typography. There is the long, thin stem that obviates fingerprints on the bowl. Why? Because no cloud must come between your eyes and the fiery heart of the liquid. Are not the margins on book pages similarly meant to obviate the necessity of fingering the type-page? Again: the glass is colourless or at the most only faintly tinged in the bowl, because the connoisseur judges wine partly by its colour and is impatient of anything that alters it. There are a thousand mannerisms in typography that are as impudent and arbitrary as putting port in tumblers of red or green glass! When a goblet has a base that looks too small for security, it does not matter how cleverly it is weighted; you feel nervous lest it should tip over. There are ways of setting lines of type which may work well enough, and yet keep the reader subconsciously worried by the fear of â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;doublingâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; lines, reading three words as one, and so forth.

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Now the man who first chose glass instead of clay or metal to hold his wine was a ‘modernist’ in the sense in which I am going to use that term. That is, the first thing he asked of his particular object was not ‘How should it look?’ but ‘What must it do?’ and to that extent all good typography is modernist. Wine is so strange and potent a thing that it has been used in the central ritual of religion in one place and time, and attacked by a virago with a hatchet in another. There is only one thing in the world that is capable of stirring and altering men’s minds to the same extent, and that is the coherent expression of thought. That is man’s chief miracle, unique to man. There is no ‘explanation’ whatever of the fact that I can make arbitrary sounds which will lead a total stranger to think my own thought. It is sheer magic that I should be able to hold a one-sided conversation by means of black marks on paper with an unknown person half-way across the world. Talking, broadcasting, writing, and printing are all quite literally forms of thought transference, and it is the ability and eagerness to transfer and receive the contents of the mind that is almost alone responsible for human civilization. If you agree with this, you will agree with my one main idea, i.e. that the most important thing about printing is that it conveys thought, ideas, images, from one mind to other minds. This statement is what you might call the front door of the science of typography. Within lie hundreds of rooms; but unless you start by assuming that printing is meant to convey specific and coherent ideas, it is very easy to find yourself in the wrong house altogether. Before asking what this statement leads to, let us see what it does not necessarily lead to. If books are printed in order to be read, we must distinguish readability from what the optician would call legibility. A page set in 14-pt Bold Sans is, according to the laboratory tests, more ‘legible’ than one set in 11-pt Baskerville. A public speaker is more ‘audible’ in that sense when he bellows. But a good speaking voice is one which is inaudible as a voice. It is the transparent goblet again! I need not warn you that if you begin listening to the inflections and speaking rhythms of a voice from a platform, you are falling asleep. When you listen to a song in a language you do not understand, part of your mind actually does fall asleep, leaving your quite separate aesthetic sensibilities to enjoy

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themselves unimpeded by your reasoning faculties. The fine arts do that; but that is not the purpose of printing. Type well used is invisible as type, just as the perfect talking voice is the unnoticed vehicle for the transmission of words, ideas. We may say, therefore, that printing may be delightful for many reasons, but that it is important, first and foremost, as a means of doing something. That is why it is mischievous to call any printed piece a work of art, especially fine art: because that would imply that its first purpose was to exist as an expression of beauty for its own sake and for the delectation of the senses. Calligraphy can almost be considered a fine art nowadays, because its primary economic and educational purpose has been taken away; but printing in English will not qualify as an art until the present English language no longer conveys ideas to future generations, and until printing itself hands its usefulness to some yet unimagined successor. There is no end to the maze of practices in typography, and this idea of printing as a conveyor is, at least in the minds of all the great typographers with whom I have had the privilege of talking, the one clue that can guide you through the maze. Without this essential humility of mind, I have seen ardent designers go more hopelessly wrong, make more ludicrous mistakes out of an excessive enthusiasm, than I could have thought possible. And with this clue, this purposiveness in the back of your mind, it is possible to do the most unheard-of things, and find that they justify you triumphantly. It is not a waste of time to go to the simple fundamentals and reason from them. In the flurry of your individual problems, I think you will not mind spending half an hour on one broad and simple set of ideas involving abstract principles. I once was talking to a man who designed a very pleasing advertising type which undoubtedly all of you have used. I said something about what artists think about a certain problem, and he replied with a beautiful gesture: ‘Ah, madam, we artists do not think---we feel!’ That same day I quoted that remark to another designer of my acquaintance, and he, being less poetically inclined, murmured: ‘I’m not feeling very well today, I think!’ He was right, he did think; he was the thinking sort; and that is why he is not so good a painter, and to my mind ten times better as a typographer and type designer than the man who instinctively avoided anything as

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coherent as a reason. I always suspect the typographic enthusiast who takes a printed page from a book and frames it to hang on the wall, for I believe that in order to gratify a sensory delight he has mutilated something infinitely more important. I remember that T.M. Cleland, the famous American typographer, once showed me a very beautiful layout for a Cadillac booklet involving decorations in colour. He did not have the actual text to work with in drawing up his specimen pages, so he had set the lines in Latin. This was not only for the reason that you will all think of; if you have seen the old type foundries’ famous Quousque Tandem copy (i.e. that Latin has few descenders and thus gives a remarkably even line). No, he told me that originally he had set up the dullest ‘wording’ that he could find (I dare say it was from Hansard), and yet he discovered that the man to whom he submitted it would start reading and making comments on the text. I made some remark on the mentality of Boards of Directors, but Mr Cleland said, ‘No: you’re wrong; if the reader had not been practically forced to read---if he had not seen those words suddenly imbued with glamour and significance---then the layout would have been a failure. Setting it in Italian or Latin is only an easy way of saying “This is not the text as it will appear”.’ Let me start my specific conclusions with book typography, because that contains all the fundamentals, and then go on to a few points about advertising. The book typographer has the job of erecting a window between the reader inside the room and that landscape which is the author’s words. He may put up a stained-glass window of marvellous beauty, but a failure as a window; that is, he may use some rich superb type like text gothic that is something to be looked at, not through. Or he may work in what I call transparent or invisible typography. I have a book at home, of which I have no visual recollection whatever as far as its typography goes; when I think of it, all I see is the Three Musketeers and their comrades swaggering up and down the streets of Paris. The third type of window is one in which the glass is broken into relatively small leaded panes; and this corresponds to what is called ‘fine printing’ today, in that you are at least conscious that there is a window there, and that someone has enjoyed building it. That is not objectionable, because of a very important fact which has to do with the psychology of the subconscious mind. That is that the mental eye focuses through type and not upon it. The type which, through any arbitrary warping of design or excess of ‘colour’, gets in the way of the mental

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picture to be conveyed, is a bad type. Our subconsciousness is always afraid of blunders (which illogical setting, tight spacing and too-wide unleaded lines can trick us into), of boredom, and of officiousness. The running headline that keeps shouting at us, the line that looks like one long word, the capitals jammed together without hair-spaces---these mean subconscious squinting and loss of mental focus. And if what I have said is true of book printing, even of the most exquisite limited editions, it is fifty times more obvious in advertising, where the one and only justification for the purchase of space is that you are conveying a message---that you are implanting a desire, straight into the mind of the reader. It is tragically easy to throw away half the reader-interest of an advertisement by setting the simple and compelling argument in a face which is uncomfortably alien to the classic reasonableness of the book-face. Get attention as you will by your headline, and make any pretty type pictures you like if you are sure that the copy is useless as a means of selling goods; but if you are happy enough to have really good copy to work with, I beg you to remember that thousands of people pay hard-earned money for the privilege of reading quietly set book-pages, and that only your wildest ingenuity can stop people from reading a really interesting text. Printing demands a humility of mind, for the lack of which many of the fine arts are even now floundering in self-conscious and maudlin experiments. There is nothing simple or dull in achieving the transparent page. Vulgar ostentation is twice as easy as discipline. When you realise that ugly typography never effaces itself; you will be able to capture beauty as the wise men capture happiness by aiming at something else. The â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;stunt typographerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; learns the fickleness of rich men who hate to read. Not for them are long breaths held over serif and kern, they will not appreciate your splitting of hair-spaces. Nobody (save the other craftsmen) will appreciate half your skill. But you may spend endless years of happy experiment in devising that crystalline goblet which is worthy to hold the vintage of the human mind. (Originally printed in London in 1932, under the pseudonym Paul Beaujon. This version printed in London 1955).

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UNPACKING MY LIBRARY A Talk About Book Collecting Walter Benjamin I am unpacking my library. Yes, I am. The books are not yet on the shelves, not yet touched by the mild boredom of order. I cannot march up and down their ranks to pass them in review before a friendly audience. You need not fear any of that. Instead, I must ask you to join me in the disorder of crates that have been wrenched open, the air saturated with the dust of wood, the floor covered with torn paper, to join me among piles of volumes that are seeing daylight again after two years of darkness, so that you may be ready to share with me a bit of the moodâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;it is certainly not an elegiac mood but, rather, one of anticipationâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;which these books arouse in a genuine collector. For such a man is speaking to you, and on closer scrutiny he proves to be speaking only about himself. Would it not be presumptuous of me if, in order to appear convincingly objective and down-to-earth, I enumerated for you the main sections or prize pieces of a library, if I presented you with their history or even their usefulness to a writer? I, for one, have in mind something less obscure, something more palpable than that; what I am really concerned with is giving you some insight into the relationship of a book collector to his possessions, into collecting rather than a collection. If I do this by elaborating on the various ways of acquiring books, this is something entirely arbitrary. This or any other procedure is merely a dam against the spring tide of memories which surges toward any collector as he contemplates his possessions. Every passion borders on the chaotic, but the collectorâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s passion borders on the chaos of memories. More than that: the chance, the fate, that suffuse the past before my eyes are conspicuously present in the accustomed confusion of these books. For what else is this collection but a disorder to which habit has accommodated itself to such

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an extent that it can appear as order? You have all heard of people whom the loss of their books has turned into invalids, or of those who in order to acquire them became criminals. These are the very areas in which any order is a balancing act of extreme precariousness. ‘The only exact knowledge there is,’ said Anatole France, ‘is the knowledge of the date of publication and the format of books.’ And indeed, if there is a counterpart to the confusion of a library, it is the order of its catalogue. Thus there is in the life of a collector a dialectical tension between the poles of disorder and order. Naturally, his existence is tied to many other things as well: to a very mysterious relationship to ownership, something about which we shall have more to say later; also, to a relationship to objects which does not emphasize their functional, utilitarian value—that is, their usefulness—but studies and loves them as the scene, the stage, of their fate. The most profound enchantment for the collector is the locking of individual items within a magic circle in which they are fixed as the final thrill, the thrill of acquisition, passes over them. Everything remembered and thought, everything conscious, becomes the pedestal, the frame, the base, the lock of his property. The period, the region, the craftsmanship, the former ownership—for a true collector the whole background of an item adds up to a magic encyclopedia whose quintessence is the fate of his object. In this circumscribed area, then, it may be surmised how the great physiognomists—and collectors are the physiognomists of the world of objects—turn into interpreters of fate. One has only to watch a collector handle the objects in his glass case. As he holds them in his hands, he seems to be seeing through them into their distant past as though inspired. So much for the magical side of the collector—his old-age image, I might call it. Habent sua fata libelli: these words may have been intended as a general statement about books. So books like The Divine Comedy, Spinoza’s Ethics, and The Origin of Species have their fates. A collector, however, interprets this Latin saying differently. For him, not only books but also copies of books have their fates. And in this sense, the most important fate of

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a copy is its encounter with him, with his own collection. I am not exaggerating when I say that to a true collector the acquisition of an old book is its rebirth. This is the childlike element which in a collector mingles with the element of old age. For children can accomplish the renewal of existence in a hundred unfailing ways. Among children, collecting is only one process of renewal; other processes are the painting of objects, the cutting out of figures, the application of decals—the whole range of childlike modes of acquisition, from touching things to giving them names. To renew the old world—that is the collector’s deepest desire when he is driven to acquire new things, and that is why a collector of older books is closer to the wellsprings of collecting than the acquirer of luxury editions. How do books cross the threshold of a collection and become the property of a collector? The history of their acquisition is the subject of the following remarks. Of all the ways of acquiring books, writing them oneself is regarded as the most praiseworthy method. At this point many of you will remember with pleasure the large library which Jean Paul’s poor little schoolmaster Wutz gradually acquired by writing, himself, all the works whose titles interested him in book fair catalogues; after all, he could not afford to buy them. Writers are really people who write books not because they are poor, but because they are dissatisfied with the books which they could buy but do not like. You, ladies and gentlemen, may regard this as a whimsical definition of a writer. But everything said from the angle of a real collector is whimsical. Of the customary modes of acquisition, the one most appropriate to a collector would be the borrowing of a book with its attendant non-returning. The book borrower of real stature whom we envisage here proves himself to be an inveterate collector of books not so much by the fervor with which he guards his borrowed treasures and by the deaf ear which he turns to all reminders from the everyday world of legality as by his failure to read these books. If my experience may serve as evidence, a man is more likely to return a borrowed book upon occasion than to read it. And the non-reading of books, you will object, should be characteristic of collectors? This is news to me, you may say. It is not news at all. Experts will bear me out when I say that it

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is the oldest thing in the world. Suffice it to quote the answer which Anatole France gave to a philistine who admired his library and then finished with the standard question, ‘And you have read all these books, Monsieur France?’ ‘Not one-tenth of them. I don’t suppose you use your Sèvres china every day?’ Incidentally, I have put the right to such an attitude to the test. For years, for at least the first third of its existence, my library consisted of no more than two or three shelves which increased only by inches each year. This was its militant age, when no book was allowed to enter it without the certification that I had not read it. Thus I might never have acquired a library extensive enough to be worthy of the name if there had not been an inflation. Suddenly the emphasis shifted; books acquired real value, or, at any rate, were difficult to obtain. At least this is how it seemed in Switzerland. At the eleventh hour I sent my first major book orders from there and in this way was able to secure such irreplaceable items as Der blaue Reiter and Bachofen’s Sage von Tanaquil, which could still be obtained from the publishers at that time. Well—so you may say—after exploring all these byways we should finally reach the wide highway of book acquisition, namely, the purchasing of books. This is indeed a wide highway, but not a comfortable one. The purchasing done by a book collector has very little in common with that done in a bookshop by a student getting a textbook, a man of the world buying a present for his lady, or a businessman intending to while away his next train journey. I have made my most memorable purchases on trips, as a transient. Property and possession belong to the tactical sphere. Collectors are people with a tactical instinct; their experience teaches them that when they capture a strange city, the smallest antique shop can be a fortress, the most remote stationery store a key position. How many cities have revealed themselves to me in the marches I undertook in the pursuit of books! By no means all of the most important purchases are made on the premises of a dealer. Catalogues play a far greater part.

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And even though the purchaser may be thoroughly acquainted with the book ordered from a catalogue, the individual copy always remains a surprise and the order always a bit of a gamble. There are grievous disappointments, but also happy finds. I remember, for instance, that I once ordered a book with colored illustrations for my old collection of children’s books only because it contained fairy tales by Albert Ludwig Grimm and was published at Grimma, Thuringia. Grimma was also the place of publication of a book of fables edited by the same Albert Ludwig Grimm. With its sixteen illustrations my copy of this book of fables was the only extant example of the early work of the great German book illustrator Lyser, who lived in Hamburg around the middle of the last century. Well, my reaction to the consonance of the names had been correct. In this case too I discovered the work of Lyser, namely Linas Märchenbuch, a work which has remained unknown to his bibliographers and which deserves a more detailed reference than this first one I am introducing here. The acquisition of books is by no means a matter of money or expert knowledge alone. Not even both factors together suffice for the establishment of a real library, which is always somewhat impenetrable and at the same time uniquely itself. Anyone who buys from catalogues must have flair in addition to the qualities I have mentioned. Dates, place names, formats, previous owners, bindings, and the like: all these details must tell him something—not as dry, isolated facts, but as a harmonious whole; from the quality and intensity of this harmony he must be able to recognize whether a book is for him or not. An auction requires yet another set of qualities in a collector. To the reader of a catalogue the book itself must speak, or possibly its previous ownership if the provenance of the copy has been established. A man who wishes to participate at an auction must pay equal attention to the book and to his competitors, in addition to keeping a cool enough head to avoid being carried away in the competition. It is a frequent occurrence that someone gets stuck with a high purchase price because he kept raising his bid—more to assert himself than to acquire the book. On the other hand, one of the finest memories of a collector is the moment when he rescued a book to which he might never have given a

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thought, much less a wishful look, because he found it lonely and abandoned on the market place and bought it to give it its freedomthe way the prince bought a beautiful slave girl in The Arabian Nights. To a book collector, you see, the true freedom of all books is somewhere on his shelves. To this day, Balzac’s Peau de chagrin stands out from long rows of French volumes in my library as a memento of my most exciting experience at an auction. This happened in 1915 at the Rümann auction put up by Emil Hirsch, one of the greatest of book experts and most distinguished of dealers. The edition in question appeared in 1838 in Paris, Place de la Bourse. As I pick up my copy, I see not only its number in the Rlimann collection, but even the label of the shop in which the first owner bought the book over ninety years ago for one-eightieth of today’s price. ‘Papeterie I. Flanneau,’ it says. A fine age in which it was still possible to buy such a de luxe edition at a stationery dealer’s! The steel engravings of this book were designed by the foremost French graphic artist and executed by the foremost engravers. But I was going to tell you how I acquired this book. I had gone to Emil Hirsch’s for an advance inspection and had handled forty or fifty volumes; that particular volume had inspired in me the ardent desire to hold on to it forever. The day of the auction came. As chance would have it, in the sequence of the auction this copy of La Peau de chagrin was preceded by a complete set of its illustrations printed separately on India paper. The bidders sat at a long table; diagonally across from me sat the man who was the focus of all eyes at the first bid, the famous Munich collector Baron von Simolin. He was greatly interested in this set, but he had rival bidders; in short, there was a spirited contest which resulted in the highest bid of the entire auction—far in excess of three thousand marks. No one seemed to have expected such a high figure, and all those present were quite excited. Emil Hirsch remained unconcerned, and whether he wanted to save time or was guided by some other consideration, he proceeded to the next item, with no one really paying attention. He called out the price, and with my heart pounding and with the full realization that I was unable to compete with any of those big collectors I bid a somewhat higher amount. Without

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arousing the bidders’ attention, the auctioneer went through the usual routine—’Do I hear more?’ and three bangs of his gavel, with an eternity seeming to separate each from the next—and proceeded to add the auctioneer’s charge. For a student like me the sum was still considerable. The following morning at the pawnshop is no longer part of this story, and I prefer to speak about another incident which I should like to call the negative of an auction. It happened last year at a Berlin auction. The collection of books that was offered was a miscellany in quality and subject matter, and only a number of rare works on occultism and natural philosophy were worthy of note. I bid for a number of them, but each time I noticed a gentleman in the front row who seemed only to have waited for my bid to counter with his own, evidently prepared to top any offer. After this had been repeated several times, I gave up all hope of acquiring the book which I was most interested in that day. It was the rare Fragmente aus dem Nachlass eines jungen Physikers [Posthumous Fragments of a Young Physicist] which Johann Wilhelm Ritter published in two volumes at Heidelberg in 1810. This work has never been reprinted, but I have always considered its preface, in which the author-editor tells the story of his life in the guise of an obituary for his supposedly deceased unnamed friend—with whom he is really identical—as the most important sample of personal prose of German Romanticism. Just as the item came up I had a brain wave. It was simple enough: since my bid was bound to give the item to the other man, I must not bid at all. I controlled myself and remained silent. What I had hoped for came about: no interest, no bid, and the book was put aside. I deemed it wise to let several days go by, and when I appeared on the premises after a week, I found the book in the secondhand department and benefited by the lack of interest when I acquired it. Once you have approached the mountains of cases in order to mine the books from them and bring them to the light of day—or, rather, of night—what memories crowd in upon you! Nothing highlights the fascination of unpacking more clearly than the difficulty of stopping this activity. I had started at noon, and it was midnight before I had worked my way to the last cases. Now I put my hands on two volumes bound

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in faded boards which, strictly speaking, do not belong in a book case at all: two albums with stick-in pictures which my mother pasted in as a child and which I inherited. They are the seeds of a collection of children’s books which is growing steadily even today, though no longer in my garden. There is no living library that does not harbor a number of booklike creations from fringe areas. They need not be stick-in albums or family albums, autograph books or portfolios containing pamphlets or religious tracts; some people become attached to leaflets and prospectuses, others to handwriting facsimiles or typewritten copies of unobtainable books; and certainly periodicals can form the prismatic fringes of a library. But to get back to those albums: Actually, inheritance is the soundest way of acquiring a collection. For a collector’s attitude toward his possessions stems from an owner’s feeling of responsibility toward his property. Thus it is, in the highest sense, the attitude of an heir, and the most distinguished trait of a collection will always be its transmissibility. You should know that in saying this I fully realize that my discussion of the mental climate of collecting will confirm many of you in your conviction that this passion is behind the times, in your distrust of the collector type. Nothing is further from my mind than to shake either your conviction or your distrust. But one thing should be noted: the phenomenon of collecting loses its meaning as it loses its personal owner. Even though public collections may be less objectionable socially and more useful academically than private collections, the objects get their due only in the latter. I do know that time is running out for the type that I am discussing here and have been representing before you a bit ex officio. But, as Hegel put it, only when it is dark does the owl of Minerva begin its flight. Only in extinction is the collector comprehended. Now I am on the last half-emptied case and it is way past midnight. Other thoughts fill me than the ones I am talking about—not thoughts but images, memories. Memories of the cities in which I found so many things: Riga, Naples, Munich, Danzig, Moscow, Florence, Basel, Paris; memories of Rosenthal’s sumptuous rooms in Munich, of the Danzig Stockturm where the late Hans Rhaue was domiciled, of Siissengut’s musty book cellar in North Berlin; memories

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of the rooms where these books had been housed, of my student’s den in Munich, of my room in Bern, of the solitude of Iseltwald on the Lake of Brienz, and finally of my boyhood room, the former location of only four or five of the several thousand volumes that are piled up around me. 0 bliss of the collector, bliss of the man of leisure! Of no one has less been expected, and no one has had a greater sense of wellbeing than the man who has been able to carry on his disreputable existence in the mask of Spitzweg’s ‘Bookworm.’ For inside him there are spirits, or at least little genii, which have seen to it that for a collector—and I mean a real collector, a collector as he ought to be—ownership is the most intimate relationship that one can have to objects. Not that they come alive in him; it is he who lives in them. So I have erected one of his dwellings, with books as the building stones, before you, and now he is going to disappear inside, as is only fitting.

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THE PRINCIPLES OF THE NEW TYPOGRAPHY Jan Tschichold Modern man has to absorb every day a mass of printed matter which, whether he has asked for it or not, is delivered through his letter-box or confronts him everywhere out of doors. At first, today’s printing differed from that of previous times less in form than in quantity. But as the quantity increased, the ‘form’ also began to change: the speed with which the modern consumer of printing has to absorb it means that the form of printing also must adapt itself to the conditions of modern life. As a rule we no longer read quietly line by line, but glance quickly over the whole, and only if our interest is awakened do we study it in detail. The old typography both in feeling and in form was adapted to the needs of its readers, who had plenty of time to read line by line in a leisurely manner. For them, function could not yet play any significant role. For this reason the old typography concerned itself less with function than with what was called ‘beauty’ or ‘art.’ Problems of formal aesthetics (choice of type, mixture of typefaces and ornament) dominated considerations of form. It is for this reason that the history of typography since Manutius is not so much a development towards clarity of appearance (the only exception being the period of Didot, Bodoni, Baskerville, and Walbaum) as an embodiment of the development of historical typefaces and ornaments. It was left to our age to achieve a lively focus on the problem of ‘form’ or design. While up to now form was considered

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as something external, a product of the ‘artistic imagination’ (Haeckel even imputed such ‘artistic intentions’ to nature in his Art Forms in Nature), today we have moved considerably closer to the recognition of its essence through the renewed study of nature and more especially to technology (which is only a kind of second nature). Both nature and technology teach us that ‘form’ is not independent, but grows out of function (purpose), out of the materials used (organic or technical), and out of how they are used. This was how the marvelous forms of nature and the equally marvelous forms of technology originated. We can describe the forms of technology as just as ‘organic’ (in an intellectual sense) as those of nature. But as a rule most people see only the superficial forms of technology, they admire their ‘beauty’—of airplanes, cars, or ships—instead of recognizing that their perfection of appearance is due to the precise and economic expression of their function. In the process of giving form, both technology and nature use the same laws of economy, precision, minimum friction, and so on. Technology by its very nature can never be an end in itself, only a means to an end, and can therefore be a part of man’s spiritual life only indirectly, while the remaining fields of human creativity rise above the purely functional of technical forms. But they too, following the laws of nature, are drawn towards greater clarity and purity of appearance. Thus architecture discards the ornamental façade and ‘decorated’ furniture and develops its forms from the function of the building—no longer from the outside inwards, as determined by the façade-orientation of pre-wartime days, but from the inside outwards, the natural way. So too typography is liberated from its present superficial and formalistic shapes, and from its so-called ‘traditional’ designs which are long since fossilized. To us, the succession of historic styles, reactions against Jugendstil, are nothing but proof of creative incompetence. It cannot and must not be our wish today to ape the typography of previous centuries, itself conditioned by its own time. Our age, with its very different aims, its often different ways and means and highly developed techniques, must dictate new and different visual forms. Though its significance remains undeniable, to think today that the Gutenberg Bible represents an achievement that can never again be reached is both naive and romantic

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rubbish. If we want to ‘prove ourselves worthy’ of the clearly significant achievements of the past, we must set our own achievements beside them born out of our own time. They can only become ‘classic!’ if they are unhistoric. The essence of the New Typography is clarity. This puts it into deliberate opposition to the old typography whose aim was ‘beauty’ and whose clarity did not attain the high level we require today. This utmost clarity is necessary today because of the manifold claims for our attention made by the extraordinary amount of print, which demands the greatest economy of expression.The gentle swing of the pendulum between ornamental type, the (superficially understood) ‘beautiful’ appearance, and ‘adornment’ by extraneous additions (ornaments) can never produce the pure form we demand today. Especially the feeble clinging to the bugbear of arranging type on a central axis results in the extreme inflexibility of contemporary typography. In the old typography, the arrangement of individual units is subordinated to the principle of arranging everything on a central axis. In my historical introduction I have shown that this principle started in the Renaissance and has not yet been abandoned. Its superficiality becomes obvious when we look at Renaissance or Baroque title pages. Main units are arbitrarily cut up: for example, logical order, which should be expressed by the use of different type-sizes, is ruthlessly sacrificed to external form. Thus the principal line contains only three-quarters of the title, and the rest of the title, set several sizes smaller, appears in the next line. Such things admittedly do not often happen today, but the rigidity of central-axis setting hardly allows work to be carried out with the degree of logic we now demand. The central axis runs through the whole like an artificial, invisible backbone: its raison d’être is today as pretentious as the tall white collars of Victorian gentlemen. Even in good central-axis composition the contents are subordinated to ‘beautiful line arrangement.’ The whole is a ‘form’ which is predetermined and therefore must be inorganic.

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We believe it is wrong to arrange a text as if there were some focal point in the center of a line which would justify such an arrangement. Such points of course do not exist, because we read by starting at one side (Europeans for example read from left to right, the Chinese from top to bottom and right to left). Axial arrangements are illogical because the distance of the stressed, central parts from the beginning and end of the word sequences is not usually equal but constantly varies from line to line. But not only the preconceived idea of axial arrangement but also all other preconceived ideas—like those of the pseudo-constructivists—are diametrically opposed to the essence of the New Typography. Every piece of typography which originates in a preconceived idea of form, of whatever kind, is wrong. The New Typography is distinguished from the old by the fact that its first objective is to develop its visible form out of the functions of the text. It is essential to give pure and direct expression to the contents of whatever is printed; just as in the works of technology and nature, ‘form’ must be created out of function. Only then can we achieve a typography which expresses the spirit of modern man. The function of printed text is communication, emphasis (word value), and the logical sequence of the contents. Every part of a text relates to every other part by a definite, logical relationship of emphasis and value, predetermined by content. It is up to the typographer to express this relationship clearly and visibly, through type sizes and weight, arrangement of lines, use of color, photography, etc. The typographer must take the greatest care to study how his work is read and ought to be read. It is true that we usually read from top left to bottom right—but this is not a law. … There is no doubt that we read most printed matter in successive steps: first the heading (which need not be the opening word) and then, if we continue to read the printed matter at all, we read the rest bit by bit according to its importance. It is therefore quite feasible to start reading a text at a different point from the top left. The exact place depends entirely on the kind of printed matter and the text itself. But we must admit that there are dangers in departing from the main rule of reading from the top to

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the bottom. One must therefore, in general, not set a following body of text higher than the preceding one—assuming that the arrangement of the text has a logical sequence and order. Working through a text according to these principles will usually result in a rhythm different from that of former symmetrical typography. Asymmetry is the rhythmic expression of functional design. In addition to being more logical, asymmetry has the advantage that its complete appearance is far more optically effective than symmetry. Hence the predominance of asymmetry in the New Typography. Not least, the liveliness of asymmetry is also an expression of our own movement and that of modern life; it is a symbol of the changing forms of life in general when asymmetrical movement in typography takes the place of symmetrical repose. This movement must not however degenerate into unrest or chaos. A striving for order can, and must, also be expressed in asymmetrical form. It is the only way to make a better, more natural order possible, as opposed to symmetrical form which does not draw its laws from within itself but from outside. Furthermore, the principle of asymmetry gives unlimited scope for variation in the New Typography. It also expresses the diversity of modern life, unlike central-axis typography which, apart from variations of typeface (the only exception), does not allow such variety. While the New Typography allows much greater flexibility in design, it also encourages ‘standardization’ in the construction of units, as in building. The old typography did the opposite: it recognized only one basic form, the central axis arrangement, but allowed all possible and impossible construction elements (typefaces, ornaments, etc.). The need for clarity in communication raises the question of how to achieve clear and unambiguous form.

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An example of pseudomodern typography. The compositor has the idea of a prefabricated foreign shape and forces the words into it. But the typographic form must be organic, it must evolve from the nature of the text.

Above all, a fresh and original intellectual approach is needed, avoiding all standard solutions. If we think clearly and approach each task with a fresh and determined mind, a good solution will usually result. The most important requirement is to be objective. This however does not mean a way of design in which everything is omitted that used to be tacked on, as in the letterhead ‘Das politische Buch’ shown here. The type is certainly legible and there are no ornaments whatever. But this is not the kind of objectivity we are talking about. A better name for it would be meagerness. Incidentally this letterhead also shows the hollowness of the old principles: without ‘ornamental’ typefaces they do not work. And yet, it is absolutely necessary to omit everything that is not needed. The old ideas of design must be discarded and new ideas developed. It is obvious that functional design means the abolition of the ‘ornamentation’ that has reigned for centuries. The use of ornament, in whatever style or quality, comes from an attitude of childish naïveté . It shows a reluctance to use ‘pure design,’ a giving-in to a primitive instinct to decorate—which reveals, in the last resort, a fear of pure appearance. It is so easy to

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employ ornament to cover up bad design! The important architect Adolf Loos, one of the first champions of pure form, wrote already in 1898: ‘The more primitive a people, the more extravagantly they use ornament and decoration .The Indian overloads everything, every boat, every rudder, every arrow, with ornament. To insist on decoration is to put yourself on the same level as an Indian. The Indian in us all must be overcome. The Indian says: This woman is beautiful because she wears golden rings in her nose and her ears. Men of a higher culture say: This woman is beautiful because she does not wear rings in her nose or her ears. To seek beauty in form itself rather than make it dependent on ornament should be the aim of all mankind.’ Today we see in a desire for ornament an ignorant tendency which our century must repress. When in earlier periods ornament was used, often in an extravagant degree, it only showed how little the essence of typography, which is communication , was understood. It must be understood that ‘ornament’ is not only decorated rules and printers’ flowers but also includes all combinations of rules. Even the thick/thin rule is an ornament, and must be avoided. (It was used to disguise contrasts, to reduce them to one level. The New Typography, on the other hand, emphasizes contrasts and uses them to create a new unity.) ‘Abstract decorations’ which some foundries have produced under different names are also ornaments in this sense. Unfortunately many people have thought the essence of the New Typography consists merely in the use of bold rules, circles, and triangles. If these are merely substituted for the old ornaments, nothing is improved. This error is forgivable since, after all, all former typography was oriented towards the ornamental. But that is exactly why the utmost care must be taken to avoid replacing the old floral or other ornamentation with abstract ornaments. Equally the New Typography has absolutely nothing to do with ‘pictorial’ typesetting (Bildsatz) which has become fashionable recently. In almost all its examples it is the opposite of what we are aiming for.

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But it is not enough to dispense with ornament in order to create a meaningful form. We have already seen that even the old form that dispenses with ornament is ineffective because it is still based on the effect of ornamental types. The form of the old typography could be taken in at a glance, even though this does not correspond with the reading process. Even if I succeed in recognizing the outline of the type matter I have not really read anything. Reading presupposes eye movement. The New Typography so designs text matter that the eye is led from one word and one group of words to the next. So a logical organization of the text is needed, through the use of different type-sizes, weights, placing in relation to space, color, etc. The real meaning of form is made clearer by its opposite. We would not recognize day as day if night did not exist. The ways to achieve contrast are endless: the simplest are large/ small, light/dark, horizontal/vertical, square/round, smooth/ rough, closed/open, colored/plain; all offer many possibilities of effective design. Large differences in weight are better than small. The closer in size different types are to each other, the weaker will be the result. A limit to the number of type sizes usedâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;normally three to not more than fiveâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;is always to be recommended. This has the additional advantage of being easier both in designing and in setting. Variations in size should be emphatic: it is always better for the headline to be very large the remaining text noticeably smaller. It is vital that all contrasts, for example in type sizes, should be logical. For example, a forename should not have a much larger initial letter if the beginning of the principal name is not specially indicated. All form must correspond with meaning and not contradict it. In asymmetric design, the white background plays an active part in the design. The typical main display of the old typography, the title page, showed its black type on a white background that played no part in the design. In asymmetric typography, on the other hand, the paper background

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contributes to a greater or lesser degree to the effect of the whole. The strength of its effect depends on whether it is deliberately emphasized or not; but in asymmetric design it is always a component. The New Typography uses the effectiveness of the former ‘background’ quite deliberately, and considers the blank white spaces on the paper as formal elements just as much as the areas of black type. In this way the New Typography has enriched the art of printing by giving it a new medium of expression. The powerful effect in many examples of the New Typography depends directly on the use oflarge areas of white: white is always stronger than grey or black. Strong contrasts between white and black, in the form of type or rules, emphasize the white areas and greatly assist the total effect. A common misunderstanding of what we are about can be seen when the area of white has been decided beforehand and the text compressed into it. It is equally wrong to suppose that areas of white are ever more important than the words of the text. When the design of a piece of typography is looked at—and all typography has a design, of varying nature and quality—modern typography is distinguished by its formal use of the white and black areas. Of course, logically only the type is important. The pursuit of greater effectiveness and clarity in the relationship between black and white areas often leads to a noticeable reduction of margins (always prominent in the old typography). In the New Typography margins often almost entirely disappear. Of course type cannot in most cases be set right up to the edge of the paper, which would hinder legibility. In small items of printed matter, 12 to 24 points are the minimum margin required; in posters 48 points. On the other hand, borders of solid red or black can be taken right up to the edge, since unlike type they do not require a white margin to achieve their best effect. Blocks too can be bled off the page provided the trim is accurate. COLOR In contrast with the old typography, in which color as well as

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form was always used decoratively, in the New Typography color is used functionally, i.e., the physiological effect peculiar to each color is used to increase or decrease the importance of a block of type, a photograph, or whatever. White, for example, has the effect of reflecting light: it shines. Red comes forward, it seems closer to the reader than any other color, including white. Black on the other hand is the densest color and seems to retire the furthest. Of the other colors, yellow, for example, is close to red, and blue to black. (We do not accept a ‘literary’ identification of colors, for example, red=love, yellow=envy, as not being natural.) We have today a strong feeling for light, therefore for white, which explains its importance in the New Typography. The liveliness of red corresponds to our own natures, and we prefer it to all other colors. The already strong contrast between black and white can be greatly enhanced by the addition of red. (This is admittedly not a new discovery: but we have perhaps made sharper use of this combination than the earlier typographers, who also much enjoyed using black-red on white, especially in the Gothic and Baroque periods.) The combination of black-red is of course not the only possibility, as is often mistakenly supposed, but it is often chosen because of its greater intensity. Color should be used, in general, to help express the purpose of the work: a visiting-card does not require three colors, and a poster generally needs more than just black and white. Pure red, yellow, and blue, unmixed with black , will generally be preferred, because of their intensity, but other mixed colors need not be excluded. TYPE None of the typefaces to whose basic form some kind of ornament has been added (serifs in roman type, lozenge shapes and curlicues in fraktur) meet our requirements for clarity and purity. Among all the types that are available, the so-called ‘Grotesque’ (sans serif ) or ‘block letter’ (‘skeleton letters’ would be a better name) is the only one in spiritual accordance with our time.

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To proclaim sans serif as the typeface of our time is not a question of being fashionable, it really does express the same tendencies to be seen in our architecture. It will not be long before not only the ‘art’ typefaces, as they are sometimes called today, but also the classical typefaces, disappear, as completely as the contorted furniture of the eighties. There is no doubt that the sans serif types available today are not yet wholly satisfactory as all-purpose faces. The essential characteristics of this type have not been fully worked out: the lower case letters especially are still too like their ‘humanistic’ counterparts. Most of them, in particular the newest designs, such as Ebar and Kabel, are inferior o the old sans serifs, and have modifications which place them basically in line with the rest of the ‘art’ faces. As bread-and-butter faces they are less good than the old sans faces. Paul Renner’s Futura makes a significant step in the right direction. But all the attempts up to now to produce a type for our time are merely ‘improvements’ on the previous sans serifs: they are all still too artistic, too artificial, in the old sense, to fulfill what we need today. Personally I believe that no single designer can produce the typeface we need, which must be free from all personal characteristics: it will be the work of a group, among whom I think there must be an engineer. For the time being it seems to me that the jobbing sans serifs, like those from Bauer & Co. in Stuttgart, are the most suitable for use today, because of their functionalism and quiet line. Less good is Venus and its copies, owing to the bad design of caps E and F and the lower case t with its ugly slanted crossbar. In third place, when nothing better is available, come the ‘painterly’ (malerischen) block letters (light and bold, etc.) with their seemingly gnawed-off edges and rounded finals. Of the roman types, the bold romans (the Aldine, the bold Egyptians), with their exact drawing, are best, as far as types for emphasis are required.

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The essential limitation of this restricted range of typefaces does not mean that printers who have no or too few sans serif faces cannot produce good contemporary typography while using other faces. But it must be laid down that sans serif is absolutely and always better. I am aware that to lay down the law like this will offend the romantic predilections of a large part of the printing trade and the public for the old ‘decorative’ faces. These old types can however from time to time find a new use in modern typography: for fun, for example in order to make typographical parody of the ‘good old days’; or as an eye-catcher—for example by using a bold fraktur B in the middle of sans serif—just as the pompous uniforms of Victorian generals and admirals have been degraded for flunkeys and fancy dress. Whoever is so attached to fraktur— this sixteenth-century clerk’s type—that he cannot let go of it, should also not do violence to it by using it in modern typography where it can never be comfortable. Fraktur, like gothic and Schwabacher, has so little to do with us that it must be totally excluded as a basic type for contemporary work. The emphatically national, exclusivist character of fraktur— but also of the equivalent national scripts of other peoples, for example of the Russians or the Chinese—contradicts present-day transnational bonds between people and forces their inevitable elimination. To keep these types is retrograde . Roman type is the international typeface of the future. These important changes must come, since they express the actual spirit of our age and are required by the technical forms of the present and indeed the future. As undesirable as fraktur are those roman types with extraordinary forms, such as script and decorated, like Eckmann and others. The details of these faces distract from the meaning and thus contradict the essence of typography, which is never an end in itself. Their use for parody, in the sense described above, of course remains legitimate. As a bread-and-butter type today’s sans serifs are only partially suited. A bolder face is out of the question because continuous reading matter in bold sans serif is not easy to read . I find the best face in use today is the so-called ordinary jobbing sans

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serif, which is quiet and easy to read. In using it for this book I wanted to show how readable it is, but I still have certain reservations. However, it is preferable to all the romans. (In the particular choice of type for this book I was limited to what the printer held.) The main reason why sans serif is so seldom used today for normal text setting is that in general there is not enough of it available. So for much printed matter and books like the present one, entirely set in sans serif, it will remain the exception. In such cases the text face will be a good roman, and sans serif will be reserved for emphasis. Even more than the historic typefaces, the ‘artists’’ typefaces are disturbing because of their strongly individual character, which is in direct opposition to the spirit of our age and makes them unsuitable for properly designed printing today. No period was so preoccupied with individualism as that from the beginning of the present century up to the outbreak of war. The ‘artists’ types of this period reached their lowest point. None are in any way better than their predecessor, which are preferable for their superior quality. Nevertheless the classic faces like Walbaum, Didot, Bodoni, etc., cannot serve as breadand-butter types today. In terms of their conception they possess romantic associations , they divert the reader’s attention into certain emotional and intellectual spheres and clearly belong to a past with which we have no connection. A natural development—not a forced one—would hardly have brought them back again. To my mind, looking at the modern romans, it is the unpretentious works of the anonymous type-designers that have best served the spirit of their age: Sorbonne, Nordische Antiqua, Französische Antiqua, and so on. These three typefaces and their derivatives are the best designs from the pre-war period. They are easily legible; they are also above all in a technical sense useful and free from personal idiosyncrasies—in the best sense of the word, uninteresting.They can therefore be used everywhere, when a roman type has to be used because no appropriate sans serif is available.

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ON THE EXPRESSIVENESS OF TYPE Those who claim that sans serif is the typeface of our own age are often told that it does not express anything. Do other typefaces express anything? Is it really a typeface’s job to express spiritual matters? Yes and no. The widely held belief that every typeface has some ‘spiritual’ content is certainly not true of either gothic type (textura) or sans serif. The enormous number of typefaces available today, which express only an absence of creativity and are the result of the feebly eclectic nature of the pre-war period, may lead to the erroneous conclusion that gothic type expresses peace, solemnity, and religion, and italic, on the contrary, expresses cheerfulness and joy. However, all the innumerable things that can be expressed in writing, of whatever kind, at any time, are set down in one—or at most two—kinds of lettering or type.Yes, the character of gothic is religious and solemn, that of rococo (as far as the wealthy class is concerned) is light-hearted, but the typography of those times, even when expressing something contrary to the ‘zeitgeist,’ is always logical and stylistically consistent. In the Gothic period even profane texts were set in textura, and in the Rococo period an invitation to a funeral looks in no way different from any light-hearted printed matter of the same period. All lettering, especially type, is first and foremost an expression of its own time, just as every man is a symbol of his time. What textura and also rococo type express is not religiosity, but the Gothic, not cheerfulness, but the Rococo; and what sans serif expresses is not lack of feeling but the twentieth century! There is no personal expression of the designer, nor was it ever his aim, except in the first years of our century. The different kinds of type get their character from the different ideas of form in every age. Every punch-cutter wished to create the best possible typeface. If Didot did something different from Fleischmann, it was because times had changed, not because he wanted to produce something ‘special,’ ‘personal,’ or ‘unique.’ The conception of what a good typeface should look like had simply changed.

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The eclectic nature of the pre-war period led people to play with typefaces of every period, thus revealing their own artistic poverty. A book about the Thirty Yearsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; War had to be set in a different face from MĂśrikeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s poems or an industrial catalogue. But St. Augustine was set in textura, not in uncial! All printed matter of whatever kind that is created today must bear the hallmark of our age, and should not imitate printed matter of the past. This applies not only to the typeface but of course to every element of the manufacture: the illustrations, the binding, etc. Earlier periods, unlike us, ever conscious of themselves, always denied the past, often very crudely; that can be seen in the building of cathedrals, in the general development of culture, and in typography. The punch-cutter Unger, creator of Unger-fraktur (c. 1800) and a famous typographer, declared that Schwabacher was an ugly type and introduced letterspacing for emphasis in fraktur (previously, Schwabacher had been used for emphasis in fraktur). He was absolutely right. His age, the Rococo, found that gothic, and its ways of expression, including Schwabacher, were out of harmony with their own times and hence ugly: Unger was merely its mouthpiece in our field of typography. An art historian may prize the good qualities of an old Schwabacher type, and we too can see that it was an excellent face of its period, but we must not use it today, it is totally unsuitable for the twentieth century. So are all the other historical typefaces. Like everyone else, we too must look for a typeface expressive of our own age. Our age is characterized by an all-out search for clarity and truth, for purity of appearance. So the problem of what typeface to use is necessarily different from what it was in previous times. We require from type plainness, clarity, the rejection of everything that is superfluous. That leads us to a geometric construction of form. In sans serif we find a type that comes very close to these requirements, so it must become the basis for all future work to create the typeface of our age. The character of an age cannot be expressed only in rich and ornamental forms. The simple geometric forms of sans serif express something too: clarity and concentration on essentials, and so the essence of our time. To express this is important. But it is not important to create special types for advertising perfume

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manufacturers and fashion shops, or for lyrical outpourings by poets. It was never the task of punch-cutters of the past to create a type for a single kind of expression. The best typefaces are those which can be used for all purposes, and the bad ones are those which can be used only for visiting-cards or hymn books. A good letter is one that expresses itself, or rather ‘speaks,’ with the utmost distinctiveness and clarity. And a good typeface has no purpose beyond being of the highest clarity. Sans serif, looked at in detail, is admittedly capable of improvement, but there is no doubt that it is the basic form from which the typeface of the future will grow. Other individual expressive possibilities of type have nothing to do with typography. They are in contradiction to its very nature. They hinder direct and totally clear communication, which must always be the first purpose of typography. ORTHOGRAPHY AS AT PRESENT OR ALL IN LOWER CASE In roman type and its simpler form, sans serif, we possess faces that have been made out of not one but two alphabets. This combination took place in the fifteenth century. The one alphabet, the capitals, known as majuscules, was made by the old Romans as a form shaped by the chisel, at the beginning of our era. The other alphabet, the small or lower case letters, called minuscules, dates from the time of the emperor Charlemagne, about A.D. 800; the so-called Carolingian minuscule, a written letter made with a pen, with ascenders and descenders. This script too was originally complete in itself. The concept of ‘capital letters’ was foreign to it. It was during the Renaissance that these two forms of letter, the roman capitals and the Carolingian minuscules, were combined to make one alphabet, the ‘Antiqua’ or ‘roman.’ This is the explanation of the dichotomy, especially noticeable in German, between the capitals and the smaller letters. It is much less noticeable in other languages, especially French and English, because they use capital letters much less often than in German. Settings in roman type in English always look better than in German because they employ fewer accents and in particular do not use capitals for the first letters of nouns.

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For a long time now there have been efforts to abolish the use of capital initial letters for nouns and make German writing conform with the international style. This signaling of nouns with capitals started in the Baroque period and seems to us now no longer useful. The rules governing our use of capitals make teaching at school more difficult and also present problems in later life because of the many exceptions. Jakob Grimm, one of the founders of German studies, advocated its abolition already a hundred years ago, and referred to the Old and Middle High German literature in which capitals were used only for proper names and beginnings of sentences. Following him, capitals have been used by German scholars only in this way. The aesthetic critic finds this mixture of two such differently designed faces unpleasing. For this reason many artists prefer to use capitals only, to avoid mixing them with lower case. In France recently there have been many examples of the independent use of lower case only—mainly in fashion publicity and the announcements in fashion-shop windows. Besides the exclusive use of lower case for text can be seen the use of capitals alone for headings—and vice-versa, capitals for text and lower case for headings. From this one can see that it is now recognized that the two alphabets of roman are really two different styles, and should be used in parallel, but not mixed. The New Typography does not accept either of these alternatives to the previous system—adjustment to the international writing method, or division of roman type into capitals and lower case and regarding them as separate alphabets, even if this is against current opinion. It accepts neither the view of the Germanists nor that of the artists following the eclectic French fashion. The New Typography demands economy in type design. To redesign our letters completely—as in shorthand and lettering for the blind—would be quite impractical and unacceptable. So we have to make do with the type we have, the capitals and the lower case. To decide which to choose is not difficult, because capitals in continuous text are too difficult to read. Lower case letters are far easier to read, because of the ascenders and descenders which make complete words easier to recognize.

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A completely one-type system, using lower case only, would be of great advantage to the national economy; it would entail savings and simplifications in many areas; and would also result in great savings of spiritual and intellectual energy at present wasted: we can mention here the teaching of writing and orthography, a great simplification in typewriters and typing technique, a relief for memory, type design, type-cutting, type-casting, and all composition methods—and so on. At the same time as economic advantages, the use of minuscule would give us a stylistically faultless letter, so scientific advantage would be combined with aesthetic. So there cannot be any change in orthography if it means abandoning the concept of capitals and lower case. We can go on using the small letters, only the use of capitals is discontinued. (A subsequent continuance of capitals in some special kinds of writing could be considered.) But whether roman and also modern sans serif lower case can continue to express the opinions and claims of the present is open to doubt. Their form has always too much of writing and too little of type, and the efforts of the future will be directed towards suppressing their written character and bringing them closer to true print form. German orthography if it is to be truly contemporary must see changes, which will undoubtedly influence typeface design. Above all we must lose the burden of too much heavy philology in linguistics, and provide ourselves with self-explanatory signs for sch, ch, dg, drop the unnecessary letters (z, q, c) and aim at the rule ‘Write as you speak!’ and its counterpart ‘Speak as you write!’ On this basis a new and more practical orthography could be achieved, without which literature cannot succeed. Of course such a revolution in orthography and type will not happen in a day, but its time will assuredly come. Whether consciously or unconsciously, cultural developments take place and men change with them. The typeface of the future will not come from a single person but from a group of people.

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It is significant that one of the best new books on speech, type, and orthography has been written not by an architect or a philologist but by an engineer: Sprache und Schrift (Speech and Writing) by Dr. W Porstmann. Anyone interested in these problems will find this essential reading. At the same time, while the New Typography regards the removal of capitals as desirable, it is not an absolute demand. But it lies, like a more logical design for our orthography, in our path: an unmistakable design for typography that is in harmony with the desires and demands of our time. MISTAKES OFTEN MET In the beginning, many saw a new formalism in the New Typography: that is, they adopted some of its most obvious features—circles, triangles, rules—as geometrical features and used them as if they were the old kinds of ornament. The ‘elementary ornaments’ (itself a contradiction in terms) brought out by some foundries under various names further helped to spread this misunderstanding. These basic geometric forms, which we like to use must however be functional: they must emphasize words or paragraphs or be justified by the formal harmony of the whole. But instead of this we still find truly childish, pseudo-constructive shapes, which are totally contradictory to the spirit of the New Typography. The newspaper advertisement shown on top the next page is a typical example of pseudocontructivism, found all too commonly. Its form is not natural but comes from an idea before it was set. The advertisement is no longer typography but painting with letters, it turns good typography into borrowed, misunderstood, and thoughtless shapes. A similar example is in the business announcement on the bottom of the next page. Again, a previously conceived and meaningless shape is used, which has no connection with the text or its logical arrangement and in fact conflicts with it. Another serious fault is the lack of contrast in color, which emphasizes the bland and boring look of the whole.

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Wrong! It looks functional but when examined more closely we find it is superficial and does not express the text. In the middle, it is very difficult to find where to go on reading. Certain forms of abstract painting, understood only superficially, have been used in this piece, but typography is not abstract painting!

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The magazine cover below is an even worse example. It attempts to be ‘technical’ but contradicts the whole nature of what actually is technical. Here we see the mixing-in of that ‘art’ against which we are fighting—an artificiality which neglects truth and merely makes a ‘pretty shape’ which fails to express the purpose of the design. Imagination must be used on the basis of actual purpose, if truth in design is to be achieved. (In painting it is different: no restrictions are laid down, because the work does not have a fixed purpose.)

Wrong! The word ‘Revue’ is hard to read because of the complicated type: and the abstract forms are used thoughtlessly, purely for decoration, including the crossed thick-thin rules. The white paper background plays no part in the design. The whole shows a complete misunderstanding of the aims of the New Typographywhich does not arrange decorative forms, but designs-that is, it resolves the given text, which itself must show the simplest forms, into a harmonious whole.

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One also often finds the use of historical typefaces (Schwabacher, gothic, fraktur) in the manner of contemporary typography. But it is wrong to use these historical forms in this wayâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;they are foreign to our time and should be used only in a manner suitable to their own age. Can you imagine an airline pilot with a beard? The juxtaposition of positive and negative (reversed black to white) type, first introduced by commercial artists, can also be found in purely typographic work. There is no objection to this if it is based on logic (an important part of a word can be emphasized in this way)â&#x20AC;&#x201D;but that is not often the case. A word is often broken for purely formal reasons. This is not a sign of the New Typography. Independent negative lines can of course be beautiful and are usually very effective. Equally, setting in which blocks of text are arranged alternately on the left and right of an imaginary vertical line usually has a forced and unsatisfactory effect. The resulting uneven spacing and the violence of the block-shapes are merely unpleasing repetitions of old mistakes. But no one will hold the New Typography responsible for all the mistakes made under its name. The value of the work of printers striving to create the typographical expression of our time cannot be lessened by failures always inherent in any new movement.