THE WONDERS OF TYPOGRAPHY
PRATEEBA PERUMAL
“Typograpy is what language looks like” – Ellen Lupton
Dedicated to all my instructors, family and friends.
THE WONDERS OF TYPOGRAPHY
PRATEEBA PERUMAL
Published by Vanprint Printing Press 1177 Harwood Street Vancouver, Canada
BOOK DESIGNER Prateeba Per umal COVER DESIGNER Prateeba Per umal
Visit our web site www.vanprint.com © 2014, Vanprint Printing Press
No par t of this book may be used or reproduced in any matter without written permission from the publisher, expect in the content of reviews. Ever y reasonable attempt has been made to identify owner s of copyright, Error s or omission will be corrected in subsequent editions.
PRIMARY TYPEFACES Gill Sans Std, designed by Eric Gill HEADLINE & TITLE TYPEFACES Futura Bk, designed by Paul Renner DIN 1451 Std, published by Linotype Horatio LT Std, designed by Bob Newman Avenir LT Std, designed by Adrian Fr utiger ITC New Basker ville Std, designed by John Basker ville, SPECIAL THANKS TO Celeste Mar tin, Assistant Professor, Faculty of Design + Dynamic Media —Emily Carr University of Arts + Desiggn. This book publication project was produced for Typographic Communication, Emily Carr Univer sity of Ar ts + Design.
CONTENTS
The Crystal Goblet
GRID & DESIGN
Or Printing Should Be Invisible
New Life In Print
by Beatrice Warde
by Jan Tschichold
by Josef Muller Brockmann
8 – 15
16 – 25
26 – 31
PHILOSOPHY
DESTRUCTION OF SYNTAX
Towards A Universe Type
PROGRAMMES
by Herbet Bayer
by Karl Gerstner
by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti
32 – 39
40 – 45
46 – 55
DESIGNING
IMAGINATION WITOUT STRINGS WORDS IN FREEDOM
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
A
s a young designer and a visual tinker, I am indebted to my teacher s at Emily Carr Univer sity, where I am currently studying in Bachelor of Design in Communication Design, 2014. Back then, the design wor ld was neatly divided between ar t movements relating to modernism and an idea based approach rooted in America adver tising and illustration. My instr uctor, Celeste Mar tin staked out a place between those wor lds, allowing the modernist fascination with abstract system to collide with the strange and the popular. The title of this book, “The Wonder s of Typography” is a complilation of six great essays wrriten by Beatrice Warde, Jan Tschichold, Josef Muller Brockmann, Herber t Bayer, Karl Gerstner and Filippo Tommaso Marinetti. This book publication was produced for my Typoraphic Communication class and in order to design my own book publication, I had to imply all my knowledge that I have learnt from my instructor where I learnt the histor y of typograhy, design rules do’s and dont’s, how to think, how to use visual and verbal language to develop ideas. For me, discovering typography was like finding the bridge that connects ar t and language. Therefore, a great care has been taken in the compilation for this book publication project. The book was designed and created by using Adobe In-Design CC and Adobe Photoshop CC . During the project, Celeste Mar tin guided me throughout the whole book publication and along the way I learnt how to use the Adobe In-Design CC software in depth. With help of Celeste Mar tin I have made the book publication sucessfully. Ever yday I learn something new from people around me including my family and friends, and I am glad to have them by my side and also for helping me in many ways throughout the book publication.
– Prateeba Perumal
THE CRYSTAL GOBLET
Beatrice Warde (1900 – 1969) 8 l THE WONDERS OF TYPOGRAPHY
BEATRICE WARDE
The Crystal Goblet
Or Printing Should Be Invisible by Beatrice Warde
1935
P
rior to the turn of the century, practitioners often argued over the vir tues of personal style versus neutrality, which was the underlying topic of a lecture given by Beatrice Warde to the Society of Typographic Designers in London (later published as an essay). Warde, who used the pen name Paul Beaujon, was a respected type historian and critic of the graphic ar ts industry. In 1927, on the strength Beaujon’s writing in the Fleuron, she was appointed editor of the Monotype Recorder, published in England by the Lanstone Monotype Company. “The Crystal Goblet” is Warde’s best-known (and most reprinted) essay on the clarity of type and design. In the introduction to her book of collected writing, The Crystal Goblet, she asser ts that the essay contains ideas that must be “said over again in other terms to many…people who in the nature of their work have to deal with the putting of printed words on paper and who, for one reason or another, are in danger of becoming as fascinated by the intricacies of its techniques as birds are supposed to be by the eye of a serpent.” – Steven Heller
THE WONDERS OF TYPOGRAPHY l 9
THE CRYSTAL GOBLET
I
magine that you have before you a flagon of wine. You may choose your own favorite vintage for this imaginary demonstration, so that it be a deep shimmering crimson in color. 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 to 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 vir tues of the perfect wineglass 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 arid the fiery hear t 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 colorless or at the most only faintly tinged in the bowl, because the connoisseur judges wine par tly by its color and is impatient of anything that alters it. There are a thousand mannerisms in typography that are as impudent and arbitrary as putting por t 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 ‘doubling’ lines, reading three words as one, and so for th. 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
10 l THE WONDERS OF TYPOGRAPHY
use that term. That is, the first thing he asked of this par ticular 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’ of the fact I can make arbitrary sounds that will lead a total stranger to think my own thought. It is sheer magic that I should be able to hold a onesided conversation by means of black marks on paper with an unknown person halfway across the world. Talking, broadcasting, writing, and printing are all quite literally forms of thought transference, and it is this 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 impor tant thing about printing is that it conveys thought, ideas, images, from one mind to other minds. Within lie hundreds of rooms but unless you star t 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 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. 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.
BEATRICE WARDE
“...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.”
THE WONDERS OF TYPOGRAPHY l 11
THE CRYSTAL GOBLET
BEATRICE WARDE BOOK (RIGHT) Concerning Some Words by Beatrice Warde and Types by Varied Hands, 1953. This particular copy is unique because it was autographed by Warde inside the front cover.
When you listen to a song in a language you do not understand, par t of your mind actually does fall asleep, leaving your quite separate aesthetic sensibilities to enjoy themselves unimpeded by your reasoning faculties. The fine ar ts do that; but that is not the purpose of printing. That is why it is mischievous to call any printed piece a work of ar t, especially fine ar t: 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 ar t nowadays, because its primary economic and educational purpose has been taken away; but printing in English will not qualify as an ar t 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. I think you will not mind spending half an hour on broad and simple set of ideas involving abstract principles. 12  l THE WONDERS OF TYPOGRAPHY
BEATRICE WARDE
HANDWRITINGS (LEFT) Calligraphy style handwritings of Beatrice Warde.
I once was talking to a man who designed a very pleasing adver tising type that undoubtedly all of you have used. I said something about what ar tists think about a cer tain problem, and he replied with a beautiful gesture: That same day I quoted that remark to another designer of my acquaintance, and he, being less poetically inclined, murmured: He was right, he did think; he was the thinking sor t; 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 coherent as the 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 impor tant. I remember that T. M. Cleland, the famous American typographer, once showed me a very beautiful layout for a Cadillac booklet involving decorations in color. 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 typefoundries’ 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 and yet he discovered that the man to whom he submitted it would star t reading and making comments on the text. I made sonic 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 significance, then the layout would have been a failure. THE WONDERS OF TYPOGRAPHY l 13
THE CRYSTAL GOBLET
FRONT COVER (LEFT) “I Am a Communicator,” homage to Beatrice Warde, The Monotype Recorder, 1970. Monotype hired Warde in 1927 to edit its main publication, Monotype Recorder, and soon named her Publicity Manager
Setting it in Italian or Latin is only an easy way of saying “This is not the text as it will appear.”’ Let me star t my specific conclusions with book typography, because that contains all the fundamentals, and then go on to a few points about adver tising. 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 marvelous beauty, but a failure as a window; that is, he may use some rich superb type like text gothic that is something to he 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 14 l THE WONDERS OF TYPOGRAPHY
objectionable, because of a very impor tant fact which has to do with the psychology of the subconscious mind. This is that the mental eye focuses through type and not upon it. The type which, through any arbitrary warping of design or excess of ‘color,’ gets in the way of the mental picture to be conveyed is a bad type. Our subconsciousness is always be afraid of the blunders (which illogical setting, tight spacing and toowide 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 adver tising, 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 adver tisement by setting the simple and compelling argument in a face
BEATRICE WARDE
that is uncomfor tably 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 ar ts 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 realize 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 ‘stunt typographer’ 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 wor thy to hold the vintage of the human mind.
Address to the Society of Typographic Designers, formerly the British Typographers Guild, London, 1932 Published in Beatrice Warde: The Crystal Goblet-Sixteen Essays on Typography. (Cleveland and New York World Publishing Co, 1956).
THE WONDERS OF TYPOGRAPHY l 15
NEW LIFE IN PRINT
Jan Tschichold (1902 – 1974) 16 l THE WONDERS OF TYPOGRAPHY
JAN TSCHICHOLD
New Life In Print by Jan Tschichold
1935
I
n the October 1925 issue of Typographische Mitteilungen, a printer’s trade journal, guest editor Jan Tschicholdintroduced international examples of elementare typographie (elementary typography), the experiments in reductive design practice by the European avant-garde (de Stijl, Constructivism, and the Bauhaus). Three years later, in 1928, he published his most influential book, Die neue Typographie, The New Typography, 1995. A manual for German typographers on how to apply progressive, modern typographic concepts and thus reject antiquated ideas of composition. As codifier of the New Typography, Tschichold was in demand as both practitioner and commentator ; he wrote a stream of books, pamphlets, and ar ticles in Germany and abroad. His second book, Eine Stunde Druckgestaltung, included an introduction titled “Was ist und was will Die neue Typographie?” (“The new typography: What is it and what does it want?”); published as “New life in print” in the British journal Commercial Ar t, it is considered his most concise discussion on the subject. From 1930 to 1931, Commercial Ar t featured a series of ar ticles by Tschichold that championed the adoption of asymmetry and sans-serif type.
–Steven Heller THE WONDERS OF TYPOGRAPHY l 17
NEW LIFE IN PRINT
T
he general term “The New Typography” embraces the activities of a few of the younger typographers working principally in Germany, the Soviet Union, Holland, Czechoslovakia, and in Switzerland and Hungary. The inception of the movement in Germany reaches back into the war period. The existence of the New Typography can be said to be due to the personal achievements of its initiators; but to me it seems more accurate to regard these as the exponents of the tendencies and practical needs of our time, a view which by no means attempts to underestimate their extraordinary achievements and creative power or the inestimable value of their individual pioneer work. The movement would never have been so widespread, as in Central Europe it incontestably is, had it not served practical contemporary needs, and this it does so excellently because its primary aim is the unprejudiced adaptation of typography to the purposes of the task in hand. Here I think it necessary briefly to describe the state of prewar typographical development. Following upon the stylistic confusion of the eighties, England gave
bir th to the Ar ts and Craft movement (Morris 1892), which at least from a typographical standpoint, was mainly influenced by traditional tendencies (limitation of incunabula). In the “Youth style” an attempt was made, without however any permanent success, to break away from traditional models, arriving at a misunderstood offshoot of the Natural Form, finally to end in a renovated Biedermeier type in a word, in a new traditionalism. Then the traditional models were rediscovered and fur ther imitated, albeit on this occasion with better understanding (German Book Production 1911-1420). The reverence for traditional forms evoked by a more intensive research-work, resulted naturally in a limitation of creative freedom and forced it at length into inanition. Contrary to expectation, the most impor tant gain resulting from these years was the rediscovery of original traditional faces (Walbaum, Unger, Didot, Bodoni, Garamond, etc.), which for some time and with every justification have been preferred above their “precursors,” in reality their imitators. The natural reaction to the inanition of prewar
18 l THE WONDERS OF TYPOGRAPHY
JAN TSCHICHOLD
“ The difference between painting and typography exists only in as much as in the former there is a free choice of elements and the resulting design has no practical purpose. “
THE WONDERS OF TYPOGRAPHY l 19
NEW LIFE IN PRINT
PAMPHLET (LEFT) Jan Tschichold, pamphlet advertising The New Typography, 1928 and BOOK COVER (RIGHT) Cover of Elementary Typography,1925.
typography was the New Typography aiming above all at suppleness in its methods of design. Two aims can be discerned in all typographical work: the recognition and fulfillment of practical requirements-and the visual design. (Visual design is a question of aesthetic; it is senseless to attempt to avoid this expression). At this point typography differs not a little from architecture: it is possible (and it has indeed been done by the best architects) that the form of a house may be determined by its practical purpose, but in the case of typography the aesthetic side in the question of design makes itself clearly manifest. This factor relates typography far more nearly to the domain of “free” design on a plane surface (painting, drawing) than to that of architectural ar t. Both typography and the graphic ar ts are always
20 l THE WONDERS OF TYPOGRAPHY
concerned with surface (plane) design. Here at this stage the reason why none other than the “new” painters, the “abstract” painters, were destined to be the initiators of the New Typography. It is too wide a subject here to give any account of the development of abstract painting in this connection: visit any exhibition of their work and its relation to the New Typography is immediately discernible. This connection is not, as many believe, a formalist one but is genetic, a fact which abstract painters themselves have failed to understand. Abstract painting is the “unpurposing” relating of pure color and form without any literary admixtures. Typography signifies the visual (or aesthetic) ordering of given elements (practical requirements, type, pictures, color, etc.), on a plane surface. The difference between painting and typography exists only inasmuch as in the former there is a free choice of elements and the resulting design has no practical purpose.
JAN TSCHICHOLD
Modern typography therefore cannot be better occupied than with an intensive study of surface composition in abstract painting. Let us examine the principles followed by prewar typography. The majestic traditional model knew of only one scheme of designthe medial axis, the axial symmetry whose plainest example was the title page. The whole of typography followed this scheme, whatever its immediate task might be, whether printing a newspaper or a circular, letterheads or adver tisements. Only in the postwar period did the dim realization dawn that all these were quite different tasks, making entirely different practical demands to be met creatively by the typographer. A distinction between the New Typography and the old can only be drawn by means of a negation-the New Typography does not traditionalize.
And at the door of the old, whose tendency was purely traditional, the blame for this negation must be laid. But at the same time the New Typography, became of its utter rejection of any formalist limitations, is less antitraditional than a nontraditional. For instance, to achieve typographical design it is permissible to use every traditional and nontraditional face, every manner of plane relationship and every direction of line. The sole aim is design, the creative harmonious ordering of the practical requirements. There exist no limitations such as are imposed by the positing of “permissible” and “forbidden” type conjunctions. The unique aim of design to present a “restful” page is also reversed-we are at liber ty to present a designed “unrest.” The swift tempo of the modern business forces us fur ther to a most accurate calculation of economic presentation. Typography had not only to find a simpler and more easily realizable constructive form but at the same time had to make this itself more visually attractive and varied in design.
BOOK PAGE (LEFT) Jan Tschichold, page for his book Die neue Typographie, 1928.
THE WONDERS OF TYPOGRAPHY l 21
NEW LIFE IN PRINT
Dadaism, through Marinetti in Italy with his “Les mots en liber te futuriste (1919)” gave the first impulse to new development in typography. Today, its looked upon as sheer idiocy by many who have not taken the trouble to understand its dynamic and its the impor tant pioneer work done by those in the schools of Hausmann, Hear tfield, Gross, Hulsenbeck, and others be estimated at their proper value.The handbills and other publications of the Dadaists were the earliest documents of the New Typography. In 1922, the movement spread, a few abstract painters began typographical experiments. A fur ther impulse was given by the author’s supplement (“Elementare Typographie”) of the “Typographische Mitteilungen” (1925, out of print), in which the effor ts made and results achieved were demonstrated for the first time and which, published in an edition of 28,000, was broadcast to the printing world. The views of the New Typography were the object of savage attack on all sides, today none but a few disgruntled die-hards ever think of raising their voice against them. The New Typography has won through. Next to its nontraditional attitude the New Typography is characterized by its preference for new technical processes. It prefers: typefounder’s type machine setting machine-made paper machine presses photographs photo process blocks standardization
to to to to to to to
engraved type hand setting handmade paper hand presses drawings woodcuts individualization
Fur ther, the New Typography, by vir tue of its methods of design, embraces the whole domain of printing and not merely the narrow field of pure type. Thus in photography we possess an objective means of reproducing objectivity and one which is comprehensible to all. Photography because it is merely another method 22 l THE WONDERS OF TYPOGRAPHY
of visual speech is also regarded as type. The method of the New Typography is based upon a clear realization of purpose and the best means of achieving it. No the modern typography, be it never so “beautiful,” is “new” if it sacrifices purpose to form. “Form” is the result of work done and not the realization of an external conception of form. This fact has not been grasped by a whole troupe of pseudo-moderns. The chief demand of the New Typography is the most ideal adaptation to purpose. This makes the omission of any decorative ingredients self-understood. Purpose fur ther demands, and this cannot be too strongly emphasized, really good legibility. Lines too narrowly or too widely spaced and set are difficult to read and therefore, if for no other reason, to be avoided. The proper use of the various new processes produces in nearly every case specific forms and it is the typographer’s proper study to recognize these and adapt his design to them. The New Typography has won through. Thus a good typographer without a most thorough knowledge of technical requirements is unthinkable.
JAN TSCHICHOLD
MAGAZINE COVER (LEFT) Printed in 1928. Use of san-sarif fonts, strict rules and grids were used. New concentration on readability and function to the ideas and communication across. Placement and arrangment became important and not focused on artistry.
The present mass of the printed matter, circulars a thing which closely affects the individual as he receives no small par t of them, renders the use of a standardized format necessary. Of the available standing types, the New Typography is most par tial to the “grotesque” or “block” type, as this is simply formed and easy to read. The use of others, easily legible, or even traditional faces, in the new sense is quite admissible, as they are “evaluated” one against the other, i.e., if the contrast between them be designed. It is not therefore demanded that everything be set in “grotesque,” although in most cases this is indicated as most fitting. This face in its many variations of the thin, semi-bold, bold-faced, condensed, expanded, hair-spaced and many more is open to many effects which in juxtaposition are capable of rich and varied contrasts. Varying contrasts can be obtained by the introduction of antique faces (Egyptienne, Walbaum, Garamond, Italic, etc.), and there is no reason why these effects should not be used in conjunction. Typescript is also a very peculiar and effective face. Design is the most legible ordering and the correct choice of type
dimensions according to their value within the logical bounds of the text. The conscious use of movement by means of type or now and again a thick or thin rule, or group of rules, the visual agitated contrast of upper and lower case, thin and bold face, condensed and expanded type, gray and colored patches, slanting and horizontal, compact, and loose groups of type, are fur ther means of design. Therefore, they represent the “aesthetic” side of typographical composition. Within the definite limits set by practical requirement and the logical structure it is possible to tread various paths so that from this point onwards the visual sensibilities of the typographer must be the deciding factor. THE WONDERS OF TYPOGRAPHY l 23
NEW LIFE IN PRINT
Thus it comes about that when several of typographers are mostly engaged upon the one definite task, they each achieve a varying result, each of which may have the same practical advantages. The various men whose work is illustrated in this ar ticle reveal tremendously varying possibilities, in spite of the use of the same means and methods of design. Thus, means which are practically identical meet with an extraordinary variety of usage. And these examples show that modern methods, in spite of frequent surmise, do not lead to monotony of expression, but on the contrary to results of extreme dissimilarity and which above all possess more originality than those of prewar typography. Color is just another effective element as type. In a cer tain sense the unprinted surface must be reckoned in with it and the discovery of its effectiveness must be put to the credit of the New Typographers. The white surface is not regarded as a passive background but as an active element. Usually among actual colors preference is given to red; as “The” color it forms the most effective contrast to the normal black. The clear tones of yellow and blue must also be given place in the foreground of interest as these two are not diffuse. Color is not used as a decorative element, “beautifying” ingredient, but the peculiar psychophysical proper ties of each are used as a means to heighten or tone down effects. Illustration is supplied by photography. By this means we are given the most objective rendering of the object. Whether photography is in itself an ar t or not an ar t need not concern us here; in conjunction with type and a plane surface it can be an ar t, as then it is purely a matter of values, of fitness in structural contrasts and relationships. Many people incline to mistrust graphic illustrations, the old graphic illustrations that no longer convince us and their individualistic pose and mannerisms affect us unpleasantly. If it be desired to give several pictorial impressions at the same time, to display 24 l THE WONDERS OF TYPOGRAPHY
several contrasting things, montage must be called into service. For this the same general methods of design as in typography hold good; used in conjunction with type, the photograph becomes a par t of the whole and must be properly evaluated in this connection so as to achieve harmonious design. A rare but very attractive photographic possibility is the photogram of which an example is shown. A photogram is taken without a camera simply by placing a more or less transparent object on a sensitized medium (paper, film or plates). Typography + Photography is termed “Typophoto.” The extraordinary adaptability of the New Typography to every conceivable purpose renders it an impor tant phenomenon in contemporary life. Its very attitude and position reveal that it is no mere fashion of a moment but is destined to form the basis of all fur ther typographical progress. Karel Teige of Prague has formulated the main characteristics of the New Typography as follows: “Constructivist Typography” (a synonym for the New Typography) means and requires:
JAN TSCHICHOLD
Freedom from tradition and prejudice; over throw of archaicism and academicism and the rejection of decoration. No respect for academic and traditional rules unsuppor ted by visual reason, which are here lifeless form (“the golden section,” unity of type). A choice of type, more perfect, more legible and cut with more geometric simplicity. Understanding of the spirit of the types suitable and their me in accord with the character of the text, contrast of typographical material to emphasize content. Constant appreciation of purpose• and fulfillment of requirement. Differentiation in special aims. Adver tisements meant to be seen from a distance require different treatment to a scientific work or a volume of verse.
Exploitation of all means, which are or may be offered by present and future technical discoveries; conjunction of illustration and text by typophoto. The closest cooperation between typographers and exper ts in the composing room is desirable, just as the designing architect cooperates with the constructional engineer. Specialization and division of labor are quite as necessary as close contact. There is nothing to be added to the above beyond that the “golden section” together with other exact propor tional formulas are often far more effective than chance relationships and should therefore not suffer fundamental exclusion.
First published in Commercial Art, London, July 1930. Harmonious disposition of surface and text in accordance with objective visual law; surveyable structure and geometric organization. THE WONDERS OF TYPOGRAPHY l 25
GRID & DESIGN PHILOSOPHY
Josef Müller Brockman (1914 – 1996) 26 l THE WONDERS OF TYPOGRAPHY
JOSEF MULLER-BROCKMANN
GRID & DESIGN PHILOSOPHY BY
JOSEF MULLER BROCKMANN 1981
J
osef Müller-Brockman divided and ordered graphic design into the grid of Swiss typography. He took design elements that were subjective, irrational, and chaotic and brought them under tight, measured control. He dealt deep into form and content, spending his life in Zurich bearing down his work to the essentials necessary for what he considered an objective—even timeless—method of communication. They grid was key to his pursuit. As Müller-Brockman’s notes in the essay at right, “working within the grid system means submitting to laws of universal validity.”
He popularized the grid while spreading the principles of Swiss typography internationally through graphic design, lectures, and publications. In 1958 he founded New Graphic, and influential trilingual magazine promoting Swiss typography. He embodied the expansive precision of this movement. When asked about David Carson, postmodern designer and surfer, in 1996, Müller-Brockman replied, “I don’t surf, I dive.” His intense quest to achieve a universal system of communication calls to contemporary designers seeking ideal global forms for the world of new media.
THE WONDERS OF TYPOGRAPHY l 27
GRID & DESIGN PHILOSOPHY
T
he use of the grid system as an ordering system is the expression of a cer tain mental attitude inasmuch as it shows that the designer conceives his work in terms that are constructive and oriented to the future. This is the expression of a professional ethos: the designer’s work should have the clearly intelligible, objective, functional, and aesthetic quality of mathematical thinking. His work should thus be a contribution to general culture and itself form par t of it. Constructivist design that is capable of analysis and reproduction can influence and enhance the taste
of a society and the way it conceives forms and colors. Design that is objective, committed to the common weal, well composed, of refined constitutes the basis of democratic behavior. Constructivist design means the conversion of design laws into practical solutions. Work done systematically and in accordance with strict formal principles makes those demands for directness, intelligibility, and the integration of all factors that are also vital in sociopolitical life.
JOSEF MULLER-BROCKMANN. The “musica viva“ poster is built up on
with the letters of “musica viva“. In this way an impression is created of a
a grid 4.5 fields wide and 4 fields deep. The two words “musica viva“ are
severe but elegant architectire. Format : 128 x 90.5 cm, upright. Colors :
arranged in a cross, the letters of “musica“ being set at irregular inter vals
blue-green-white.
so that a rhythm is prodiced. The lines of the program in small type allign
28 l THE WONDERS OF TYPOGRAPHY
JOSEF MULLER-BROCKMANN
“ Every visual creative work is a manifestation of the character of the designer. It is a reflection of his knowledge, his ability, and his mentality. “
THE WONDERS OF TYPOGRAPHY l 29
GRID & DESIGN PHILOSOPHY
30 l THE WONDERS OF TYPOGRAPHY
JOSEF MULLER-BROCKMANN
Working with the grid system just means submitting to laws of universal validity. The use of a grid system implies the will to systematize, to clarify There will to penetrate to the essentials, to concentrate The will cultivate objectivity instead of subjectivity, The will to rationalize that creative and technical production processes The will to integrate elements of color, form, and material The will to achieve architectural dominion over surface and space The will to adopt a positive, forward-looking attitude The recognition of the impor tance of education and the effect of work devised in a constructive and creative spirit.
Every visual creative work is a manifestation of the character of the designer. It is a reflection of his knowledge, his ability, and his mentality. Caption. Josef Müller-Brockman. The “musica viva” poster is built up on a grid 4.5 fields wide and 4 fields deep. The two words “musica viva” are arranged in a cross, the letters of “musica” being set at irregular intervals so that a rhythm is produced. The lines of the program in small type align with the letters of “musica viva.” In this way an impression is created of a severe but elegant architecture. Format: 128 X 90.5 cm, upright. Colors: blue-green-white.
See Kerry William Purcell, Josef Müller-Brockman (New York: Phaidon Press, 2006), 277.
THE WONDERS OF TYPOGRAPHY l 31
TOWARDS A UNIVERSE TYPE
Herbet Bayer (1900 – 1985) 32 l THE WONDERS OF TYPOGRAPHY
HERBET BAYER
Towards A Universe Type by Herbet Bayer
1935
B
eginning in the1920s, German type reformers sought ways of replacing the national alphabet—the spiky Blackletter—with simplified gothic letters. A leading advocate was Austrian-born Herber t Bayer (1900–1985), who was educated at the Bauhaus in Weimar and later taught at the Bauhaus in Dessau, where, from 1925 to 1928, he was director of the school’s depar tment of typography and adver tising. During this time, his interests-and the depar tment’s emphasis-shifted from lithography and hand-printing to more mechanical processes and more inventive typographic exploration. A devout modernist who was profoundly influenced by the De Stijl movement (1917–1932), Bayer railed against the redundancy of serifs and capital letters, arguing instead for the efficiency of lowercase and the economy of a sans-serif alphabet. His universal alphabet of 1925–1927 emphatically illuminates this argument. In this ar ticle, published seven years after the Bauhaus was closed, Bayer— who was at this time living in Nazi Germany—explains the practical conveniences of a typographic system that mirrors the functional requirements of modern life. Here, a renunciation of thick-to-thin strokes is contrasted by a celebration of the purity of geometric form.
– Jessica Helfland THE WONDERS OF TYPOGRAPHY l 33
TOWARDS A UNIVERSE TYPE
O
ne glance at the specimen book of types issued by even an up-to-date printing firm, reveals a collection of the most varied sor ts of letters, which as a whole constitute a conglomeration of style of the worst kind. arranged in groups and compared with other expressions of the periods from which they have descended, they remind us that: today we do not build in gothic, but in our contemporary way. no longer do we travel on horseback, but in cars, train and planes. we do not dress in crinolines nowadays, but in a more rational manner.
Every period has its own formal and cultural features, expressed in its contemporary habits of life, in its architecture and literature. the same applies to language and writing. we recognize clearly enough that literary forms of past ages do not belong to the present times. a man would make himself ridiculous who insisted on talking today in the manner of the middle ages. Later, we shall see that the type designs of tradition do not respond to the essential requirements of type suitable for use today. we look back upon a long line of development in type design, and we have no intention of criticizing the heritage which now oppresses us. but we have reached a stage when we must decide to break with the past. when we are confronted with a collection of traditional styles we ought to see that we can turn away from the antiquated forms of the middle ages with a clear conscience to the possibilities of designing a new kind of type more suitable to the present and what we can foresee of the future. In the course of the centuries our language has changed. it has become shor ter, sound-changes have taken place, new words have been coined, new concepts have been formed. language itself needs complete reorganization-but this is a tremendous subject. we shall not enter upon it, but limit ourselves to consideration of type-design. Out of the conglomerate mass of type faces, some of which are illustrated, there has emerged, as a last phase, the form of classical roman type, with variations until we arrive at the simplified form without serifs, popularly known as “sans-serif ” or “sans,” in england the most familiar type of this order is commonly known as “gill sans,” after the name of its designer, eric gill. sans-serif type is the child of our period. in form it is in complete harmony with other visible forms and phenomena of modern life. we welcome it as our most modern type. we cannot set about inventing an entirely new form of type, as this would have to be parallel with a radical reorganization of the language. We must remain true to our basic letter-forms, and try to develop them fur ther. classic roman type, the original form of all historical variations of type, must still be our star ting point. all the variations of shape have been formed freely according to the style and the calligraphy of the type designer, and it is just this 34 l THE WONDERS OF TYPOGRAPHY
HERBET BAYER
“The classic roman type, the original form of all historical variations of type, must still be our starting point. All the variations of shape have been formed freely according to the style and calligraphy of the type designer, and it is just this freedom which has been responsible for so many mistakes. ”
THE WONDERS OF TYPOGRAPHY l 35
TOWARDS A UNIVERSE TYPE
EXHIBITION POSTER (RIGHT) Herbert Bayer designed the poster in 1926. Bayer developed the “Universal”, a geometric sans-serif typeface in 1925, designed the iconic signage for the Bauhaus’ new building complex in Dessau, and the graphic design for Bauhaus product catalogues and posters.
freedom which has been responsible for so many mistakes. geometry, however, gives us the most exact forms. albrecht durer’s endeavours to resolve both the roman and the german gothic type into their constructive basic elements, unfor tunately were never carried beyond their experimental stage. the bayer-type produced by the ber thold type foundry represents a practical attempt to give a modern expression to classical roman type by means of geometrical construction of form. a tremendous amount of reading is done today and there should be no difficulties put in the way of the reader. some things have to be read from afar, and letters must be visible from considerable distances. it is not without reason that oculists use clear cut type faces when testing the state of the patient’s eyesight. Much has been written about the legibility of type. oculists can offer no definite proofs, because their experiments are influenced by habits to which patients are accustomed. for example, it is found that old people with bad eyesight often read complicated gothic type more easily than clear roman type, because they are used to the former. but from research, however, it has been concluded that the more the individual letters resemble one another in shape, the less visible is the type. this conclusion may be wrong, as it would be easy to find illegible type-faces in which the individual letters differ very widely from one another, if that be the only consideration. and then where shall we look for harmony of form and the fundamental constructional form of our types? other research has established that whole groups of letters-not single letters, but words-are taken in by the eye at one 36 l THE WONDERS OF TYPOGRAPHY
HERBET BAYER
glance. if we carried this conclusion to its logical end we should have optical word pictures (similar to chinese signs) and no type with separate letters. personally, i believe in the following logical conception: the simpler the shape of the letter, the easier the type is to see, read, and learn. in classic times capital letters (the only letters in use) were drawn with a slate pencil and incised with a chisel. no doubt their form was intimately associated with these tools. lower case developed in the early middle ages from the use of the pen. Therefore, inherits the characteristics of handwriting. later, both alphabets adapted themselves, and we observe in all types up to the present the characteristic basic element of the thin up-stroke and the thick down-stroke. We must remain true to our basic letter-forms, and try to develop them fur ther. classic roman type, the original form of all historical variations of type, must still be our star ting point. These characteristics have preserved themselves up to this day. but do we need such a pretense of precedent at a time when 90 percent of all that is read is either written on a typewriter or printed on a printing press, when handwriting plays only a secondary role, and when type could be much simpler and more consistent in form?
PAPER BANKNOTES (RIGHT) A beautifully simple design by Herbert Bayer (1900 - 1985) for the emergency banknotes issued by Die Landesregierung Thüringen in Weimar (State government of Thuringia in Weimar) during the “hyperinflation” economic period of the Weimar Republic. The paper money was worthless it was more economic to use it as fuel. It is dated 9. August 1923.
THE WONDERS OF TYPOGRAPHY l 37
TOWARDS A UNIVERSE TYPE
Hence, i believe the requirements of a new alphabet are as follows: geometric foundation of each letter, resulting in a synthetic construction out of a few basic elements. avoidance of all suggestion of a hand-written character, uniform thickness of all par ts of letter, and renunciation of all suggestions and down strokes. simplification of form for the sake of legibility. a basic form which will suffice for diverse applications so that the same character is adaptable for various functions: printing, typewriting, hand and stencil writing, etc. these considerations will explain the attempt to design a new type. but why do we write and print with two alphabets? a large and a small sign are not necessary for one sound. we do not speak a capital a and a small a. CATALOGUE. Bayer Catalogue of Bauhaus Products, 1923. Bayer developed the “Universal”, a geometric sans-serif typeface in 1925, designed the graphic design for Bauhaus product catalogues and posters.
We need a one-letter type alphabet. it gives us exactly the same result as the mixed type of capitals and lower-case letters, and at the same time is less of a burden to school children, students, professional and business men. it can be written considerably more quickly, especially on the typewriter, where a shift key would be unnecessary. typewriting would therefore be more easily learned. typewriters would be cheaper because of simpler construction. typesetting would be cheaper, type cases smaller ; printing establishments would save space. writing and addressing done in offices would be much cheaper. these facts apply with special force in the english language, in which the use of capital letters occurs so infrequently. it seems incomprehensible why such a huge amount of apparatus should be necessary for such little use of capitals. if it is considered necessary to emphasize the beginnings of sentences, this could be done by heavy type or wider spacing. proper names could also be shown in another way, and for the “i” a uniform sign would have to be created.
38 l THE WONDERS OF TYPOGRAPHY
HERBET BAYER
LETTERING. Herbert Bayer Design for “universal” lettering in 1925. Herbert Bayer was the first lecturer on typography and he created the first all lowercase type. He created this type because the German blackletter types were not his taste as he felt that the “capital letters for every proper noun was annoying”
Pursuing this thought to its logical conclusion we perceive that the sound of the language ought to be given a systematic optical shape. in order to aim at a simplified type, as against that used today, syllables that frequently recur, and combined sounds (diphthongs, etc. should be given new letter signs).THE CAPITAL LETTERS OF ANCIENT TIMES ARE HARDLY LEGIBLE WHEN THEY ARE FORMED INTO SENTENCES. THEY CANNOT, THEREFORE, BE TAKEN INTO CONSIDERATION. there remains only the small letters of our present-day lower case alphabet. this must be the foundation of our one-letter alphabet. and is not a sentence in a oneletter alphabet, which intrinsically possesses a formally compact construction, more harmonious, logically, than a sentence consisting of two alphabets, which completely differ from each other in shape and size?
First published in PM 4, no. 2 from December till January in 1939-1940.
THE WONDERS OF TYPOGRAPHY l 39
DESIGNING PROGRAMMES
Karl Grestner (1930 - present) 40 l THE WONDERS OF TYPOGRAPHY
KARL GRESTNER
DESIGNING PROGRAMMES by Karl Gerstner
1964
K
arl Gerstner created a rational and a systematic approach to graphic design. As a boy and Basel this pioneer of Swiss typography longed to be a chemist. Unable to afford the extensive training, he turned instead to the visual synthesis of graphic design. Gerstner merged ar t with science. He developed a comprehensive system capable of generating a broad range of design solutions, and he connected this system to be evolving field of computer programming. Gerstner detailed his approach in Designing Programmes, a book that became a 1960s cult classic. For three decades he run GGK, the adver tising agency he founded with Markus Kutter in 1959. He’s barely work with systemsoriented design reveals, in his words, “How much computers change’s—or can change—not only the procedure of the work but the work itself.”
THE WONDERS OF TYPOGRAPHY l 41
DESIGNING PROGRAMMES
Programme as Logic
I
nstead of solutions for problems, programmes for solutions—this subtitle can also be understood in these terms: for no problem (so to speak) is there an absolute solution. Reason: the possibilities cannot be delimited absolutely.There is always a group of solutions, one of which is the best under cer tain conditions. To describe the problem is par t of the solution. This implies: not to make creative decisions as prompted by feeling but by intellectual criteria. The more exact and complete these criteria are, the more creative the work becomes.The creative process is to be reduced to an act of selection. Designing means: to pick out determining elements combine them. Seeing in these terms, designing calls for method. The most suitable I know is that one Fritz Zwicky has developed, although actually his is intended for scientists rather than designers. (Die morphologische Forschung, 1953, Kommissionsverlag, Winter thur.) I have produced the diagram below in accordance with his instructions and, following his terminology, I have called it “the morphological box of the typogram.” Is the criteria—the parameters on the
left, the relative components on the right—following which marks and signs are to be designed from letters. The criteria are rough. As the work proceeds, of course, they are to be refined as desired. The components are to be made into parameters and new components are to be specified, etc. Moreover, they are not only rough, they are also not self-contained. The component “something else” is the parcel in which the leftovers are packed if the parameter does not breakdown neatly. The designations are imprecise in some cases. There are many imperfections. But it is precisely in drawing up the scheme, in striving for perfection, that the work really lies. The work is not diminished; it is merely transferred to another plane. The inadequacy of this box is my own and not inherent in the method. Even so: it contains thousands of solutions that—as could be shown by checking an example— are arrived at by the blind concatenation of components. It is a kind of designing automatic.
a. Basis 1. Components
11. Word
12. Abbreviation
13. Word group
14. Combined
2. Typeface
21. Sans-serif
22. Roman
23. German
24. Some other
25. Combined
3. Technique
31. Written
32. Drawn
33. Composed
34.
35. Combined
1. Shade
11. Light
12. Medium
13. Dark
14. Combined
2. Value
21. Chromatic
22. Achromatic
23. Mixed
24. Combined
1. Size
11. Small
12. Medium
13. Large
14. Combined
2. Proportion
21. Narrow
22. Usual
23. Broad
24. Combined
3. Boldness
31. Lean
32. Normal
33. Fat
34. Combined
4. Inclination
41. Upright
42. Oblique
43. Combined
1. Reading Direction
12. From top to bottom
12. From top to bottom
13. Otherwise
2. Spacing
22. Normal
22. Wide
23. Combined
3. Form
32. Mutilated
32. Projected
33. Something else
34. Combined
4. Design
42. Something Omitted
42. Something Replaced
43. Something added
44. Combined
a. Colour
c. Appearance
d. Expression
42 l THE WONDERS OF TYPOGRAPHY
14. Combined
KARL GRESTNER
“ The designations are the imprecise in some cases. There are many imperfections. But it is precisely in drawing up the scheme, in striving for perfection, that the work really lies. The workis not diminished; it is merely transferred to another plane. ”
THE WONDERS OF TYPOGRAPHY l 43
DESIGNING PROGRAMMES
Solutions from the Programme Not all the solutions were found with the aid of the morphological box. But all those phones can be assigned to a place in it and analyzed. If all the components contained in the trademark intermöbel are added, we obtain the following chain: a. b.
11. (word) – 21. (sans-serif) – 33. (composed) 14. (shades combined, viz. light and dark) – 12. (achromatic)
c.
12. (size immaterial, therefore medium) – 22. (propor tion usual) – 33. (fat) – 41. (roman) 11. (from left to right) - 22. (normal spacing) 31. (form unmodified) – 43. (something replaced, viz., the face of the letter r by superimposition of the two par ts of the word).
d.
Not all the components are of equal impor tance; only two are actually decisive: b 14 + d 43. The impor tance of “combined” is shown in example b 14: the components light-medium-dark are not very expressive in themselves because they do not represent an assessable value (apar t from black always being dark). But if letters of varying degrees of darkness are combined (as there) the parameter of shade may be the
44 l THE WONDERS OF TYPOGRAPHY
point at which the solution crystallizes out. Parameters as points of crystallization: I will illustrate photos in the section “Expression” by the following examples: “Reading direction” determines the expression of the typograms Krupp and National Zeitung. In both instances the component d 15 (combined) forms the basis. In Krupp d 11 (from left to right) is combined with d 14 (otherwise, i.e., from right to left). In the case of National Zeitung the components are d 12 and 13. “Spacing,” once again combined in the component, is determining in Braun Electric and Autokredit A.G.
KARL GRESTNER
Programme as Grid Is the grid programme? Let me put it more specifically: if the grid is considered as a promotional regulator, a system, it is a programme par excellence. Squared paper is a (arithmetic) grid, but not programme. Unlike, say, the (geometric) module of Le Corbusier, which can, of course, be used as a grid but is primarily a programme. Alber t Einstein said of the module: “is the scale of propor tions that makes the bad difficult and a good easy.”That is a programmatic statement of what I take to be the aim of “Designing Programmes.” The typographic grid is a propor tional regulator for composition, tables, pictures, etc. it is a formal programme to accommodate x unknown items. The difficulty is: to find a balance, the maximum of conformity to a rule with the maximum of freedom. Or : the maximum of constants with the greatest possible variability. In our agency we have evolved the “mobile grid.” An example is the arrangement below: the grid for the periodical Capital. The basic unit is 10 points; the size of the basic typeface
including the lead. The text and picture area are divided at the same time into one, two, three, four, five, and six columns. There are 58 units along the whole width. This number is a logical one when there are always two units between the columns. That is: it divides in every case without a remainder : with two columns and 58 units are composed of 2 x 28 + 2 (space between columns); with 3 columns 3 x 18 + 2 x 2; with 4 columns 4 x 13 + 3 x 2; with 5 columns 5 x 10 + 4 x 2; with6 columns 6 x 8 + 5 x 2 10-point units. The grid looks complicated to anyone not knowing the key. For the initiate it is easy to use and (almost) inexhaustible as a programme.
Manfred Kröplien, “Status Quo at 66” in Karl Gerstner, Review of 5 x 10 Years of Graphic Design etc. (OstfildernRuit, Germany: Hatje Cantz, 2001), 242.
THE WONDERS OF TYPOGRAPHY l 45
DESTRUCTION OF SYNTAX
Filippo Tommaso Marinetti (1874 – 1944) 46 l THE WONDERS OF TYPOGRAPHY
FILIPPO TOMMASO MARINETTI
DESTRUCTION OF SYNTAX IMAGINATION WITOUT STRINGS WORDS IN FREEDOM BY
FILIPPO TOMMASO MARINETTI 1913
A
t a time when graphic design had yet to emerge as awfully defined commercial practice, the writings and experiments of the Italian Futurist Filippo Tommaso Marinetti (1876–1944) embodied a vigorous alternative set of possibilities for graphic communication. As a poet reacting against his Symbolist predecessors, Marinetti’s primary concern was with the free expressive potential of language, and his typographic researches were all conducted to this end (though the approach would later be applied to adver tising by For tunato Depero and others). Marinetti was the selfpublicizing author of the first Futurist hymn to speed, dynamism, war, and the end of tradition–published in
Le Figaro newspaper in 1909—and between 1912 and 1914 he ar ticulated his radical aesthetic agenda in a series of manifestos. This extract, with its section on “typographical revolution” is the most explicit in typographic terms. In the poems collected in his book Les mots en liber té futuristes (1919), Marinetti collaged letterforms and fragments into a state of violent agitation, with words moving at the velocity of the trains, planes, waves, and atoms that inspired the Futurists. Verbal language is dematerialized, even as its material aspects are elevated, while the sensibility guiding these paper-bound explosions is cybernetic. Filippo Tommaso Marinetti
– Rick Poynor THE WONDERS OF TYPOGRAPHY l 47
DESTRUCTION OF SYNTAX
WORDS IN FREEDOM
C
asting aside every stupid formula and all the confused verbalisms of the professors, I now declare that lyricism is the exquisite faculty of intoxicating oneself with life, of filling life with the inebriation of oneself. The faculty of changing into wine the muddy water of the life that swirls us. The ability to color the world with the unique colors of our changeable selves. Now suppose that a friend of yours gifted with this faculty finds himself in a zone of intense life (revolution, war, shipwreck, ear thquake, and so on) and star ts right away to tell you his impressions. Do you know what this lyric, excited friend of yours will instinctively do? He will begin by brutally destroying the syntax of his speech. He wastes no time in building sentences. Punctuation and the right adjectives will mean nothing to him. He will despise subtleties and nuances of language. Breathlessly he will assault your nerves with visual, auditory, olfactory sensations, just as they come to him. The rush of steam-emotion will burst the sentence’s steam pipe, the valves of punctuation, and the adjectival clamp. Fistfuls of essential words in no conventional order. Sole preoccupation of the narrator, to render every vibration of his being. If the mind of this gifted lyrical narrator is also populated by general ideas, he will involuntarily bind up his sensations with the entire universe that he intuitively knows. And in order to render the true wor th and dimensions of his lived life, he will cast immense nets of analogy across the world. In this way he will reveal the analogical foundation of life, telegraphically, with the same economical speed that the telegraph imposes on repor ters and war correspondents in their swift repor tings. This urgent laconism answers not only to the laws of speed that govern us but also to the rappor t of centuries between poet and audience. In fact, the same rappor t exists as between two old friends. They can make themselves 48 l THE WONDERS OF TYPOGRAPHY
understood with half a word, a gesture, a glance. So the poet’s imagination weave together distant things with no connecting strings, by means of essential free words. DEATH OF FREE VERSE Free verse once had countless reasons for existing but now is destined to be replaced by words-in-freedom. The evolution of poetry and human sensibility has shown us the two incurable defects of free verse. Free verse fatally pushes the poet towards facile sound effects, banal double meanings, monotonous cadences, a foolish chiming, and an inevitable echo-play, internal and external. Free verse ar tificially channels the flow of lyric emotion between the high walls of syntax and the weirs of grammar. The free intuitive inspiration that addresses itself directly to the intuition of the ideal reader finds itself imprisoned and distributed like purified water for the nourishment of all fussy, restless intelligences. When I speak of destroying the canals of syntax, I am neither categorical nor systematic. Traces of conventional syntax and even of true logical sentences will be found here and there in the words-in-freedom of my unchained lyricism. This inequality in conciseness and freedom is natural and inevitable. Since poetry is in truth only a superior, concentrated and intense life than what we live from, like the latter it is composed of hyper-alive elements and moribund elements. We ought not, therefore, to be too much preoccupied with these elements. But we should at all costs avoid rhetoric and banalities telegraphically expressed.
FILIPPO TOMMASO MARINETTI
“ The imagination without strings, and words-in-freedom, will bring us to the essence of material. As we discover new analogies between distant and apparently contrary things, we will endow them with an ever more intimate value. “
THE WONDERS OF TYPOGRAPHY l 49
DESTRUCTION OF SYNTAX
THE IMAGINATION WITHOUT STRINGS By the imagination without strings I mean the absolute freedom of images or analogies, expressed with unhampered words and with no connecting strings of syntax and with no punctuation. Up to now the writers have been restricted to te immediate analogies. For instance, they have compared to an animal with a man or with another animal, which is almost the same as a kind of photography. Therefore, they have compared, for example, a fox terrier to a very small thoroughbred. Others, are more advanced, might compare to the same trembling fox terrier to a little Morse Code machine. I, on the other hand, compare it with gurgling water. Moreover, In this there is an ever vaster gradation of analogies, there are ever deeper and more solid affinities, however remote. Analogy is nothing more than the deep love that assembles distant, seemingly diverse and hostile things. An orchestral style, at once polychromatic, polyphonic, and polymorphous, can embrace the life of matter only by means of the most extensive analogies. When, in my Battle of Tripoli, I compared a trench bristling with bayonets to an orchestra, a machine gun to a femme fatale, I intuitively introduced a large par t of the universe into a shor t episode of African battle. Images are not flowers to be chosen and picked with parsimony, as Voltaire said. They are the very lifeblood of poetry should be an uninterrupted sequence of new images, or it’s mere anemia and greensickness. The broader their affinities, the longer will images keep their power to amaze. The imagination without strings, and words-in-freedom, will bring us to essence of material. We discover new analogies between distant and apparently contrary things, we will endow them with an ever more intimate value. Instead of humanizing animals, vegetables, and minerals we will be able to animalize or liquefy our style, making it live the life of material. 50 l THE WONDERS OF TYPOGRAPHY
For example, to represent the life of a blade of grass, I say: “Tomorrow I’ll be greener.” With words-infreedom we will have: CONDENSED METAPHORS. TELEGRAPHIC IMAGES. MAXIMUM VIBRATIONS. NODES OF THOUGHT. CLOSED OR OPEN FANS OF MOVEMENT. COMPRESSED ANALOGIES. COLOR BALANCES. DIMENSIONS, WEIGHTS, MEASURES, AND THE SPEED OF SENSATIONS.THE PLUNGE OF THE ESSENTIAL WORD INTO THE WATER OF SENSIBILITY, MINUS THE CONCENTRIC CIRCLES THAT THE WORD PRODUCES. RESTFUL MOMENTS OF INTUITION. MOVEMENTS IN TWO, THREE, FOUR, FIVE DIFFERENT RHYTHMS. THE ANALYTIC, EXPLORATORY POLES THAT SUSTAIN THE BUNDLE OF INTUITIVE STRINGS.
FILIPPO TOMMASO MARINETTI
DEATH OF THE LITERARY 1
SEMAPORIC ADJECTIVE
Molecular life and material — My technical manifesto opposed the obsessive I that up to now the poets have described, sung, analyzed, and vomited up. To rid ourselves of this obsessive I, we must abandon the habit of humanizing nature by attributing human passions and preoccupations to animals, plants, water, stone, and clouds. Instead we should express the infinite smallness that surrounds us, the imperceptible, the invisible, the agitation of atoms, the Brownian movements, all the passionate hypotheses and all the domains explored by the high-powered microscope. To explain: I want to introduce the infinite molecular life into poetry not as a scientific document but as an intuitive element. It should mix, in the work of ar t, with the infinitely great spectacles and dramas, because this fusion constitutes the integral synthesis of life. To give some aid to the intuition of my ideal reader I use italics for all wordsin-freedom that express the infinitely small and the molecular life.
The Lighthouse or atmosphere adjective — Everywhere we tend to suppress the qualifying adjective because it presupposes an arrest in intuition, too minute a definition of the noun. None of this is categorical. I speak of a tendency. We must make use of the adjective as little as possible and in a manner completely different from its use hither to. One should treat adjectives like railway signals of style, employ them to mark the tempo, the retards and pauses along the way. So, too, with analogies. As many as twenty of these semaphoric adjectives might accumulate in this way. A semaphoric adjective, lighthouse-adjective, or atmosphereadjective is the adjective apar t from nouns, isolated in parentheses. This makes it a kind of absolute noun, broader and more powerful than the noun proper. The semaphoric adjective or lighthouse-adjective, suspended on high in its glassed-in parenthetical cage, throws its far-reaching, probing light on everything around it. The profile of this adjective crumbles, spreads abroad, illuminating, impregnating, and enveloping a whole zone of words-in-freedom. If, for instance, in an agglomerate of words-in-freedom describing a sea voyage I place the following semaphoric adjectives between parentheses: (calm, blue, methodical, habitual) not only the sea is calm, blue, methodical, habitual, but the ship, its machinery, the passengers. What I do and my very spirit are calm, blue, methodical, habitual.
MANIFESTO (LEFT) Fillipo Merinetti Montagne Vallate Strade Joffre, 1915. Filippo Marinetti’s Futurist Manifesto was created in a series of manifestos (the believes behind a movement) to designed to shock and provoke the public, during this process he formulated styles of painting, music, sculpture, theatre, poetry, architecture, cooking, clothing, and furniture.
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DESTRUCTION OF SYNTAX
THE INFINITIVE VERB Here, too, my pronouncements are not categorical. I maintain, however, that in a violent and dynamic lyricism the infinitive verb might well be indispensable. Round as a wheel, like a wheel adaptable to every car in the train of analogies, it constitutes the very speed of the style. The infinitive in itself denies the existence of the sentence and prevents the style from slowing and stopping at a definite point. While the infinitive is round and as mobile as a wheel, the other moods and tenses of the verb are either triangular, square, or oval. ONOMATOPOEIA SYMBOLS
AND
MATHEMATICAL
When I said that we must spit on the Altar of Ar t, I incited the Futurists to liberate lyricism from the solemn atmosphere of compunction and incense that one normally calls by the name of Ar t with a capital A. Ar t with a capital A constitutes the clericalism of the creative spirit. I used this approach to incite the Futurists to destroy and mock the garlands, the palms, the aureoles, the exquisite frames, the mantles and stoles, the whole historical wardrobe and the romantic bric-a-brac that comprise a large par t of all poetry up to now. I proposed instead a swift, brutal, and immediate lyricism, a lyricism that must seem anti-poetic to all our predecessors, a telegraphic lyricism with no taste of the book about it but, rather, as much as possible of the taste of life. Beyond that the bold introduction of onomatopoetic harmonies to render all the sounds and noises of modern life, even the most cacophonic. Onomatopoeia that vivifies lyricism with crude and brutal elements of reality was used in poetry (from Arisrophanes to Pascoli) more or less timidly. We Futurists initiate the constant, audacious use of onomatopoeia. This should not be the systematic. 52  l THE WONDERS OF TYPOGRAPHY
For instance, my Adrianople Siege-Orchestra and my Battle Weight + Smell required many onomatopoetic harmonies. Always with the aim of giving the greatest number of vibrations and a deeper synthesis of life, we abolish all stylistic bonds, all the bright buckles with which the traditional poets link images together in their prosody. Instead we employ the very brief or anonymous mathematical and musical symbols and we put between parentheses indications such as (fast) (faster) (slower) (two-beat time) to control the speed of the style. These parentheses can even cut into a word or an onomatopoetic harmony.
BOOK COVER. Cover book of Zang Tumb Tuum by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, published in 1914.
FILIPPO TOMMASO MARINETTI
TYPOGRAPHY REVOLUTION I initiate a typographical revolution aimed at the bestial, nauseating idea of the book of passéist and D’Annunzian verse, on seventeenth-century handmade paper bordered with helmets, Minervas, Apollos, elaborate red initials, vegetables, mythological missal ribbons, epigraphs, and roman numerals. The book must be the Futurist expression of our Futurist thought. Not only that. My revolution is aimed at the so-called typographical harmony of the page, which is contrary to the flux and reflux, the leaps and bursts of style that run through the page. On the same page, therefore, we will use three or four colors of ink, or even twenty different typefaces if necessary. For example: italics for a series of similar or swift sensations, boldface for the violent onomatopoeias, and so on. With this typographical revolution and this multicolored variety in the letters I mean to redouble the expressive force of words.
I oppose the decorative, precious aesthetic of Mallarmé and his search for the rare word, the one indispensable, elegant, suggestive, exquisite adjective. I do not want to suggest an idea or a sensation with passéist airs and graces. Instead I want to grasp them brutally and hurl them in the reader’s face. Moreover, I combat Mallarmé’s static ideal with this typographical revolution that allows me to impress on the words (dynamic, and torpedo-like) every velocity of the stars, the clouds, aeroplanes, trains, waves, explosives, globules of sea foam, molecules, and atoms. Thus I realize the four th principle of my First Futurist Manifesto (20 February 1909): “We affirm that the world’s beauty is enriched by a new beauty: the beauty of speed.”
SPREAD PAGE (LEFT) Turkish Balloon, an inner spread from Zang Tumb Tuuum by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti,1914.
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DESTRUCTION OF SYNTAX
MULTILINEAR LYRICISM In addition, I have conceived multilinear lyricism, with which I succeed in reaching that lyric simultaneity that obsessed the Futurist painters as well: multilinear lyricism by means of which I am sure to achieve the most complex lyric simultaneities. On several parallel lines, the poet will throw out several chains of color, sound, smell, noise, weight, thickness, analogy. One of these lines might, for instance, be olfactory, another musical, another pictorial. Let us suppose that the chain of pictorial sensations and analogies dominates the others. In this case it will be printed in a heavier typeface than the second and third lines (one of them containing, for example, the chain of musical sensations and analogies, the other the chain of olfactory sensations and analogies). Given a page that contains many bundles of sensations and analogies, each of which is composed of three or four lines, the chain of pictorial sensations and analogies (printed in boldface) will form the first line of the first bundle and will continue (always in the same type) on the first line of all the other bundles. The chain of musical sensations and analogies, less impor tant than the chain of pictorial sensations and analogies (first line) but more impor tant than that of the olfactory sensations and analogies (third line), will be printed in smaller type than that of the first line and larger than that of the third.
54  l THE WONDERS OF TYPOGRAPHY
FREE EXPRESSIVE ORTHOGRAPY The historical necessity of free expressive or thography is demonstrated by the successive revolutions that have continuously freed the lyric powers of the human race from shackles and rules. In fact, the poets began by channeling their lyric intoxication into a series of equal breaths, with accents, echoes, assonances, or rhymes at pre-established intervals (traditional metric). Then the poets varied these different measured breaths of their predecessors’ lungs with a cer tain freedom. Later the poets realized that the different moments of their lyric intoxication had to create breaths suited to the most varied and surprising intervals, with absolute freedom of accentuation. Thus they arrived at free verse, but they still preserved the syntactic order of the words, so that the lyric intoxication could flow down to the listeners by the logical canal of syntax.
FILIPPO TOMMASO MARINETTI
Today we no longer want the lyric intoxication to order the words syntactically before launching them for th with the breaths we have invented, and we have words-infreedom. Moreover our lyric intoxication should freely deform, refresh the words, cutting them shor t, stretching them out, reinforcing the center or the extremities, augmenting or diminishing the number of vowels and consonants. Thus we will have the new or thography that I call free expressive. This instinctive deformation of words corresponds to our natural tendency towards onomatopoeia. It matters little if the deformed word becomes ambiguous. It will marry itself to the onomatopoetic harmonies, or the noise-summaries, and will permit us soon to reach the onomatopoetic psychic harmony, the sonorous but abstract expression of an emotion or a pure thought. But one may object that
my words-in-freedom, my imagination without strings, demand special speakers if they are to be understood. Although I do not care for the comprehension of the multitude, I will reply that the number of Futurist public speakers is increasing and that any admired traditional poem, for that matter, requires a special speaker if it is to be understood.
First published in Lacerba (Florettee: 15 June 1913).
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The Wonders of Typography Continues with
THE WONDERS OF TYPOGRAPHY II Coming Spring 2015