hyphen press - 2015

hyphenCatalogue & Almanack 2013

press

1 7 11

distributors

12

forthcoming books

13

subjects

authors

almanack 2012

contents

15

checklist of books

23

table of

catalogue

[Typography papers 8 modern typography in britain: graphic design, politics, and society]

cata-

Department of Typography, University of Reading

availability published exten dimensions illustrations binding

in print 2009.09.03 216 pp 297 x 210 mm 161 b&w + 89 colour pictures sewn paperback

This remarkable volume is a collection of eleven essays and shorter articles which for the first time provide rich contexts – social, cultural, and political – for graphic design in Britain. Reaching from the Second World War to the early 1970s, they fizz with provocative interconnections: between print culture, photojournalism and publishing, the London of émigrés, political meetings and demonstrations, cultural cafés and art schools. From these disparate milieux emerged new ideas about designing: configuring and picturing the world of facts and processes, shaping them for understanding, learning, and action.

Presented here are documents of the nation’s life in war, its reconstruction through the passages from scarcity to plenty, the seeds of later fragmentation, always fertile with multiple intersections between biography and history

[Typography papers 7] Department of Typography, University of Reading

availability published exten dimensions illustrations binding

1 catalogue

in print 2009.09.03 216 pp 297 x 210 mm 161 b&w + 89 colour pictures sewn paperback

This occasional, book-length work is edited and produced at the Department of Typography, University of Reading, and is now published

by Hyphen Press. It publishes extended articles on its subject, exploring topics to the length to which they want to go. Its scope is broad and international, its treatment – serious and lively.

[The transformer: principles of making isotype charts] Marie Neurath and Robin Kinross

availability published exten dimensions illustrations binding

in print 2009.09.03 216 pp 297 x 210 mm 161 b&w + 89 colour pictures sewn paperback

[Details in typography] Department of Typography, University of Reading

binding

in print 2009.09.03 216 pp 297 x 210 mm 161 b&w + 89 colour pictures sewn paperback

Jost Hochuli’s concise guide to micro-typography considers everything that can happen within a column of text. The book was published first, in several languages, in 1987 and 1988. Hochuli then developed the German text, publishing it again in 2005, with Verlag Niggli in Switzerland. That new edition is the basis for our book: translating and adapting the work to English-language conditions.

logue

availability published exten dimensions illustrations

The visual work of Otto Neurath and his associates, now commonly known as Isotype, has been much discussed in recent years. This short book explains its essential principles: the work of ‘transforming’, or putting information into visual form. This deeper level of their work – which is applicable in all areas of design – is routinely neglected in the assumption that Isotype is just a matter of symbols and pictograms. At the core of the book is a previously unpublished essay by Marie Neurath, the principle Isotype transformer, which she wrote in the last year of her life. This is supplemented by Robin Kinross with commentary on illustrated examples of Isotype and other supporting short essays. availability in print

2 catalogue

[Active literature: Jan Tschichold and New Typography] Christopher Burke

availability published exten dimensions illustrations binding

in print 2007.08.02 336 pp 276 x 210 mm 700 colour pictures hardback

[The stroke: theory of writing] Gerrit Noordzij

availability published exten dimensions illustrations binding

3 catalogue

in print 2005.10.27 88 pp 210 x 125 mm b&w pictures sewn paperback

In the first book on Tschichold to be based on extensive archive research, Burke turns fresh and revealing light on his subject. He sets Tschichold in the network of artists and designers who constituted New Typography in its moment of definition and exploration, and puts new emphasis on Tschichold as an activist collector, editor and writer. Tschichold’s work is shown in colour throughout, in freshly made photographs of examples drawn from public and private collections. This is not a biography, but rather a discussion of the work seen in the context of Tschichold’s life and the times in which he lived.

This is the first English-language edition of a major piece of thinking about writing (in its visual manifestation). Noordzij’s short and powerful text, illustrated with his own diagrams and examples, is the best exposition of a theory that is making a still growing impact on designers, and on those thinking about writing and letters.

[Karel Martens: Counterprint] Karel Martens with Paul Elliman & Carel Kuitenbrouwer

availability published exten dimensions illustrations binding

in print 2004.01.01 32 pp 297 x 210 mm colour pictures sewn & flipped paperback

[Type now: a manifesto, plus work so far] Fred Smeijers

availability published exten dimensions illustrations binding

Now that stocks of Karel Martens: printed matter are exhausted, we have published a short book that shows some of the uncommissioned printed work of Martens, with an essay on ‘The world as a printing surface’ by Elliman. This is very much an object-book, in which the work is not so much reproduced as bodied forth.

A short and strong statement of position by a type designer. The book takes a wide view, taking in the business of present-day font production, and the technics and the ethics of type as software.

As always, Smeijers’s arguments are informed by a strong historical sense. The book also shows his own work as a designer, and is published as a conclusion to the award to him of the Gerrit Noordzij Prize.

in print 2009.09.03 216 pp 297 x 210 mm 161 b&w + 89 colour pictures sewn paperback

4 catalogue

[Designing books: practice and theory] Jost Hochuli & Robin Kinross

availability published exten dimensions illustrations binding

in print 2007.08.02 336 pp 276 x 210 mm 700 colour pictures hardback

[Typography papers 5]

Department of Typography, University of Reading

availability published exten dimensions illustrations binding

5 catalogue

in print 2005.10.27 88 pp 210 x 125 mm b&w pictures sewn paperbackv

In the first book on Tschichold to be based on extensive archive research, Burke turns fresh and revealing light on his subject. He sets Tschichold in the network of artists and designers who constituted New Typography in its moment of definition and exploration, and puts new emphasis on Tschichold as an activist collector, editor and writer. Tschichold’s work is shown in colour throughout, in freshly made photographs of examples drawn from public and private collections. This is not a biography, but rather a discussion of the work seen in the context of Tschichold’s life and the times in which he lived.

This is the first English-language edition of a major piece of thinking about writing (in its visual manifestation). Noordzij’s short and powerful text, illustrated with his own diagrams and examples, is the best exposition of a theory that is making a still growing impact on designers, and on those thinking about writing and letters.

[What is a designer: things, places, messages] Norman Potter

availability published exten dimensions illustrations binding

in print 2004.01.01 32 pp 297 x 210 mm colour pictures sewn & flipped paperback

[Paul Renner : the art of typography] Christopher Burke

availability published exten dimensions illustrations binding

Now that stocks of Karel Martens: printed matter are exhausted, we have published a short book that shows some of the uncommissioned printed work of Martens, with an essay on ‘The world as a printing surface’ by Elliman. This is very much an object-book, in which the work is not so much reproduced as bodied forth.

in print 2009.09.03 216 pp 297 x 210 mm 161 b&w + 89 colour pictures sewn paperback

A short and strong statement of position by a type designer. The book takes a wide view, taking in the business of present-day font production, and the technics and the ethics of type as software.

As always, Smeijers’s arguments are informed by a strong historical sense. The book also shows his own work as a designer, and is published as a conclusion to the award to him of the Gerrit Noordzij Prize.

6 catalogue

checklist

Stuart Bailey & Robin Kinross (editors) [God’s amateur: the writing of E.C. Large] hb £10 $20 1978-0-907259-38-1

O. F. Boilnow [Human space] hb £25 $50 1978-0-907259-35-0

Christopher Burke [Active literature: Jan Tschichold and New Typography] hb £35 $75 €55 I978-0-907259-32-9

Christopher Burke [Paul Renner: the art of typography] jkpb £15/ $35 1978-0-907259-12-1

Peter Burnhill [Type spaces: in-house norms in the typography of Aldus Manutius] pb £25 $50 1978-0-907259-35-0

Harry Carter [A view of early typography: up to about 1600]

7 checklist of books

flpb £25 $35 €40 1978-0-907259-21-3

Jost Hochuli & Robin Kinross [Designing books: practice and theory] flpb £17.50 $30 €25 1978-0-907259-23-7

Jost hochuli [Detail in Typography] hb £12.50 $25 1978- 0-907259-34-3

Robin Kinross [Modern typography: an essay in critical history] flpb £15 $27.50 €25 1978-0-907259-18-3

Robin Kinross

jkpb £20 $30 €38.50 1978-0-907259-17-6

Robin Kinross (editor) [Anthony Froshaug: Typography & texts. Documents of a life] pbs £40 $7 €70.80 1978-0-907259-09-1

of books

[Unjustified texts: perspectives on typography]

E. C. Large [Asleep in the afternoon] hb £17.50 $35 1978- 0-907259-37-4

8 checklist of books

E. C. Large [sugar in the air] hb £17.50 $35 1978-0-907259-36-7

Karl Martens Karl Martens: Counterprint] flpb £17.5° $35 €30 1978-0-907259-25-1

Marie Neurath & Robin Kinross [The transformer: principles of making Isotype charts] pb £12.50 $25 1978-0-907259-40-4

Gerrit Noordzij [The stroke: theory of writing] pb £15 $25 €20 1978-0-907259-30-5

Norman Potter [Models & Constructs: margin notes to a design culture] pb £20 $40 1978-0-907259-04-6

9 checklist of books

Norman Potter

Bindings

[What is a designer: things, places. messages]

The following codes are used in the descriptions of the books:

pb £12.50 $20 €21 1978-0-907259-16-9

Fred Smeijers [Type now: a manifesto, plus work so far] flpb £17.50 $27.50 €25 1978-0-907259-24-4

Carl Villars (editor)

pb simple paperback flpb paperback with flaps jkpb paperback with a

loose jacket pbs paperback(s) in a slipcase hb cloth-covered hardback

[Morton Feldman says: selected interviews and lectures 1964-1987] jkpb £25 $50 €45 I978-0-907259-31-2

David Wild [Fragments of utopia: collage reflections of heroic modernism] flpb £18 $40 1978-0-907259-10-7

Typography papers 5 pb £20 $40 €35 I978-0-907259-28-2

Typography papers 6 pb £20 $40 €35 1978-0-907259-29-9

Typography papers 7 pb £20 $40 €35 I978-0-907259-33-6

Typography papers 8 pb £20 $40 €35 1978-0-907259-39-8

10 checklist of books

distri-

Bricks & mortar shops

Our books can be bought from any bookshop. If the shop does not stock a title, ask and they should be able to order a copy from our distributors. Among specialist shops around the world that are regular stockists of our titles:

EUROPE

Nijhof & Lee, Amsterdam Motto, Berlin Artwords Bookshop, London Lia Wolf, Vienna

USA

11 distributors

Swipe Books, Toronto CCA Bookstore, MontrĂŠal

butors

CANADA

Dexter Sinister, New York Peter Miller, Seattle William Stout, San Francisco

forthcoming

[From hieroglyphics to Isotype: a visual autobiography] Otto Neurath / edited by Matthew Eve & Christopher Burke Otto Neurath wrote From hieroglyphics to Isotype during the last two years of his life: this is the first publication of the full text, carefully edited from the original manuscripts.

He called it a ‘visual autobiography’, documenting the importance of visual material to him: from his earliest years to his professional activity with the picture language of Isotype. Neurath draws clear links between the stimulus he received as a boy from illustrated books, toys, exhibitions, to the considered work in visual education that occupied him for the last twenty years of his life. This engaging and informal account gives a rich picture of Central-European culture around the turn of the twentieth century, seen through the eyes of Neurath’s insatiable intelligence, as well as a detailed exposition of the technique of Isotype. The edition includes the numerous illustrations intended by Neurath to accompany his text, and is completed by an extensive appendix showing examples from the rich variety of graphic material that he collected.

[Human space] O.F. Bollnow Human space is an English translation of one of the most comprehensive studies of space as we experience it. Since it was published in Germany in 1963, Bollnow’s text has become a key reading in architecture, anthropology, and philosophy. In 2004 the German edition was issued in its tenth impression. The book is serious academic research and something more – showing a great sensitivity to the near and the everyday.

The text is enlivened and illustrated with many quotations, principally from German and English literature. Our edition is translated by Christine Shuttleworth and has an introduction by Joseph Kohlmaier, who places the work in its context of philosophical and architectural discussion.

Fred Smeijers A book that moves in towards an investigation into the technics of making metal type by hand, and then out towards a discussion of designing digital type now. In the course of the discussion, Smeijers takes in the fundamentals of designing and making letters, so that he can be read as a guide to type and font construction in any medium. Lively, pointed drawings and photographs complement an equally fresh text.

books

[Counterpunch: making type in the sixteenth century, designing typefaces now]

12 forthcoming books

subjects

protagonists, ideas and interests in our books and our online journal.

www.hyphenpress.co.uk/journal

Architecture (12) Aesthetics (6) what cannot be reduced to ‘function’

Book Review (3) reviews of books from other publishers

design in stone

Book Trade (17) Book Production (15)

making and selling book

Type Design

(8) Hyphen authors speak

(8) designing systematized character-sets

Carter (3) Harry Carter, typographer & typographic historian (1901–82)

13 subjects

Burnhill (11)

Fiction (4) tested in imagination

Anthony Froshaug, typographer & writer (1920–84)

reviews of books from other publishers

Burke (12) Christopher Burke, typographer & writer

Exhibitions (15) Detail in Typography

exhibitions we’ve seen

(4) everything that happens within a column of text

Froshaug (18)

Feldman (15)

as seen in the annual exhibitions of the ‘most beautiful’ or best designed (and so on) books of a particular nation

Book Review (3)

Peter Burnhill, typographer, artist & writer (1922–2007)

Conferences

(1926–87)

Blod World (7) observed on the internet

the material di mension of books

Morton Feldman, composer & writer

Best Books (6)

Handwriting (2) Gray (2) Nicolete Gray, writer on typography & art (1911–97)

writing by hand (but not calligraphy)

Editing (8) getting the stuff into good shape; then design follows almost without a second thought

History (6) what explains, and complicates

Hochuli (15) Mordenism (11) consciously making it new

Interviews (3) conversations with authors

Lettering on Buildings (3) not type, but letters made for that context

Fiction (4) tested in imagination

Richard Hollis, graphic designer & writer

the visual work directed

by Otto Neurath

Music (33) design in sound

(15) Karel Martens, designer

Kinneir (5)

Norman Potter, designer & writer (1923–95)

Paul Renner, typographer & writer (1878–1956)

Robin Kinross, editor & writer

(12) Jan Tschichold, typographer & writer (1902–1974)

our books in languages other than English

Legibility (4) perceiving and grasping text

Noordzij (3) Mosley (3) James Mosley, typographic historian & writer

Gerrit Noordzij, typographer & writer

Obituaries (8) people we cared about

Smeijers (25) Reading (4) Department of Typography & Graphic Communication, University of Reading

Fred Smeijers, type designer & writer

Science (4) tested knowledge

Wild (10)

Translations (4) Tschichold

Hyphen Reviews (11) reviews of our books

Jock Kinneir, graphic designer (1917–94)

Renner (5) Potter (13)

(108) about our own workings

Kinross (27)

Martens

Spiekermann (7) Erik Spiekermann, typographer & writer

Hollis (2)

Isotype (19)

Politics (5) human beings in the public realm

Jost Hochuli, typographer & writer

Hyphen News

Typography Papers (12) irregular collection of good things edited at the Department of Typography, University of Reading

David Wild, architect & writer

14 subjects

authors

Our writers and contributors.

Stuart Bailey Stuart Bailey graduated from the University of Reading in 1994, from the Werkplaats Typografie in 2000 – and co-founded the ongoing journal [Dot Dot Dot] in the same year. His work circumscribes various aspects of graphic design, writing and editing, most consistently in the form of publications made in close collaboration with artists. Since 2002 he has worked with Will Holder under the compound name Will Stuart on a broader range of projects, including theatre and performance. Since 2006 he has worked together with David Reinfurt as Dexter Sinister, also the name of their basement space on New York’s Lower East Side which operates as a ‘just-in-time workshop and occasional bookstore’.

O.F. Bollnow Otto Friedrich Bollnow (1903–91) gained a doctorate in physics with Max Born before studying philosophy with (especially) Georg Misch and Martin Heidegger, finishing his ‘Habilitation’ at Göttingen in 1931.

In the years that followed, he found it difficult to gain a permanent teaching position, achieving this only in 1938. During the war, Bollnow served in the German army. In 1946 he began to teach at the University of Mainz, and in 1953 started as a professor of philosophy and pedagogy at the University of Tübingen, where he stayed for the rest of his life.

As a writer he was prolific: his bibliography runs to 38 books and about 300 articles, almost none of which have been translated into English. Bollnow’s work towards an anthropological pedagogy can be placed within and between the fields of existentialism and phenomenology. His book of 1963, [Human space], is situated there too.

15 authors

Christopher Burke

Peter Burnhill

Christopher Burke is a typographer, typeface designer, and a writer on modern typographic history.

After graduating in Typography & Graphic Communication from the University of Reading he worked at Monotype Typography in the UK. Leaving Monotype, he undertook research at Reading for a PhD on Paul Renner, which he completed in 1995. This provided the basis for his book [Paul Renner].

Peter Burnhill (1922–2007) was a typographer, artist, and teacher. In 1965 he was part of the group that set up and then ran the course in typography at Stafford College of Art and Design (UK). This was dedicated to a more fundamental and practical approach to education than was common, then or since. Through the 1960s and 1970s he participated in a number of attempts to reform typography in Britain, including the Typographers’ Computer Working Group (from 1965), and the Working Party on Typographic Teaching (from 1966). With the psychologist James Hartley, he wrote and published articles in the[ Journal of Typographic Research] and [Visible Language].

From 1996 to 2001 he taught at the University of Reading, where he planned and conceived the MA in typeface design. His Celeste and Parable typefaces are available from FontShop, and Pragma from Neufville Digital. His book on Jan Tschichold, [Active literature], was published in 2007.

Peter Campbell Peter Campbell (1937–2011) was a book designer and illustrator.

He worked for the [London Review of Books] from its inception in 1979, as its designer and then also its principal art and exhibitions reviewer. A book of his illustrations for the LRB,[ Artwork], is published by the LRB and Profile Books.

Harry Carter Harry Carter (1901–82) was an English typographer and writer.

After an education at Bedales School and Oxford University, then training to become a barrister at Lincoln’s Inn, he turned to typography, first (1928–29) as an apprentice at the Monotype Corporation, then working first for a printer (Kynoch Press in Birmingham) and then a book-publisher (Nonesuch Press, London). During the Second Word War he served in the British army, and also during this time continued to design and cut type, and to do typographic history.

After the war he worked for HMSO (the official state publisher in Britain) as a typographer.

In 1954 he became Archivist to the Oxford University Press, working there until his retirement in 1980. In this capacity he became a leading figure in the work of discovery and cataloguing at the Plantin-Moretus Museum in Antwerp. Notable among his publications, under his own name and in collaboration, were [Fournier on typefounding] (1930), an edition of Moxon’s [Mechanick exercises] (with Herbert Davis, 1958), [Type specimen facsimiles] (with others, under the editorship of John Dreyfus, 1963 & 1972), [Civilité types] (with H.D.L. Vervliet, 1966), [Stanley Morison’s John Fell] (1967), [A view of early typography] (1969), and the first volume of a [History of Oxford University Press] (1975), Charles [Enschedé’sTypefoundries in the Netherlands] (1978).

16 authors

Anthony Froshaug

Tanya Harrod

Anthony Froshaug (1920–84) was an English typographer and teacher. Born in London to a Norwegian father and English mother, he went to Charterhouse School and the Central School of Arts & Crafts. On leaving the Central in 1939 he began to practice as a freelance graphic designer and typographer. As a typographer he was unusual in running his own small (un-private) press, including two periods of printing in Cornwall (1949–52, 1954–47).

This attachment to working with his hands (and feet) in the material production of printing, he combined with a fierce intellect and an often astonishing visual sureness.

Froshaug can be considered as the most convincing exponent of modern typography in Britain. Froshaug was a natural teacher: he taught first at the Central School (1948–9, 1952–53), then at the Hochschule für Gestaltung Ulm (1957–61), the Royal College of Art in London (1961–4), Watford School of Art (1964–46); in 1970 he returned to teach (part-time) at the Central School, continuing there until illness forced him to stop.

Tanya Harrod is an independent design historian, living in London, who writes widely on the crafts. Her major study, [The crafts in Britain in the twentieth century], was published in 1999; [The last sane man], her biography of the potter Michael Cardew, was published in 2012. She is one of the editors of the [The Journal of Modern Craft].

Jost Hochuli Jost Hochuli is a Swiss typographer and graphic designer. After study at the Kunstgewerbeschule St. Gallen, he trained as a compositor with the printer Zollikofer and at the Kunstgewerbeschule Zürich; his education was completed in 1958–9 in Adrian Frutiger’s class at the Ecole Estienne. Since then he has practised as a freelance graphic designer, eventually specializing in book design. In 1979 he co-founded the co-operatively run publishing company VGS Verlagsgemeinschaft St. Gallen, for which much of his book design work has been done. He has taught at the schools at Zurich and then St. Gallen since 1967. As writer and editor, his books include [Das Detail in der Typografie] (1987, revised edition 2005; English-language edition, [Detail in typography]), [Bücher machen] (1989), [Buchgestaltung in der Schweiz] (1993), [Designing books: practice and theory] (1996), [Jost Hochuli: Drucksachen, vor allem Bücher] (2002). He has edited and designed the annually published ‘Typotron’ series of booklets (1983–98) and the Edition ‘Ostschweiz’ (from 2000).

Eric Kindel

17 authors

Eric Kindel is a designer, writer, editor, and Associate Professor in the Department of Typography & Graphic Communication, University of Reading. He graduated from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and Central Saint Martins College of Art & Design, London, where he later taught and was appointed Research Fellow to the project that made [Typeform dialogues]. He joined Reading in 1998. His research into the history of stencilling has been underway since 1999, and has involved collaborations with James Mosley and Fred Smeijers. In 2007, he became Principal Investigator for the ‘Isotype revisited’ project; its research products have included [From hieroglyphics to Isotype], the exhibition ‘Isotype: international picture language’ (V&A, 2010–11), and [Isotype: design and contexts, 1925– 1971]. Since its fifth issue he has collaborated on Typography papers. He has written for other publications including AA Files, Baseline, Eye, and the Journal of the Printing Historical Society

James Mosley

Robin Kinross

James Mosley was Librarian of the St Bride Printing Library (London) from 1958 to 2000. He teaches in the Department of Typography at the University of Reading, and at courses in Lyons, Charlottesville, and elsewhere. He was a founding member of the Printing Historical Society and the first editor of itsJournal. The author of many essays, reviews, and monographs on printing and typographic history, he has published some notable articles in [Typography papers].

He also writes online at Typefoundry.

Robin Kinross is proprietor of Hyphen Press. After graduating (1975) and postgraduating (1979) from the Department of Typography & Graphic Communication at the University of Reading, he began to do ‘editorial typography’ (editing and design in one process) as well as write about typography. In 1980, while still living in Reading, he re-edited and re-published Norman Potter’s [What is a designer] as the first book under the imprint of Hyphen Press. In 1982 he moved to London, did behindthe-scenes work for Pluto Press’s political atlases and began to write journalism, especially for the magazine Blueprint in its golden period of the late 1980s. When his book [Modern typography] came out in 1992, this signalled the start of Hyphen Press as the full-time occupation that it is now. Impatient with authors slow to complete promised works, he resorted to publishing his own words again in the book [Unjustified texts] (2002). Other books to which he has contributed include Otto Neurath’s [Gesammelte bildpädagogische Schriften] (1991) and Jan Tschichold’s [The new typography] (1995).

Ernest Charles Large Ernest Charles Large (1902–76) was (in chronological order) an English industrial chemist, writer, and plant scientist, best known for his book [The advance of the fungi] (1940): a magisterial history of plant diseases.

His novels [Sugar in the air] and [Asleep in the afternoon] come from the period of the mid- to late 1930s when he had left his work in industry and was writing full-time. In 1940 he went back into salaried employment as a research scientist. A third novel, [Dawn in Andromeda], was published in 1956.

Karel Martens Karel Martens is a Dutch designer and teacher. After training at the school of art in Arnhem, he has worked as a freelance graphic designer, specializing in typography. Alongside this, he has always made free (noncommissioned) graphic and three-dimensional work. His design work ranges widely, from postage stamps, to books, to signs on buildings. All this work is documented and celebrated in the books [Drukwerk / printed matter] and [Karel Martens: counterprint].

Martens has taught graphic design since 1977. His first appointment was at the school of art at Arnhem (until 1994). He was then attached to the Jan van Eyck Academie in Maastricht (1994–9). From 1997 he has been a visiting lecturer in the graphic design department at the School of Art, Yale University. In that year, together with Wigger Bierma, he started a pioneering school of postgraduate education within the ArtEZ, Arnhem – the Werkplaats Typografie – where he still teaches.

18 authors

Marie Neurath Marie Neurath (née Reidemeister; 1898–1986) was born in Braunschweig (Germany) and studied at the University of Göttingen. In 1924, just before graduation, she met Otto Neurath (1882–1945) in Vienna and (in March 1925) went to work there as his assistant in what had been a small museum of information about housing. At the start of 1925 this became the Gesellschafts- und Wirtshaftsmuseum in Wien (‘Social and Economic Museum of Vienna’).

This was the start of her long activity as the main ‘transformer’ (in English, we would now say designer) working with Neurath in the teams that made graphic displays of social information.

The other essential member of the Neurath group, the German artist Gerd Arntz (1901–88), joined in 1928. Marie Reidemeister worked at this museum in Vienna until

the brief civil war in Austria in 1934, moving then with Neurath (a prominent Social Democrat) and Arntz (who had allegiances to radical-left groups) to The Hague.

In 1935 they began to use the nameIsotype in the signature for their work. In 1940, as the German army invaded the Netherlands, Neurath and Reidemeister escaped to England, while Arntz stayed behind in The Hague. In 1941, after release from internment (as ‘enemy aliens’), Marie and Otto Neurath were married, and resumed their work in Oxford, founding the Isotype Institute.

After Otto Neurath’s death in 1945, Marie Neurath carried on the work with a small number of English assistants, moving to London in 1948. After her retirement in 1971, she gave much energy to establishing a record of Otto Neurath’s life and work, and editing and translating his writings.

Otto Neurath

19 authors

Otto Neurath (1882–1945), was a polymath whose life’s work encompassed politics, sociology, philosophy, urbanism, and visual communication. Concerning the last-named field: he was the leading figure in the work that is now most commonly termed ‘Isotype’.

Neurath was born in Vienna, the son of the political economist Wilhelm Neurath (1840–1901).

He studied mathematics and physics, then economics, history and philosophy at the University of Vienna; he gained his doctorate in the department of philosphy at the University of Berlin. From 1907 he taught political economy at the

Neue Wiener Handelsakademie (‘new Vienna academy of commerce’) until war broke out in 1914. After some war service, he became director of the Deutsches Kriegswirtschaftsmuseum (‘German museum of war economy’) at Leipzig. In 1918–19, working as a civil-servant (though he joined the German Social-Democratic Party), Neurath ran an office for central economic planning in Munich.

When the Bavarian ‘soviet republic’ was defeated, Neurath was arrested and, after trial, sentenced to oneand-a-half years’ imprisonment, but was eventually released after an intervention from the Austrian government – with a condition that he did not return to Germany.

Back in Vienna, Neurath became general secretary for the Österreichischer Verband für Siedlungs-und Kleingartenwesen (‘Austrian association for estatehousing and allotments’), a collection of self-help groups that aimed to provide housing and garden plots for its members. In 1923, he became the director of a Siedlungsmuseum (a museum of housing – it went under various titles). At the start of 1925 he opened the Gesellschafts-und Wirtschaftsmuseum in Wien (‘social and economic museum of Vienna’), for which he became fully engaged in the use of visual methods for explanation and education. Working with Marie

Reidemeister (from 1925) in a gradually developing team of collaborators – the main other one was the artist Gerd Arntz (from 1928) – Neurath created Isotype.

Alongside his work for this museum and for the housing movement, Neurath also became a very committed Logical Positivist.

He was the main author of the Vienna Circle manifesto (1929).

Later, in the 1930s and 1940s, he was the driving force behind its successor Unity of Science movement. In February 1934 a brief civil war in Austria broke out: the conservative-nationalist Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss took control of government and began to suppress socialist opposition

Gerrit Noordzij

Daniel Poyner

Gerrit Noordzij is one of the eminent Dutch graphic designers and (in all senses) writers. He has also been a path-breaking teacher at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague, where from 1970 to 1990 he directed the course in letter design. Among the students from his classes are some of the most distinguished Dutch type and graphic designers. As a writer of essays and books, his works include the bulletin [Letterletter] (reissued in book form in 2000), [De handen van de zeven zusters] (2000), and [The stroke].

Daniel Poyner is an independent graphic designer working in Staffordshire. After graduating from the University of Northampton in 1998, he moved to London where he worked on projects for arts, media and cultural organizations.

In 2008 he returned to the Midlands to concentrate on writing and on running his own design practice.

groups. Neurath and his core group at the Gesellschafts- und Wirtschaftsmuseum left Vienna for The Hague. They had already established a working organization – the ‘International Foundation for the Promotion of Visual Education by the Vienna Method’ – there.

The group from the Gesellschaftsund Wirtschaftsmuseum then continued their work from this new base. Its international spread, which had already started in Vienna, intensified and extended. In 1935 the name ‘Isotype’ was devised to describe what had been known as the Wiener Methode (‘Vienna method’). With the German invasion of the Netherlands in May 1940, Otto Neurath and Marie Reidemeister left The Hague and mainland Europe, heading for England, which they reached.

(Gerd Arntz stayed behind in The Hague.) After internment – along with all other ‘enemy aliens’ – they resumed their work, now living in Oxford; the Isotype Institute was established in 1942. Otto Neurath died suddenly in December 1945, in full flow – and with some remarkable accomplishments to his name and to those of the groups of collaborators of which he was one.

Erik Spiekermann Erik Spiekermann is a partner in Edenspiekermann in Berlin and Amsterdam, and a writer at Spiekerblog.

From 1979 to 2000 he was the leading figure in the design practice MetaDesign.

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Fred Smeijers Fred Smeijers is a Dutch type designer, teacher, and writer.

After finishing as a student at the school of art at Arnhem, he worked as a typographic advisor to the reprographic company Océ, then became a founding member of the graphic design

practice Quadraat, which provided the name for his first published typeface (FontShop, 1992).

Smeijers has a whole range of distinctive typefaces to his credit, including Renard (The Enschedé Font Foundry, 1998) and Arnhem, Fresco, Sansa, and Custodia.

These latter are all distributed

by OurType, the company that he cofounded. His books are [Counterpunch] (1996) and [Type now] (2003). He is a winner of the Gerrit Noordzij prize (2001), and is Professor of Digital Typography at the Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst, Leipzig.

Department of Typography The Department of Typography & Graphic Communication grew out of the Typography Unit, established by Michael Twyman first within, then outwith, the Fine Art Department at the University of Reading in the 1960s. In 1974 ‘the Unit’ was turned into ‘the Department’. At that time it could claim to be the only place in the UK (and elsewhere) in which to do typography at university level.

Despite the subsequent proliferation of typography courses and universities, it remains a remarkable centre of typographic teaching and research.

Paul Stiff

Christopher Wilson

Paul Stiff (1949–2011) taught in the Department of Typography at the University of Reading, where, among other things, he ran the MA Information Design programme, directed the Optimism of modernity research project, and edited [Typography papers].

He was co-editor of [Information Design Journal], with Rob Waller, from 1985 to 1989, and then editor until 2000.

Christopher Wilson is a British graphic designer (under the name Oberphones) and writer about graphic design. He graduated from Central Saint Martins in 1996 and the Royal College of Art in 2002. As a writer, his work has been published in [Dot Dot Dot[, [, and other magazines; he also designed, and wrote most of, the book [Designed by Peter Saville].

He worked as Richard Hollis’s assistant on many projects in the years 1999–2002.

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Norman Potter Norman Potter (1923–95) was an English cabinetmaker, designer, poet, and teacher. In the Second World War, and immediately afterwards, he acquired the skills of cabinetmaking; his lifelong anarchist beliefs were also developed then. Through the 1950s he ran a workshop in Wiltshire, and began to work also as an ‘interior designer’ (a term he refused). In the 1960s he became a teacher, first at the Royal College of Art in London, then at the Construction School of the West of England College of Art, Bristol. After the first publication of [What is a designer], he gave his energies increasingly to writing.

His book [Models & Constructs] (1990) documented and reflected on his life & work.

Chris Villars Chris Villars works as an information technologist and gives his spare moments to music and painting. Born in Cambridge (UK), he studied philosophy at the University of Birmingham.

He was one of the founding editors of the contemporary music magazine [Contact].

In 1997, he started the Morton Feldman Page, the website that has become the major online resource for anyone interested in Feldman and his music.

Christopher Wilson

Sue Walker

Edward Wright (1912–88) was an artist and designer. Born in Liverpool, where his father was Ecuadorian vice-consul (his mother was Chilean), he trained and worked briefly as an architect before concentrating on painting, drawing, print-making, and also ‘commercial art’ (as it was then still called). From 1942 through to his retirement he lived in London, with periods of work in book publishing and advertising, and teaching graphic design (very broadly conceived) – most notably at the Central School (his evening classes in typography, 1952–6, became legendary) and at Chelsea School of Art.

Sue Walker is Professor of Typography and a former Head of the Department of Typography & Graphic Communication at the University of Reading. She has written numerous articles about typography and design for children. Her research interests are in the relationship between typography and language, and in information design history, theory and practice. With Eric Kindel she was Co-Investigator on the‘Isotype revisited’ project; its research products have included [From hieroglyphics to Isotype], the exhibition ‘Isotype: international picture language’ (V&A, 2010–11), and Isotype: design and contexts, 1925–1971.

Edward Wright (1912–88) was an artist and designer. Born in Liverpool, where his father was Ecuadorian vice-consul (his mother was Chilean), he trained and worked briefly as an architect before concentrating on painting, drawing, print-making, and also ‘commercial art’ (as it was then still called). From 1942 through to his retirement he lived in London, with periods of work in book publishing and advertising, and teaching graphic design (very broadly conceived) – most notably at the Central School (his evening classes in typography, 1952–6, became legendary) and at Chelsea School of Art.

David Wild David Wild is an architect and writer. He studied architecture at Portsmouth, the Architectural Association in London, then worked for several firms before starting independent practice, teaching, and writing. He entered politics during the Vietnam war, producing and distributing 20,000 NLFflagbags to raise money for medical aid; designed and edited the outside-left architectural magazine [ARse] (1969–72), and designed the first [Big Red Diary] (1974).

His practice has concentrated on domestic buildings, and his own self-built house in London is his best-known work; most recently he designed Cypher House. He has written many critiques and reviews for the British architectural press (especially [Architecture Today] and [Architects’ Journal] ) and is the author of [Fragments of utopia] and [Jazzpaths].

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h

w Hans Peter Willberg

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in conversation with

Jost Hochuli

w

jost, old friend, you say that the VGS (VGS Verlagsgemeinschaft St.Gallen) is not just a small publisher, but a smallest publisher. What does that mean? How many books does it publish in a year?

h

There is no magic needed to discover this, Hans Peter - not even for an outsider. Our list of books tells the story: one, sometimes two, rarely three, and occasionally in earlier times - but that was extraordinary - it was even four a year; and for the past three years there has been an Edition Ostschweiz booklet.

And that fills your working days?

Of course we do them on the side, so to speak.

What does ‘we’ mean? I always thought that you alone were the Lord and Master - you, because you have always maintained that you are a born lone fighter, unsuited for any teamwork.

Yes I am; the work on the board of directors of the VGS is the exception.

How is that possible?

Because I, in the second place, get on well with the two women and seven men of the board, and because, firstly and most importantly, it would hardly be possible to undertake this work (however small) without the knowledge and collaboration of the others: a journalist, a librarian, a historian and politician, a medievalist, a Germanist, an antiquarian, a bookseller, a lawyer, and a man from an insurance company, who keeps an eye on our finances and has a feeling for balance sheets - and deficits.

But as a designer, you have said more than once, no one interferes with you. Do you know what a lucky devil you are?

I know, I know. If I hear about my colleagues in large publishing houses - Elke Enns at Rowohlt, Ruedi Gögerle at Ravensburger, Peter Fischer at Beck, Rolf Staudt at Suhrkamp, or Wilfried Meiner at Fischer - when I hear about them, and how everything interferes in the design: oh my goodness!

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h

The author, the editor, the subeditor: and when you have perhaps got round these obstacles, then it is the marketing people, the representatives, who believe they know exactly what sells and what doesn’t and yet nevertheless are always wrong. And if you have the extraordinary luck to receive the agreement of the sales people, then you will be instructed by the production manager to go to the lousiest text-setting bureau, and will have to use any old printer at home or abroad, and a bookbinder that isn’t worthy of the - - name - in any event you will not be able to go to Buchbinderei Burkhardt. I at least would not like to grow old in such a publishing house: in which one is forced to make foul compromises, from morning to evening, for a whole working life; and in which, in the headlong rush of readiness to make compromises, one can hardly bring anything good into existence, and in which one has to call in someone from outside if, for once, it really is a matter of quality.

Of course designers in a large publishing house cannot see things exactly as I am used to seeing them. In one year dozens of titles pass through their hands, but it could be possible to achieve a better average quality.

When you designed the Thomas Mann edition, did Fischer really leave you alone and not interfere?

Yes, I was fortunate. Only with the position of the ISBN on the back of the cover - did they not ask me - and they then of course placed it wrongly: symmetrically, while everything else on the covers is asymmetric.

Of course I would have liked a slightly smaller format and thinner (‘bible’) paper, so that the individual volumes could have been easier to handle and lighter, and so that the whole edition - 38 volumes, 20 of them double volumes, thus 58 books altogether! - could have been brought down in length. But I did not insist on it, because I knew that either the one or the other would be unacceptable to the people buying the whole edition, and because in addition a still smaller size of type would have to be used.

Also a compromise, if you wish ...

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w

Back to the VGS! Usually you print in small editions; do you make bibliophile books?

h

Well, now you have given me a cue, and you know that I am allergic to it.

Bibliophile books? No, we certainly don’t make bibliophile books. Though if the adjective bibliophile is understood literally, then I would have nothing against it: bibliophile indeed means ‘loving books’. However one does not understand it in this original meaning, but rather as it is described by Duden: {loving (#note from the editor# beautiful and luxurious) books, valuable for lovers of books, luxuriously provided for (of books).} No, not valuable, not luxurious. The paper that we use can be found in normal collections; text-setting is not in lead type as in the time of Gutenberg, but with QuarkXPress on the Mac; printing is not on a creaking hand-press, but on an up-to-date offset machine; and binding is with one of the -usual binders. If we make small editions, that’s just because we cannot sell local and regional titles in larger quantities - as much as we’d like to.

No, we do not follow the maxim ‘small runs, high prices’. We believe that the opposite is essentially right: that quite ordinary books, including paperbacks, must be carefully produced.

That would be book culture.

Book *culture*, not book *art*. I know that you have this meaningless concept in your vocabulary, but, Hans Peter, what the devil has a book to do with art?

Yes, of course, if it is a ‘bibliophile edition’; if it is printed on hand-made paper; if the paper is so valuable that one may hardly touch it; if the text is set in a socalled artist’s typeface, which one can only read with an effort, and in a layout in which one loses any sense of where things are; and if the whole thing is bound in leather and decorated with gold and silver embossing so that it hurts the hands if one tries to pick it up. Yes, that is probably *art*, but it is not a *decent* book.

Or, as I once formulated it: {The bourgeois attitude: classical literature - Goethe, Holderlin, for a change even Rilke - printing on a handpress with handset type on hand-made paper, bound by hand in leather; small edition, high price: bibliophile, ‘book art’.}

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h

The socialist attitude (in fact not, but inflated to be so): social revolutionary text - Marx, Ché, La Passionara - unreadable, but looking visually ‘creative’, copied or printed in any old way, held together in metal or plastic covers; small edition, unsocial high price: experiment, ‘book art’.

Both may have something to do with art, I suppose.

But anyone who intends to hold the book has to fool themselves that it’s something else - one will not need that thing. And a proper book is also a useful object: one has to need it, one has to be able to use it.

Yes, my dear - are you feeling better now?

Are you making fun of me?

Yes, a little. You obviously don’t seem to notice how much you are still under the influence of the great Swiss typographers of the post-War years - Lohse, Bill, Ruder and Büchler. They too cared nothing for book art, were ultra-sober in their views, and sneered at bibliophily and bibliophile societies. Didn’t you once tell me that Emil Ruder described the Schweizerische Bibliophile Gesellschaft as a ‘doily-cloth association’?

Yes, I remember. It’s also completely clear to me where my refusal of bibliophile kitsch comes from. But while other views from earlier ears have changed, my views about bibliophily and book art haven’t just stayed the same, but have even strengthened. Both ideas share something false, inauthentic, something inflated: bluff, showing off, shoulder padding, exaggeration, something - forgive me - deeply German.

Thanks for the broadside! I won’t forget to pay you back.

But first the following question: If it isn’t a bibliophile book that you, the VGS, aspires to, how would you describe your ideal book?

My ideal is the perfect tool for reading, or - depending on the type of book - tool for looking or tool for reading and looking.

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w

Thanks for the broadside! I won’t forget to pay you back. But first the following question: If it isn’t a bibliophile book that you, the VGS, aspires to, how would you describe your ideal book?

h

Yes, I remember. It’s also completely clear to me where my refusal of bibliophile kitsch comes from. But while other views from earlier ears have changed, my views about bibliophily and book art haven’t just stayed the same, but have even strengthened. Both ideas share something false, inauthentic, something inflated: bluff, showing off, shoulder padding, exaggeration, something - forgive me - deeply German.

Then what does, for example, a perfect tool for reading look like? Could you name one of your books that you consider to be perfect?

My ideal is the perfect tool for reading, or - depending on the type of book - tool for looking or tool for reading and looking.

You are silent? Even ifyou think that every other book designer has done more books than you, you must believe that among all those that you have made, that one or another - although not perhaps perfect - yet comes close to perfection.

How else would you have won the Gutenberg Prize?

Oh gosh! You know that most prize awards are based on errors and misunderstandings. Or perhap you do really take seriously the prize-circus and the whole over-heated cultural hullabaloo.

Stop, stop! This typically Swiss deprecation is just as unsympathetic to me as its opposite!

Well, good. Among the few purely reading books for which I am responsible, first to be considered would be the volumes of the new Thomas Mann edition. But first - as I’ve already indicated - they are rather too large in format, and secondly, the paper - although rather thin, is still too thick. As I’ve said, both things couldn’t be changed. I regret it.

No, if I wanted to nominate a reading tool as ideal or at least approaching ideal,

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I have to point to the early Insel books of the first three decades of the twentieth century; for example to the Großherzog-Wilhelm-Ernst edition ofthe works of Goethe, Schiller, Kant, Schopenhauer, and Korner, whose first volumes began to appear in 1905. Later printings in different bindings no longer carry the name ‘GroBherzog-Wilhelm-Ernst-Ausgabe’.

But the format and typography remain the same.

From this series of classic texts, we - you and I - both own, among others, the volume of Goethe’s [Gespräche mit Eckermann]. This little book is for me the perfect or the nearly perfect reading tool; in any event, the best that I know. Ahandy format (#note of the editor# 10 × 17.2 cm) in the literal sense, which one can put in any trouser or coat pocket, bible paper - even with exactly 800 pages the volume is just 22 mm thick. (‘I don’t like bible paper’, someone might grumble. I know it needs a bit of finger culture; and that comes only through practise, certainly not from sitting in front of the television.)

Didn’t I sneer previously at leather bindings? What have we here but a leather binding? Yes - but leather is not always just leather. Here the leather is no bluff, here it serves a function. No other binding material, really no other, is as flexible as this thin, pressed calves’ leather, which does not break and which goes - when one has bent it - back into position, and then stays like that. And the gold embossing? Gold in itself do not like. It is too ostentatious. A gold watch would be horror for me. But to be fair and more objective, one should add this: even now gold foil is still really the only problem-free embossing foil; it was even more so at the beginning of the last century. The book is at least 80 years old (it lacks a year of publication), and it has been used, as one can see; but the lettering on the spine and the front cover is as fresh as if it has just been embossed. This little book (‘little book’ - yet 800 pages, don’t forget!) this little book is something I can take on a stroll, on a walk; in a field at the edge of a wood I can take it out of my coat pocket or rucksack and read, and if I let it fall into cow dung that isn’t a catastrophe; I can wash the leather and embossing, even with soap, and no part is damaged.

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The typography inside is of the simplest and most modest kind; no typographer had to be involved, trying to be ‘creative’. The typeface is unpretentious, undisturbing, but wonderfully readable - it is the Monotype Old Style no. 2, at that time a typographic workhorse as later Times Roman would be. My single objection: the paragraphs do not open with an indentation. But otherwise: the perfect tool for reading.

w

Agreed in every point. When will the VGS publish the perfect tool for reading?

h

It’s hardly possible. We aren’t really a literary publishing house and mostly publish non-fiction books, which are hybrids of the pure reading book and the pure factual book: in order to be comfortably readable, these books should be smaller, and because of the large number of pictures they should be larger. No, the VGS will probably never be able to publish the perfect reading book. Alas. But we will try to make our factual books as friendly to readers as is possible.

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