table of contents Introduction
A look into Wim Crouwel’s design technique and ideaologies
The Work of Wim Crouwel
Examples of Wim’s creations
A New Alphabet
Wim’s creative new way to look at letters
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Type Timeline
A look at type throughout history
About MOCT Get to know us
The career of Dutch designer Wim Crouwel spans six decades and covers an extraordinary journey from designer, teacher, curator to museum director. Based on modernist principles, Crouwel’s lucid and systematic approach to design is underpinned by a grid-based methodology. His process, logical yet experimental, distils a subject down to its absolute essence and in doing so he achieves great impact and purpose in both his exhibition and print design. Through his long and productive career he has produced exemplary work in exhibition design, and designed posters, calendars, typefaces, trademarks and stamps.
Modernism
The formal nature of Swiss design deeply affected Crouwel — clarity, structure and the employment of grids became key aspects in his visual language. Strong relationships were formed with like-minded Swiss designers early in his career and he became good friends with Gerard Ifert, Karl Gerstner and Josef Müller-Brockmann.
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Total Design
Crouwel was one of the five founders of Total Design, a multidisciplinary design studio set up to work on major design commissions. The name Total acknowledges the mixed skill-set of the partners. Together their diverse experience enables them to execute both complex and wide-ranging projects for a variety of clients, from industry, trade, government and cultural sectors.
Experimental Typography
Crouwel is recognised for the creation of radical, modular letterforms. Pushing the boundaries of legibility, Crouwel’s innovative type was often supported by easily read sans serif typefaces within a carefully structured framework. His typefaces were digitised by the Foundry in the late nineties and are available for designers to use digitially from the type library.
Designer, Director, Teacher
In 1985, Crouwel’s career took a new direction following appointment as a director at the Boijmans van Beuningen Museum in Rotterdam. In this role he commissioned the British studio 8vo to fulfil the design requirements of the museum. He retired from this position in 1993. Crouwel continues to design intermittently on a diverse range of projects for both graphic and exhibition design commissions.
the work of wim crouwel
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Wim’s New Alphabet
In the infancy of digital typography— lead blocks or by machines that gene giving way to text set on screens—C interesting experiment. Early comput monitors—rendered images in fairly l curvilinear letterforms difficult to rec to redesign the alphabet using only h is, in Crouwel’s words, “over-the-top used,” a statement on the impact of n typographic tradition. In 1988, howev stylized version of the font on the cov band Joy Division. New Alphabet was 1997 by Freda Sack and David Quay o Crouwel’s original studies.
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—as lead type, set by hand in heavy erated lines of metal type, was Crouwel saw an opportunity for an ter screens—cathode ray tube (CRT) large pixels, making traditional construct, and so Crouwel set out horizontal lines. New Alphabet p and never meant to be really new technologies on centuries of ver, Peter Saville Associates used a ver of Substance, an album for the s digitized for contemporary use in of The Foundry, closely based on
Type is everywhere – street signs, magazines, the web. Every typeface you see around you has been painstakingly and carefully planned out, and each has its own personality and vibe. But have you ever stopped to wonder how the typefaces we encounter everyday came to be? Who invented them, and why? If you’re interested in learning more about typography, you’ve come to the right place.
Here’s how it all went down:
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a Guttenberg invented Italics begin to be movable typefaces, used as way to fit giving the world a more words onto cheaper way to obtain a page, saving the written word. Up the printer money. until this point, all Today, we use italics written materials were as a design detail done by hand, and or for emphasis were very costly to when writing. purchase. Guttenburg also created the first typeface, blackletter – it was dark, fairly practical, and intense, but not very legible. Nicolas Jenson created Roman Type, inspired by the text on ancient roman buildings. It was far more readable than blackletter, and caught on quickly.
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John Baskerville created what we now call Transitional type, a Roman-style type, with very sharp serifs and lots of drastic contrast between thick and thin lines. William Caslon created a typeface which features straighter serifs and much more obvious contrasts between thin and bold strokes. Today, we call this type style ‘old style’.
Vincent Figgins created Egyptian, or Slab Serif – the first time a typeface had serifs that were squares or boxes
Firmin Didot and Giambattista Bodoni created the first ‘modern’ Roman typefaces (Didot, and Bodoni). The contrasts were more extreme than ever before, and created a very cool, fresh look.
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William Caslon IV reated the first typeface ithout any serifs at all. was widely rebuked t the time. This was he start of what we ow consider Sans Serif pefaces. During this me, type exploded, and many, many variations ere being created to ccommodate advertising.
TERMINOLOGY EXPLAINED What’s the difference between a typeface and a font? Before you jump in, let’s clarify the terminology used. Typography is the art of creating the letters we use everyday. It’s designing them and creating them and making them real. A font is a collection or set of letters – they’re the mechanism you use to get your message across to your reader. Every letter and dash and semi colon would be considered part of a specific font. A typeface is the design you see – the style and look of a specific font. Throughout history, typefaces have been influenced by technological advances, culture shifts, and just general boredom with the state of typography.
Frederic Goudy became the world’s first full time type designer, developing numerous groundbreaking typefaces, such as Copperplate Gothic, Kennerly, and Goudy Old Style. The Helvetica typeface is one of the most famous and popular in the world. It’s been used for every typographic project imaginable, not just because it is on virtually every computer. Helvetica is ubiquitous because it works so well. The design embodies the concept that a typeface should absolutely support the reading process – that clear communication is the primary goal of typography.
In the infancy of digital typography—as lead type, set by hand in heavy lead blocks or by machines that generated lines of metal type, was giving way to text set on screens—Crouwel saw an opportunity for an interesting experiment.
About the MOCT
The Museum of Contemporary Typography is a contemporary art museum founded by philanthropists Eli and Edythe Broad on Grand Avenue in downtown Los Angeles. Designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro in collaboration with Gensler, the museum offers free general admission and presents an active program of rotating temporary exhibitions and innovative audience engagement. The MOCT is home to more than 2,000 works of art in the MOCT collection, which is one of the world’s most prominent collections of postwar and contemporary typographical art. The 120,000-square-foot building features two floors of gallery space and is the headquarters of The MOTC Art Foundation’s worldwide lending library, which has been loaning collection works to museums around the world since 1984. Since opening in September 2015, The MOTC has welcomed more than 2.5 million visitors. Generous support is provided by Leading Partner East West Bank.
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M u s e u m o f C o n t e m p o r a r y Ty p o g r a p h y 21 S Grand Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90012 www. t he m u s e umo f co n t e mpo raryt ypo g raph y.o rg