1927
PAUL
REN NER
PAUL RENNER
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Paul Renner’s books
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About Futura
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Paul Renner’s artwork
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Futura Bold and Light
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traditional and modern design
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About Paul Renner
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PAUL RENNER German artist and painter Designer of futura
German typographer Paul Renner is best known as the designer of the typeface Futura, which stands as a landmark of modern graphic design. Renner can be seen as a bridge between the traditional 19th century and the modern 20th century design. He attempted to fuse the gothic and the roman typefaces. While he was never directly affiliated with the Bauhaus movement, he became an advocate of its aims and princi ples and became a leading proponent of the “New Typography�.
2 Paul Friedrich August Renner was born on August 9, 1878 in Wernigerode in the Harz region, a part of Saxony-Anhalt, which at that time fell within the kingdom of Prussia. His father was an evangelical theologian, who became court chaplain to the Earl of Stolberg in Wernigerode. Renner attended a Gymnasium, a secondary school where one studied the humanities.
Nine years of studying Greek and Latin provided students with a ticket to higher education. Renner chose to study art after the Gymnasium, attending several academies, and finally completing his training in Munich in 1900.š He was brought up to have a very German sense of leadershi p, of duty and responsibility. He was suspicious of abstract art and disliked many forms of
Form follows function That has been misunderstood Form and function should be one Joined in a spiritual union.
modern culture, such as jazz, cinema, and dancing. But equally, he admired the functionalist strain in modernism. Renner was a prominent member of the Deutscher Werkbund. Renner sought to influence culture by designing, writing and teaching. He wanted to use his aesthetic and intellectual skills to help in shaping the new life in both its material and spiritual forms.
Instead of earning a living by easel painting, Renner spent most of his life in applied art, trying to bring high cultural standards to material objects for use – typefaces and books. On this matter, he preached to his students a recommendation from Goethe, whom he regarded as the prototypical modern person: “we should direct our view outwards, away from ourselves,
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into the world, not into the distance, but onto those things that are neat, within a hand’s reach. Renner always read widely, and was acquainted with the works of the great figures in German philosophy and literature (Kant, Goethe, Schiller, and Nietzsche). He made a thorough study of philosophy and its methods. From 1908 onwards, he wrote extensively about typography and design. He created a new set of guidelines for good book design. Renner was a friend of the German typographer Jan Tschichold and a key partici pant in the heated ideological and artistic debates of that time. Even before 1932, Renner made his opposition to the Nazis very clear, notably in his pamphlet “Kulturbolschewismus”
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(Cultural Bolshevism). He was arrested and dismissed from his post in Munich in 1933, and subsequently went into a period of internal exile. Paul Renner was one of five sons. According to other family members, his upbringing as the son of a priest left him with a strict Christian ethic, in thought and work, while his younger colleagues in typography were writing manifestos in the 1920s. Renner was alluding to Eastern philosophy in his writings. He resisted the polarization of political ideologies in Weimar Germany, and tried to select the most reasonable elements from both right and left. Renner had first settled in Munich at the turn of the century as a young painter and remained there for most of his life.
5 Futura is a sans serif face designed by Paul Renner between 1924 and 1926. It is based on geometric shapes which became representative visual elements of the Bauhaus design style of 1919-1933. Futura was commercially released in 1927-1930 and it became a cornerstone of the ‘New Typography’ classified as Geometrical Modernism. Form follows function became the key words and careful reasoning constrained all the character shapes to their utmost functional simplicity. With Futura, in typographical terms, the industrial revolution had reached its logical conclusion.
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Futura
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Initially,Futura was issued by the Bauer Foundry in six weights, a condensed version in three weights, and an Inline. Renner’s typeface family provided the right typographical tool for the professional designer and it became a popular choice for text and display composition. Even today, advertising typographers often use the combination of Futura Light/Book and Futura Extra Bold because of the design’s stylish elegance and commanding visual power.
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Twentieth Century is another typeface which was ‘inspired’ by Futura. Futura Black was added later, and it is quite distinct from the rest of family, in fact, it resembles a stencil type. The Futura family members are: Regular, Light, Light Oblique, Light Condensed, Book, Book Bold, Book Oblique, Medium, Medium Oblique, Medium Condensed, Bold, Bold Oblique, Bold Condensed, Semibold, Semibold Italic, Extrabold, Extrabold Italic, Extrabold Condensed, Display and Black.
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RENNER’S BOOKS
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mechanisierte
Grafik
paul renner (1878-1956) published his book “mechanisierte grafik” (mechanised graphics)when he was director of the meisterschule für deutschlands buchdrucker (master school for germany’s printers) in munich. the book discusses the impact of modern technology – which was mainly mechanic,not electronic yet – on visual design. renner not only looks at typeface and graphic design but includes aspects of photo, film and colour. the jacket and cover share the same design in different colours. modernity is expressed not only by a sans-serif typeface – renner’s futura – but also by dropping the uppercase in the title and using “f” instead of “ph” in “grafik” and “foto”. he is convinced that every age has to find the typography that best suits its needs. he points out
parallels to modern architecture: the “carneval” of pseudo-historistic styles should give way to a new clarity a beauty – e.g. his futura typeface. but renner warns of any new orthodoxy, ideological dogmas and irrational formalism. in his chapter about “functional typography” renner is rather critical about the early “elemental” typography with its huge circles, bars and squares – in his eyes more a “fashion success” than real progress.
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RENNER’S BOOKS
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kulturbolschewismus?
paul renner (1878-1956) is one of the pioneers of modern typography. he is best known for his design of the futura typeface, a sans-serif still highly popular today. when renner became director of the meisterschule für deutschlands buchdrucker (masters school for germany’s printers) in munich,he invited jan tschichold – then a chief propagator of modern typography – to teach there. less well known is the fact that paul renner was a courageous critic of nazi ideology before hitler came to power in 1933. in his brilliant essay “kulturbolschewismus?” (culture bolshevism?) renner demasks the nazi’s campaign against modern art and architecture as false,racist and dangerous. the title refers to a term that was popular among conservative ideologists and the national socialist party to denounce modern art as “non-germanic”. and renner puts a provocatively oversized question mark after it
12 in 1932, paul renner was unable to find a german publisher for his explosive essay, but finally it was published by his swiss friend eugen rentsch. the response was a mixed one: while thomas mann wrote a letter full of praise to renner, the brown newspaper “der völkische beobachter” published a spiteful review.
after the nazis seized power in march 1933, renner was arrested, his office searched, and he was sacked from his post at the meisterschule. he spent the next 12 years in “inner emigration”, painting. soon after its publication, “kulturbolschewismus?” had to be withdrawn from the german book market. few original copies seem to have survived. fortunately, a photo-mechanical reprint was issued by the stroemfeld verlag, basel and frankfurt/main, in 2003. the new edition includes useful comments by roland reuss and peter staengle.
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Bridge between traditional and modern design
A tension between tradition and modernity was integral to two twentieth-century debates in German design. The first was the question of style in typography; German-speaking countries were unique in still using gothic letterforms during the first half of the twentieth century.
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Gothic type became enmeshed in nostalgic notions of German culture during the protracted conservative reaction that crystallized radically with Hitler’s accession to power. The relative virtues of gothic and roman type in a German context were the subject of much discussion during this time,and
Renner had strong views on this matter. The more widespread debate was the Streit um die Technik (the debate on technology), a dispute between conservative and modernizing elements in German society. Renner and his fellow members of the Deutscher Werkbund (the princi pal organization
seeking to reform German design) were fully engaged in the Streit um die Technik. Renner tended towards the conservative side in this debate, but his thinking and activity shifted in the mid 1920s towards a conscious concern with modernity. Renner had assis-
ted n reviving the bibliophile culture that he had known before the First World War with his work on editions for Georg MĂźller Verlag in 1924. However, the wealth of the book-buying middle class had been eroded by war and inflation.
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The debate concerning the importance of gothic letterforms in German culture, which had been present in learned circles for some centuries, became a political issue in the early twentieth century. The first three decades of the century were a period of great political and economic change in Germany, which was redefining its role on the world stage; consequently,
there was also a domestic struggle to define the German cultural identity, of which many believed Deutsche Schrift to be an integral part. Renner’s position on this issue was progressive: he openly called for the abolition of fraktur. In some respects, Futura can be seen to reflect his views on the appropriate style for letterforms designed in Germany – an alternative solution
to the choice of gothic or roman. Renner’s answer to the question gothic or roman seemed to be a characteristically German yearning for a third way – a revitalization of grotesk (sanserif), to make it some kind of elemental, universal form of roman. Thereby Renner certainly denied that
gothic was essential to modern Germany: instead he sought to enter into the arena of international, contemporary style, carried along by the rhetoric of the Moderns of the late 1920s. Renner made the first drawings for the typeface that became Futura in the summer of 1924. Futura
18 is a sans serif face designed by Paul Renner between 1924 and 1926. It is based on geometric shapes which became representative visual elements of the Bauhaus design style of 1919-1933. Futura was commercially released in 1927-1930 and it became a cornerstone of the “New Typography” classified as Geometrical Modernism, form follows function became the key words and careful reasoning constrained all the character shapes to their utmost functional simplicity. With Futura in typographical the industrial revolution had reached its logical conclusion.
Initially,Futura was issued by the Bauer Foundry in six weights, a condensed version in three weights, and an Inline. Renner’s typeface family provided the right typographical tool for the professional designer and it became a popular choice for text and display composition.