TYPO Nr. 13. Oktober 2012. Kr 52
TYPO
Editor: Sofie Dybvik Photo: Sofie Dybvik Text: Anonymous Design: Sofie Dybvik www.typo.com
BEAUTI & UGLINESS 4
SAGMEISTER 6
MARIAN BANTJES 8
GARAMOND 10
A R E YO U I N T E R E S T E D I N exa m p l e s of t y p ef a ce s wh o s e p ri n ci p a l d e sig n fe atu re i s n ot re l ate d to a e s th eti c co n si d e rati o n s o r l ew w wg i b ilit y, b u t rath e r s o m e u n d e rlyi n g n o n -t y p o g ra p h i c a l i d e a? G et i n s p i re d by K a re l M a r te n s !
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Having rejected the topic of the conference, I nevertheless went on to speculate on what is a true example of aconceptual typeface might be like. So I asked Pieter van Rosmalen for help. We worked on two models, adjusting both of them to achieve the best forms, rather than creating one as an afterthought of the other.
I have to admit that dealing with ugliness was a lot more interesting than revisiting the beauty contests of the classicist printers. The search for ugliness triggers a certain primal, voyeuristic curiosity, and from the designer’s perspective there is simply a lot more space to explore. Capturing beauty has always been considered the primary responsibility of the traditional artist, and even now it is rare to find examples of skilled and deliberate ugliness in type design, (although examples of inexperience and naïveté abound). Trying and failing is the secret key.
In my address I argued that there is no such thing as conceptual type, since type design is a discipline defined by its ability to execute an outcome of the process that transforms the pure idea into a functional font is a critical part of the discipline.
In his Manuale Tipografico of 1818, Bodoni laid down the four principles of type design “from which all beauty would seem to proceed”, namely: regularity, clarity, good taste, and charm. His close competitors in France were the Didots. Not only did François-Ambroise Didot invent many of the machines used in printing, but his foundry endeavoured to render the types more beautifully than his rival Baskerville and later Bodoni. Some considered Didot’s works the most beautiful of all types that had ever been used in France up to that period, though many people found them very delicate but quite lifeless ans no interesting.
In 2010 I was invited to Copenhagen for a conference to speak on the very fun and subject of the conceptua l types. The organisers were interested in examples of typefaces whose principal design feature was not related to aesthetic considerations or legibilit y, rat her underly ing non-typographical idea.
While any choice representing beauty is bound to be very personal and subjective, many agree that the high-contrast typefaces created by Giambattista Bodoni and the Didot clan are some of the most beautiful in existence. Bodoni was one of the most widely-admired printers of his time and he was considered amongst the finest in the history of the craft. Thomas Curson Hansard wrote in 1825 that Bodoni’s types had “that beautiful and perfect appearance, which we find it difficult and highly expensive to equal.”¹ He just simply did it typographic perfect.
TT
No other style in the history of typography has provoked so many negative reactions as the Italian. It was first presented in Caslon & Catherwood’s 1821 type specimen, and as early as 1825, in his Typographia Thomas Hansard called the type a “typographic monstrosity”. Nicolete Gray called that “a crude expression of the idea of perversity”, while others labeled it “degenerate”. The goal of my project was to show just how closely related beauty and ugliness are. American computer scientist with a special interest in typography identified over 60 visual parameters that control the appearance of a typeface. I was interested in designing typeface variations that shared most of these parameters, yet included both the ugliest and most beautiful letterforms. Karloff, the result of this project, connects the high contrast modern type of Bodoni and of Didot with the monstrous Italians. Also the secret are in between the different kind of forms and design.Its how we make it work!
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“Do more of the When working on The Happy Film, that o n a little p ersonal
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things I like to do and fewer of the things I don’t like.” documentary in Indonesia, S a g m e i s t e r w a n t e d t o answer questiot about happiness:
1. Think about ideas and content freely – with deadlines far away. 2. Travel to new places. 3. Use a wide variety of tools and techniques. 4.Work on projects that matter to you. 5. Get feedback from people who see your work. 6. Have things return from the printer done well. 7. Design a project that feels partly brand new and partly familiar.
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MARIAN BANTJES
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Marian’s art and design crosses boundaries of time, style and technology. She is known for her detailed and lovingly precise vector art, her obsessive hand work, her patterning and ornament. Often hired to create custom type for magazines, advertising and special projects, Marian’s work has an underlying structure and formality that frames its organic, fluid nature. It is these combinations and juxtapositions that draw the interest of such a wide variety of designers and typographers, from experienced formalists to young students. Among her international clients, she counts Saks Fifth Avenue, Penguin Books, GRANTA, Wallpaper*, The Guardian, WIRED, Stefan Sagmeister, Winterhouse (Bill Drenttel & Jessica Helfand), Maharam, Ogilvy & Mather Chicago, Young & Rubicam Chicago, Random House, Houghton Mifflin, Print Magazine, GQ Italia, and The New York Times, among others from Europe, Australia and South America.
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aramond
Claude Garamond, that died in year 1561, was credited with the design of this elegant French typeface; however, it has recently been discovered that this typeface was designed letterforms are open and round, making the face extremely readable. In 1621, sixty years after Garamond’s death, the French printer Jean Jannon issued a specimen of typefaces that had some characteristics similar to the Garamond designs, though his letters were more asymmetrical and irregular in slope and axis. After the French government raided Jannon’s printing office, Cardinal Richelieu named Jannon’s type Caractère de l’Université, and it became the house style of Royal Printing Office. In 1825, the French National Printing Office adapted the type used by Royal Printing Office in the past, and claimed the type as the work of Claude Garamond. In 1919, Thomas Maitland Cleland and Morris Fuller Benton produced for the first 20th century commercial Garamond, based on the Jannon’s design, called Garamond. Revivals of the Garamond type came as early as 1900, when a typeface based on the work of Jean Jannon was introduced at the Paris World’s Fair as “Original Garamond”, whereafter many type foundries began to cast similar types, beginning a wave of revivals that continued throughout the 20th Century. These revivals followed the designs from Garamond and Jannon. The designs of the italic fonts mainly came from a version produced by Robert Granjon. In a 1926 article in The Fleuron, Beatrice Warde revealed that many of the revivals said to be based on Claude Garamond’s designs were actually designed by Jean Jannon; but the Garamond name had stuck.
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