A Chronicle of Typographic Ideology

A Chronicle of Typographic Ideology Warde 路 Bayer 路 Weingart 路 Keedy

Exploration By Steven E. Zimmerman

A Chronicle of Typographic Ideology Warde 路 Bayer 路 Weingart 路 Keedy

Exploration By Steven E. Zimmerman

The Crystal Goblet Of Printing Should Be Invisible Beatrice Warde Imagine 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 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 virtues of the perfect wine-glass 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 and the fiery heart 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 partly 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 port 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 forth.

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 use that term. That is, the first thing he asked of his particular 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’ whatever of the fact that I can make arbitrary sounds which will lead a total stranger to think my own thought. It is sheer magic that I should be able to hold a one-sided conversation by means of black marks on paper with an unknown person half-way across the world. Talking, broadcasting, writing, and printing are all quite literally forms of thought transference, and it is the ability and eagerness to transfer and receive the contents of the mind that is almost alone responsible for human civilization. herbert bayer If you agree with this, you will agree with one glance at the specimen book of my one main idea, i.e. that the most important types issued by even an up-to-date thing about printing is that it conveys thought, printing firm, reveals a collection of the ideas, images, from one mind to other minds. most varied sorts of letters, which as This statement is what you might call the front a whole constitute a conglomeration door of the science of typography. Within lie of style of the worst kind, arranged in hundreds of rooms; but unless you start by groups and compared with other exassuming that printing is meant to convey pressions of the periods from which they specific and coherent ideas, it is very easy to have descended, they remind us that find yourself in the wrong house altogether. today we do not build in gothic, but in Before asking what this statement leads to, our contemporary way. no longer do we let us see what it does not necessarily lead travel on horseback, but in cars, train to. If books are printed in order to be read, and planes, we do not dress in crinowe must distinguish readability from what lines nowadays, but in a more rational the optician would call legibility. A page set manner. every period has its own formal in 14-pt Bold Sans is, according to the laboand 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 no belong to the present times.

towards a universal type

ratory tests, more ‘legible’ than one set in 11-pt Baskerville. A public speaker is more ‘audible’ in that sense when he bellows. But a good speaking voice is one which is inaudible as a voice. 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. When you listen to a song in a language you do not understand, part of your mind actually does fall asleep, leaving your quite separate aesthetic sensibilities to enjoy themselves unimpeded by your reasoning faculties. The fine arts do that; but that is not the purpose of printing. Type well used is invisible as type, just as the perfect talking voice is the unnoticed vehicle for the transmission of words, ideas.

We may say, therefore, that printing may be delightful for many reasons, but that it is important, first and foremost, as a means of doing something. That is why it is mischievous to call any printed piece a work of art, especially fine art: 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 art nowadays, because its primary economic and educational purpose has been taken away; but printing

a man would make himself ridiculous who insisted on talking today in the manner of the middle age” 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 shorter, 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, popu-

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.

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 larly 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 last 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 further. 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 the calligraphy of the type designer, and it is just this freedom which has been responsible tor 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, un-

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. In the flurry of your individual problems, I think you will not mind spending half an hour on one broad and simple set of ideas involving abstract principles.

I once was talking to a man who designed a very pleasing advertising type which undoubtedly all of you have used. I said something about what artists think about a certain problem, and he replied with a beautiful gesture: ‘Ah, madam, we artists do not think---we feel!’ That same day I quoted that remark to another designer of my acquaintance, and he, being less poetically inclined, murmured: ‘I’m not feeling very well today, I think!’ He was right, he did think; he was the thinking sort; 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 a reason. I always suspect the typographic enthusiast who fortunately were never carried beyond their experimental stage. the bayer-type produced by the berthold 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

HOW CAN ONE MAKE SWISS

TYPOGRAPHY? Wolfgang Weingart TECHNICAL WORK AND ELEMENTARY TYPOGRAPHY Imagine that you need my course and have no ideas about typography. As your most important goal you want to experience as many typographic possibilities as you can in perhaps two years, and become independent. Our first exercise is as follows: In the first few hours I instruct YOU in typesetting techniques and related problems. You set a ragged-right composition, print it and attempt to improve it optically. From this ragged-right composition you now make compositions of block, middle axis, and free line placements. When you have these abilities at your command, we can proceed to the second exercise. I give you a typewritten manuscript which you set in one type size. That is why you have learned to set type during the first exercise. Only the printed word is reality, not that which has been sketched or made from blind text. Only with a set and printed word can you realize its actual length, its relationship to other words and to the entire text, as

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 important. 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 considerable distances. it is not without his specimen pages, so he had set reason that oculists use clear cut type the lines in Latin. This was not faces when testing the state of the paonly for the reason that you will all tient’s eyesight. much has been written think of; if you have seen the old about the legibility of type. oculists can type foundries’ famous Quousque offer no definite proofs, because their Tandem copy (i.e. that Latin has experiments are influenced by habits few descenders and thus gives a reto which patients are accustomed. for markably even line). No, he told example, it is found that old people with me that originally he had set up bad eyesight often read complicated the dullest ‘wording’ that he could gothic type more easily than clear rofind (I dare say it was from Hansard), and yet he discovered that the man to whom he submitted it would start reading and making comments on the text. I made some 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 glamour and well as to your predesignated significance---then the layout would have been a failure. space. The text and format of Setting it in Italian or Latin is only an easy way of saying the next exercise (above) is “This is not the text as it will appear”.’ also devised to deepen your Let me start my specific conclusions with book typogfirst experiences of the diviraphy, because that contains all the fundamentals, and sion of space; through the then go on to a few points about advertising. The book study of the placement of typographer has the job of erecting a window between letters and lines and their inter relationships, and with the aid of a certain self determined program, you attempt to organize visually your name and address within a given area. With the same limitations, you attempt to solve a more complex, practice-orientated problem. You attempt to visualize the logic and content of the text. You try to find functional typographic design possibilities, based on criteria like readability, text organization, and visual quality. At this point, a slight digression is necessary: it is a mistake to assume that typography instruction for graphic designers is not very meaningful, or

to say that the teaching of elementary typography problems is superficial, in that any intelligent student can master them by himself. To this I would like to reply that the more basic the reader inside the room and that landscape which is the author’s words. He a problem is stated, the more difficult it becomes to solve. may put up a stained-glass window of marvelous beauty, but a failure as a window; Complex problems all my mistakes and superficialities to that is, he may use some rich superb type like text gothic that is something to be be more easily hidden. Because we have already pushed looked at, not through. Or he may work in what I call transparent or invisible tythese elementary exercises somewhat too far, let us solve pography. I have a book at home, of which I have no visual recollection whatever another functional problem as an end to this first chapter. as far as its typography goes; when I think of it, all I see is the Three Musketeers You have to design a business letterhead conforming to and their comrades swaggering up and down the streets of Paris. The third type the DIN system, the German industrial Norm system, of window is one in which the glass is broken into relatively small leaded panes; which is also valid in Switzerland. As already stated, I and this corresponds to what is called ‘fine printing’ today, in that you are at least am convinced that such elementary typographic exconscious that there is a window there, and that someone has enjoyed building it. ercises are a prerequisite for the solution of complex That is not objectionable, because of a very important fact which has to do with the psychology of the subconscious mind. It is tragically easy to throw away half the reader-interest of an advertisement by setting the simple and compelling argument in a face which is uncomfortably 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 man 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 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, and 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

typographic design problems. Only here can the eyes, mind and feelings be equally and gradually trained, and only here can one learn to deal confidently with for mat, space, proportion and composition. Beyond that, these basic exercises provide insight and knowledge into general typographic problems, and are indispensable in the execution of concrete practical problems. Only when the student has understood that making typography means the visual organization of a glven space with regard to a specific functional intention, will he be in a position in the future to make independent typographical decisions, regardless of whether the emphasis lies on dealing with complex practical problems or on experimental work.

Obviously, I see that a bit idealistically. The most important result of these basic exercises is that the student develops a relatively open relationship to everything that has to do with typography. He is in a position to explode the old venerable concept of typography at least in the syntactical sense. In opposition to fixed traditions, he is less rigid in dealing with the materials and technical opportunities of the workshop. He has learned that a composed word need not look like a composed word. For example, the conventional word-picture for Swissair, and with it the word Swissair set with an in-

THE

SYNTACTIC

really interesting text. Printing demands a humility of mind, for the lack of which many of the fine arts are even now floundering in self-conscious and creasing progression from bottom towards top, which becomes maudlin experiments. When a semantically changed woId-picture. In this case Swissair is an you realize that ugly typograairline company which, through the progression of the letters, phy never effaces itself; you will has a part of its most typical activity visualized-that of flying; the be able to capture beauty as the form rises into the air. The student has now realized that the mawise men capture happiness by terial is not, as in classical typography, stiff and only applicable aiming at something else. The in a very limited way. This picture shows the technically limited ‘stunt typographer’ learns the possibilities of hand-setting-the horizontal and vertical. The fickleness of rich men who hate student should have the courage to violate the respected laws to read. Nobody (save the other of lead typography when it is necessary for the effectiveness of craftsmen) will appreciate half your skill. But you may spend endless years of happy experiment in devising that crystalline goblet which is worthy to hold the vintage of the human mind.... thick down-stroke. 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? 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 thick-

DIMENSION IN TYPOGRAPHY

ness of all parts of the letter, and renunciation of all suggestions of up and down strokes. simplification of form for the sake of legibility (the simpler the optical appearance the easier the comprehension). 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. 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 the typographic composition. He then knows that in done in offices would be much cheaper. letterpress almost everything can be printed, and in these facts apply with special force in offset, everything. As you can see, the arrangement the english language, in which the use of examples into chapters is not meant so precisely. of capital letters occurs so infrequently.

Naturally in the basic exercises \ye began working it seems incomprehensible why such a with the connection of typographic elements to one huge amount of apparatus should be another. Next, I began to distribute different probnecessary for such little use of capitals. lems to the students-more complex problems that if it is considered necessary to emphademand greater effort-naturally, with consideration size the beginnings of sentences, this to levels of talent and interest. Our fifth problem is could be done by heavy type or wider really an expansion of the previous ones. The text is spacing. proper names could also be more complex and you have first one, then two, and shown in another way, and for the “i� a finally -many type sizes at your disposal, to develop uniform sign would have to be created. a series of very different results. In these Swissair pursuing this thought to its logical conadvertisements for a daily newspaper you have the clusion we perceive that the sound of possibility to completely exhaust the interpretative the language ought to be given a syspossibilities contained in the text and flight-plan. tenutic optical shape. in order to aim at There are fewer restrictions in relation to type matea simplified type , as against that used rial and design freedom. These further examples today, syllables that frequently recur, demonstrate a strong contrast and clear tension in and combined sounds (diphthongs, the typographic design material used . They show etc. should be given new letter signs). advertisements for the Swiss Post, Telegram and the capital letters of ancient times are Telegraph Service (PTT), which are published on hardly legible when they are formed into the back covers of telephone books. They contain information about the different services offered

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 one-letter 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?...

by PTT. Here is a poster for the TransEuropean Express (TEE). We have set ourselves the goal of connecting different semantic interpretations with one another. The method for this should be the application of different syntactic design material: middle-axis composition block composition, with extreme word and line spacing block composition, spaced in decreasing progressions block composition without additional manipulation.

The work that I have shown you is very diverse because the students themselves are very different from one another. They differ in their basic educations, interests and abilities, as well as their nationalities. Often there are as many as six different nationalities on one course. On average, I figure on one-fourth convinced opposition, one-fourth convinced support, one-fourth not convinced support, and one-fourth misdirected professionals. As you can imagine, this is a fundamental handicap for any lesson or teaching method. There are some students-often the majority-who are very dependent on their respective teachers and constantly want to be led. Only a few are in a position to search, find, and decide independently. This frequently intense student-teacher relationship is naturally the cause of a certain uniformity in the results from the class. To this often-made reproach against both the school and myself, I would say two things: Firstly, what teaching method does not lead to a certain uniformity? Regardless of where I look I see only gradual differences. Secondly, these more or less evident traces of uniformity in the work are not of primary impor-

tance, but instead, what is important is the foundation upon which they are built.

I admit that our school does in a certain sense produce uniform results-in a visual sense. But at the same time I think that the exercises enable the students to transfer their underlying knowledge and ability to a position whereby, during practical work, each can reach complete-

ly different kinds of results. Obviously, this is not so easily generalized-it is important to take into consideration the extent to which the personality, intelligence, and ability of the student has been developed.

As I’ve already mentioned, I place great importance on these examples and the working process that leads to them. They are loosening-up exercises for the design

Graphic Design in the Postmodern Era Jeffrey Keedy

Any discussion of postmodernism must be preceded by at least a provisional definition of modernism. First there is modernism with a capital “M,” which designates a style and ideology and that is not restricted to a specific historical moment or geographical location. Modernist designers from the Bauhaus in Germany, the De Style in Holland, and Constructivism in Russia, share essentially the same Modernist ideology as designers like Paul Rand, Massimo Vignelli, and Eric Spiekermann. Its primary tenet is that the articulation of form should always be derived from the programmatic dictates of the object being designed. In short, form follows function.

Modernism was for the most part formed in art schools, where the pedagogical strategies were developed that continue to this day in design schools. It is a formalist, rationalist, visual language that can be applied to a wide range of circumstances. All kinds of claims can and have been made in an effort to keep Modernism eternally relevant and new. The contradiction of being constant, yet always new, has great appeal for graphic designers, whose work is so ephemeral.

Then there is the modern, with a small “m.” It is often confused with Modernism with a big M, but being a modern designer

simply means being dedicated to working in a way that is contemporary and innovative, regardless of what your particular stylistic or ideological bias may be. Modern designers who were not necessarily Modernist would include designers like Milton Glaser, Charles and Ray Eames, and Tadanori Yokoo.

With all the confusion in these early days of formulating theoretical paradigms, it is understandable why some designers have given up trying to connect their practice to contemporary theory. By the time postmodernism came along, student, similar to elementary many designers were quite happy exercises in which the emphasis is placed not so much on familiarity with the materials and technical aspects, as on expanding the typographical design vocabulary. The student discovers a visual language, the visual language. I mean that when the lesson functions correctly, every student should learn how to assert himself. When the teacher is colorful and stimulating enough in what he does, the student will receive enough stimulus for the development of his individual abilities and ideas.

Finally, I do not give the student any recipes to take with him, but instead only models for the solution of specific problems. Within the different kinds of problems set, the student has enough opportunity to practice coming to terms with both the problems and himself. But as I said, I see the problem very clearly and I am conscious that it cannot be fully explained with a few quick sentences. The so-called school crisis talked about today is not as noticeable in Basle as in other similar institutions. From what I have seen, the crisis is visible in other countries, especially in Europe. Today, few schools can or want to function as in earlier times. Obviously, the reason is that both classical

to dismiss it as a trendy fad or irrelevant rambling, and be done with it. That is exactly why I think it is important to examine some of the connections between the postmodern condition and graphic design.

Although there understanding of one’s self and the social role of the school as has always been an adaptable institution have broken down. But I believe-and some confusion risk saying it-that there is another reason: not only has this about what post‘self-understanding’ broken down, but also, so has ‘discipline.’ modernism is, There is no reliable teaching concept any more, no program on the most obvious which an education can be based-not even a reliable direction feature is that it which one could follow. Everyone does what he wants. What is is a reaction (not missing are good teachers and lecturers. I do not know of one rejection), to the school today in Germany, for example, which continues the established forms methodical pioneer work begun by the Bauhaus. It was of high Modernattempted by Ulm, but with different prerequisites and in ism. The second most prominent feature of postmodernism is the erasing of the boundaries between high culture and pop culture. But probably the most contested feature is that of “theoretical discourse,” where theory was no longer confined to philosophy, but incorporated history, social theory, political science, and many other areas of study, including design theory. Postmodernism is not a description of a style; it is the term for the era of late capitalism starting after the 1940’s and realized in the 1960’s with neo-colonialism, the green revolution, computerization and electronic information.

Postmodernism didn’t have much impact on graphic design until the middle of the 1980s. Initially, many designers thought it was just undisciplined self-indulgence. A hodgepodge of styles, with no unifying ideals or formal vocabularies, dreamed up by students in the new graduate programs. But in fact it was a new way of thinking about design, one that instigated a new way of designing. Designers began to realize that as mediators of culture, they could no longer hide behind the “problems” they were “solving.”

One could describe this shift as a younger generation of designers sim-

THE SEMANTIC DIMENSION IN

TYPOGRAPHY another environment-and you know how that ended.

With the example of Ulm you can see what I mean, in that Ulm was ruined by, among other things, the loss of its three dominant personalities: Max Bill, Thomas Maldonado, and Bonsiepe. Certainly, today’s students want nothing to do with such strong domineering personalities. But I am opposed to this. If I’ve want to reconstruct, to not only look for but also realize new directions, we need strong, flexible, and active personalities. The basic exercises in my classes are syntactic exercises. But in working with the synthetic dimension the semantic cannot be excluded. By that I mean activating that part of typography dealing with the meaning of the design elements. As I mentioned at the beginning, what is decisive for me in my instruction is the typographic aspect of typography. This is not just a question of syntax, but instead, a question of semantic evaluation of the syntactical elements.

Naturally, our exercises on this theme are very limited in that we are not a scientific institution, which could, with large technical expenditure,

conduct tests related to the semantic quality and effectiveness of typographic signs. In that respect our exercises remain relatively subjective. But with experience and a healthy human understanding at our disposal, I’ve experiment with the character of letterforms, their sizes and associations, as semantic factors. One could say that we are expanding they visual vocabulary of design alternatives. But, in certain respects, we go much further than any scientific testing can, in that empirical science with its social-scientific testing methods can in general deal only with the expectations and known experiences of those tested. Only in rare cases can something new be deduced from such information. As an example, some years ago I received a hint from the disciplined and intelligently solved logotype for Arabian Airlines. I tried to determine if

ply indulging their egos and refusing to be transparent (like a crystal goblet). Or you could say they were acknowledging their unique position in the culture, one that could have any number of political or ideological agendas.

The vernacular, high and low culture, pop culture, nostalgia, parody, irony, pastiche, deconstruction, and the anti-aesthetic represent some of the ideas that have come out of the 80s and informed design practice and theory of the 90s. After the 80s designers may still choose to be anonymous, but they will never again be considered invisible. We are part of the message in the media. In the postmodern era we are not just mediators of information, but individuals who think creatively and visually about our culture.

Although Jan Tschichold has been celebrated as an early proponent of modernist asymmetric typography, designers have increasingly come to respect his earlier calligraphic and latter classical work. Tschichold’s body of work is an important precedent for today’s postmodern typography in that it represents diversity in ideology and style. It was one that ranged from craft-based calligraphy and machine-age modernism to neoclassicism.

Another important precursor to postmodernism was W. A. Dwiggins, a designer who translated traditional values and aesthetics into a modern sensibility. He was a tireless experimenter with form, who took inspiration for his work from eastern cultures, history, and new technology. Unlike Tschichold, Dwiggins never embraced the Modernist movement nor was he deified by it. However, he was absolutely committed to being a modern designer. Although Dwiggins’s and Tschichold’s work seems to have little in common, there is a similarity in how their work was initially misrepresented. Tschichold was celebrated as a Modern-

ist typographer, which downplayed his more substantial body of design and writing based on traditional and classical ideas.

On the other hand, Dwiggins has always been represented as a traditional designer in spite of the innovative and experimental nature of most of his work.

It has only been in recent years that discussions of Tschichold and Dwiggins have expanded to include the full scope and plurality of their work. That is because the postmodern context has encouraged diversity and complexity, and given us a critical distance to assess Modernism and its ramifications. In the postmodern era, the line dividing modern and classical, good and bad, new and old, has, like so many lines in graphic design today, become very blurry, distressed and fractured.

In the late 80s, an anti-aesthetic impulse emerged in opposition to the canon of Modernist “good design.” It was a reaction to the narrow, formalist concerns of late Modernism. It staked a larger claim to the culture and expanded the expressive possibilities in design. The new aesthetic was impure, chaotic, irregular and crude. A point that was so successfully made, in terms of style, that pretty much everything was allowed in the professionalized field of graphic design, and from then on typography would include the chaotic and circuitous as options in its lexicon of styles. In fact, most of the formal mannerisms of the late 80s have continued to predominate throughout the 90s. But now it’s no longer an ideologically relevant, or even new style - now it’s just the most popular commercial style.

In 1989 I designed a typeface to use in my design work for experimental arts organizations like Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions and CalArts. I called the typeface Bondage Bold.

Rudy VanderLans saw it in some of my work and wanted to

the Arabic association function only because the i dot was turned on its corner. Or is it perhaps just as good with simple round dots, which are not normally used with this typeface, Helvetica? I am sure you find, as I do, that the effect of the turned square cannot be surpassed. As proof of the quality of this visual idea-which is definitely an idea, and not a product of so-called syntactic research-I placed it in confrontation with a line of Arabic script. One realizes where the connection of this most ingenious microaesthetic invasion into our western lettering structure lies-in the dots-which in Arabic script, are determined by the writing implement. Here are some other examples that I found in Israel. They support my theory

sell it through Emigre. After adding a regular weight, normalizing the spacing, cleaning up the drawings (with Zuzana Licko’s guidance), and changing the name to Keedy Sans, it was finally released on an unsuspecting public in 1991.

I designed Keedy Sans as a “user,” simply based on a vague idea of a typeface that I had not yet seen but wanted to use in my graphic design. Most typefaces are logically systematic; if you see a few letters you can pretty much guess what the rest of the font will look like. I wanted a typeface that would willfully contradict those expectations. It was a typically postmodern strategy for a work to call attention to the flaws and artifice of its own construction. But I never thought of it as being illegible, or even difficult to read. I have never been very interested in pushing the limits of legibility for its own sake. Absolute clarity, or extreme distortion, is too simplistic a goal, and it is ground that has already been well covered. I wanted to explore the complex possibilities that lie somewhere in between and attempt to do something original that certain graphic modifications in typography, or or at least unique. At the lettering, can intensify these mantic quality of time I had been using typography as a means of communication. Conthe American highway versely, the lack of such modifications in normal typography reduces the associative semantic dimension of typography as a means of communication. The famous Coca-Cola trademark looks different in Hebrew-but still awakens an immediate association-because we identify certain essential characteristics of this well-known supersign. We are all abIe to recognize such associations, either

consciously, or, as in the case of the less visually aware, subconsciously. It is completely different with the internationally known concept ‘Police.’

Although this lettering appears on a jeep, we would not be able to decode the Hebrew word for police if the English word was deleted. To us, it could just as well be a military jeep. T he typographic signs in the English version are then without semantic value. A similar situation occurs with the geographical concept ‘Tel Aviv’, which ,when spoken evokes a large number of associations, none of which can be found when looking at this street sign. In order to orientate ourselves in Israel, we need letterforms that are familiar to us. Although they are still in the early stages, here are some

Gothic typeface in my design work that I cut and pasted from a highway signage manual. Another vernacular influence was the “f” from the Fiat logo. But I was not only quoting low vernacular sources; it was important that I mixed in high design sources as well. So I was thinking about Akzidenz-Grotesk Black, which was somewhat exotic in America, because I liked Wolfgang Weingart’s typography.

Overall I wanted a typeface that was similar to Cooper Black, extremely bold with a strong idiosyncratic personality. I think it is a very postmodern typeface in that it included “high” and “low” vernacular quotation, and it is self-consciously crude and anti-aesthetic in reaction to the slickness of Modernism. The initial reaction to Keedy Sans was that it was too idiosyncratic, it was “ugly,” hard to read, and too weird to be very useful. It’s hard to imagine that kind of reaction to a type design today. I guess nobody really cares any more. In 1993, Keedy Sans was still able to cause a bit of controversy among graphic designers, and it was starting to examples of what has resulted from our exercises be a popular typeface for with the semantic dimension and its syntactic music and youth-oriented associations. I will explain the concepts and audiences. Its popularity adjectives that served as semantic goals for each of the respective problems. Shown here are two semantic interpretations of the three letters, TEE, for Trans-European Express. Comfortable sleeping: the round forms represent ‘clouds,’ which are soft and should lead to the association with ‘soft bed.’

The quarter moon supports this idea of ‘bed’ and a ‘night’s sleep,’ through associations with ‘dreaming’

slowly but consistently grew; by 1995 it was starting to look pretty legible and tame compared to other new typefaces on the market. Eventually even the big boys in the corporate world were no longer put off by my typographic antics, and Keedy Sans made its and ‘romantic nights.’ Fast to the destination: the extreme perspective of the capital letters and the movement ‘towards a point’ or ‘towards a goal,’ should help visualize the racing tempo of this long distance, high-speed train. Obviously, these examples do not have much to do with ‘typographic design,’ but they do offer a very good view of the overlap between graphic design and typography, especially with reference to problems that emphasize the semantic. To that extent they function as preliminary design exercises, or as ‘building blocks’ in the design process of a poster or logotype. way into the mainstream world of corporate commercialism by 1997.

Eight years later, it is no longer considered an illegible, weird, deconstructed, or confrontational design. Now it’s just another decorative type style, one among many.

Its willful contradictions are only what is expected in design today. I still think it is an interesting typeface; that’s why it is a shame that now it signifies little more than the banality of novelty. Nowadays that seems to be all a designer

can expect from their work.

Resisting mainstream pop banality is an outdated attitude that only a few designers of my generation worry about anymore.

Now most graphic designers need results fast; formal and conceptual innovations only slow down commercial accessibility. It is hard for a generation raised in a supposedly “alternative” youth culture, which put every kid from Toledo to Tokyo in the same baggy pants and t-shirt, to believe that relevant forms of expression can even exist outside of pop This example illustrates the type of development in our design process. You can see the steps with which we came to the desired result of a semantic interpretation of the concept ‘Bible: Firstly, we set the word ‘Bible’ as it is commonly known. That is, readable, and with the normal letters of our alphabet. Secondly. I’ve considered how we could best interpret this concept visually. We selected one possible interpretation; the ‘classical’ origins of the Bible. Then we considered with which letters of the alphabet it is possible to visually define this speculture. Today’s young designers don’t worry about selling out, or having to work for “the man,” a conceit almost no one can afford anymore. Now everyone wants to be “the man.” What is left of an avant-garde in graphic design

isn’t about resistance, cultural critique, or experimenting with meaning. Now the avant-garde only consists of technological mastery: who is using the coolest bit of code or getting the most out of their HTML this week.

Resistance is not futile; resistance is a very successful advertising strategy. The advertising world co-opted our desire for resistance and has been refining it in pop culture since the 60s.

After the 60s, advertising was never the same. It was the end of the men in the gray flannel suits.

To this day ad agencies are full of middle-aged “creative directors” who talk and dress like twenty year-olds. They exploit an endless supply of new, cutting edge design talent to sell the same

old stuff. By comparison, graphic designers were less successful at using resistance as a vehicle for changing attitudes in their profession in the 80s. That is because most designers did not want anything to challenge their continuity with a design canon they had so recently constructed. The only thing that the design establishment in the 80s was interested in resisting was new ideas.

That is why ultimately the strategies of resistance to Modernist dogma and the critique of the status quo, from the late 80s, only led to what is currently referred to as the ugly, grunge, layered, chaotic, postmodern design of the 90s. Only now there is little opposition and no resistance to what is an empty stylistic cliché. What I

THE FORMATION OF SIGNS AS A SYNTACTIC PROCESS

cific semantic interpretation. Finally, we placed the selected basic letters together to form the new supersign ‘Bible.’ This new word-picture awakens semantic associations with ‘old greek lettering’ or’ classical’ Bible. We attempt to stimulate and secure our ideas through material studies during the design process-that is, to convey the individual idea in a gen-

had hoped would erally understandable form. In the case of the word ‘Athens,’ be an ideologiwe investigated the structure and then the written origins of the cal victory over Greek letterforms. In the typography workshop, we attempt the tyranny of to properly represent the characteristics which we discover, style mongering, with the letters and line material at our devolved into a one-style-fits-all disposal. The steps we have taken in commercial signifier for everysyntactic change, which until now have thing that is youth, alternative, been concerned mostly with complex sports, and entertainment-orienttypographic problems, are also possible ed. The “official style of the hip everything except critical, inforand cool” will probably be with us mative, and qualitative analysis. for some time, as it is easy to do This new cornucopia of type books and little has been done to estabis not the result of a sudden relish any standard of quality. naissance in typography, but the There have never been as many result of the publishing industry’s books published on contempoability to recognize and develop a rary typography as in the past commercial market. They have no few years. Ironically, in spite of all interest in “separating the wheat these new type books, there has from the chaff,” so all this new never been less of a consensus as work has just become “more grist to what is of interest or value in for the publishing mill.” typography. Although these books One of the reasons Jan Tschare fun to look at, you would be ichold went back to traditional hard pressed to find any significenter axis typography was becant discussion, criticism, debate, cause when it was done by less or even explanation in most of skilled designers, he thought it them. They include anything and resulted in less offensive work with single letters. The limits of the posthan when the more demanding sibilities, except for a few examples, are asymmetrical modernist typogdetermined by the extent of the material raphy was poorly done. Unlike in the typography workshop, and the cretraditional or Modernist typograative ability of the individual students. phy, typography To what degree can we change the nature of the letter o? of the postmodAt which point can we still identify it as an o? In other words, what is the most typical visual characteristic necessary for it

ern era has not to be recognized? Can the semantic value of the capital letter up to this point H he changed? In what way does its meaning develop through been clearly ardifferentiation in weight and proportioning of the typographic line ticulated, much material? In this exercise, the process of exploring free ideas is less canonized, given greater emphasis than the conmaking that type of qualitative scious utilization and application of these judgment difficult at best. This discovered typo-signs as trademarks or situation has led some designers to simply dismissing it all as garbage. ism, but that does not mean that Even though the current pubour values and ideals, or the lack lishing craze may be helpful as of them, have to be dictated by self-promotion for a few designers the commercial marketplace. Just and a design aid for the creatively because thinking about design challenged, it may have done isn’t a popular activity doesn’t more damage than good to the mean it isn’t an important one. promotion of typography as a soGraphic designers love new phisticated or discriminating craft. things, and new things love Fortunately, on a much smaller graphic designers - like fire loves scale, some critical and historical wood. Graphic designers loved ideas are still being disseminated, the new international corporate in spite of the smaller financial reculture. But it was the advertising wards. Some design history, critiindustry that ultimately won the cism and theory has managed to partnership with multi-national get published in recent years, but corporations. Then graphic decompared to the picture books, signers loved the new desktop graphic designers aren’t buying it. publishing. But it took away a lot The practice of graphic design of our low end projects, gave us has from the beginning been the additional responsibility of intertwined with pop commercialtypesetting and pre-press, shortened our deadlines, and ultimately reduced our fees. Now graphic delogotypes. Despite the lack of a given signers love the new Internet. But specific problem, the student can clearly maybe this time we should stop see the connection of typography to and ask: “Does the Internet love graphic design. graphic design?”

HOW DOES BASLE DIFFER

FROM

In case you sometimes have the impression that we work in a bit of a vacuum, I would like to show you what working in a vacuum really means. In all of our work we are conscious that we have an empty space, a vacuum, which we must fill with typographic elements. For both myself and my students, I would say that the fascination of typography lies in its ability to transform a silent, unprinted piece of paper, with the aid of rigid signs, into a dynamic form of communication. I have already spoken to you many times about ‘Swiss Typography’ in relation to our ,York in Basle. But there are many different schools in Switzerland, each with very different concepts of typography.

In reply, I would like to show you some more typical examples of ‘Swiss Typography:’ five designs from Emil Ruder and his students. The main criterion for the form of typographic design is ‘readability: It is the dominant factor in the selection and optical organization of the typographic signs, The ‘message’ to be communicated is not intensified through the use of additional syntactic or semantic material. To question the motive behind such an attitude towards typography, is to question the attitude towards communication in general. For a long time there has been a tendency in ‘Swiss Typography’ to deliver a message in a ‘value-free’ manner. ‘Value-free’ means to present a message simply, and not to equip it with additional visual characteristics to heighten its semantic and persuasive effectiveness. Here the

Perhaps the Internet will simply co-opt graphic design, incorporating it into its operating system.

Maybe graphic design will cease to exist as a discreet practice and just become another set of options on the menu. Or is graphic design just a lubricant that keeps everything on the info highway moving - are we just greasing the wheels of capitalism with style and taste? If graphic designers play a major role in building the bridge to the twenty-first century, will they be recognized for their outstanding efforts? Do you remember typesetters?

ethics of the designer are very much involved. Without bringing ethics into question, we can say that this ‘valuefree’ attitude towards a ‘message’ is only one of many.

However, even the most objective information, with the most sober visual presentation, still connects the receiver with personal values.

This idea, contained in ‘Swiss Typography’ and striven for in Switzerland and other countries-of pure functional organization, with its grid, unified typeface, type size, and semantic restraint-is a vain wish. It can only be one part of the complex function that distinguishes typography as a means of communication. The human being has more than just technical and economic

OTHER SCHOOLS? both its domestic and foreign policy, Switzerland is an extremely stable country. In a positive sense, peace and order prevail and a respect for people who think differently is still guaranteed. For the individual, that means the freedom needs. He has very differentiated psychological needs, espeto work uninterruptedly on cially in those areas that have to do with culture and aesthetics. his or her own projects.

That is, those areas which we call ‘design.’ This is a socialAfter having recognized the psychological platitude from which advertising, with intellisimilarities to other schools, gent ideas, lively texts and visualizations, has already profited I would now like to discuss greatly. (This was very amusingly formulated as well as ideally the differences. You can see practiced by the grand advertising philosopher, Howard Luck from the examples of work Gossage.) Of course these are only some examples from an which I’ve shown you from abundance of other designs with which I could have illustrated my students and myself that the concept of ‘Swiss Typography: In contrast, these designs we consciously emphasize from the Basle advertising agency GGK, show how something the syntactic possibilities in can look when one tries to make interesting typography from typography. Occasionally, cold and objective subject matter. These last two examples you have probably thought show clearly that ‘Swiss Typography; at least in Switzerland, that this is harmful to the is in a state of radical change. Or differently stated today, in readability of a text. But I Switzerland at least, no one knows anymore what the specialists actually mean when they bestow the honorable predicate ‘Swiss Typography: Returning to the actual question: How does my concept of typography and typography instruction differ from other such concepts in Swiss schools? Basically, these concepts do not differ. Good or bad, we are all building on the classical ‘Swiss Typography.’ We completely accept the Graphic design’s ephemfundamental principles of the purity and precision of typoeral nature has practigraphical material, its logical and disciplined structure, and the cally disqualified it from meaning of the white space in a design. We are all sure that serious consideration these ‘values’ will never be false. as an important cultural Perhaps the reason for this is that Switzerland offers every practice. For most nonperson working creatively very special conditions, which for designers, historical these people means something like a unified ‘fertile base .’ In graphic design is valued as nostalgic ephemera, while contemporary design is viewed as sometimes amusing, but mostly annoying, advertising. Graphic design is not generally accepted as having the cultural significance of other less ephemeral forms of design

like architecture, industrial design, and even fashion. This is due largely to its short life-span and its disposable ubiquity. Will the even more ephemeral and ubiquitous media of film titles, television graphics, and the Internet create greater awareness and respect for graphic design, or will such familiarity only breed contempt?

New media is a practical embodiment of the theoretical paradigm established by poststructuralism.

It was an idea about language, communication and meaning before it was ever a technology. But now it seems that the technology has eclipsed its raison d’etre and it exists outside of any theoretical critique. The often quoted cliché is that the new media requires new rules and the old assumptions do not apply, even though somehow the old consumers do.

Curiously, the new media has not yet developed a new theoretical paradigm, or even a new lexicon, to comprehend this ideological shift. Ironically, the new buzzword is a familiar old standby from grammar school art classes - it’s all a matter of “intuition.”

Although intuition is a satisfactory explanation for a five-year-old’s crayon abstractions, it’s a bit weak for describing the computer-graphic-multinationalimperialism that is reshaping our global culture.

Intuition is a generic term for a perceptive insight that is arrived at without using a rational process. It is a way of saying “educated guess” without defining the education of the “guesser.” That one’s source of inspiration could be unknowable, or at least inde-

think that the relatively high stimulus of such a text is adequate compensation for low readability. What good is readability when nothing in the text attracts one to even read it? Naturally this attitude leads to continued attempts to break away from trusted design patterns. We attempt to test experimentally the semantic and syntactic possibilities of typography, and to break through its ideological borders by consciously ignoring the traditional limits and recipes for typographic design. Also, we try to remain blind to the gags and trends of the international advertising and design scene. With my definition of ‘school,’ I have attempted to explain why we are so logical and sometimes a bit too self-conscious in our work. It would be unfair to present our school and its typography teaching methods only in a positive light. We also have ideas about how we can better reach our teaching goals through improved didactic means. One of the problems is our almost exclusive occupation with syntactic and semantic design problems in typography. But this is only an outward expression of something completely

scribable, after the death of the author, and at the end of history, is understandable in these postmodern times. But the unwillingness of graphic designers to recognize their indebtedness to history, education, and their peers is not. At this juncture in its history, graphic design practice needs a more rigorous and responsible discourse. Maybe we should leave “instincts” and “intuition” to our furry friends; then we could reinstate history, education and current practice as our center for critical reflection, discourse, and inspiration.

Theoretical and conceptual discourse in graphic design has always been a bit naive compared to older more established cultural practices. For example, all designers have been, and continue to be taught, the history of type design in terms of the five families of type: Oldstyle, Transitional, Modern, Egyptian, and Contemporary. This nineteenth century terminology devised by type founders is completely out of sync with period classifications used in the humanities.

As such, it disconnects type design from our general cultural history. Given this type of foundation, it should come as no surprise that contemporary design discourse is also out of sync with that of architecture, literature, and art.

Graphic designers are caught up in a media stream that is very wide and fast, but not very deep. The only way to navigate in it is to go faster or slower than the stream. To go faster you must be at the forefront of technology and fashion, both of which

different. That is, the real problem of the meaning of a text. In my opinion one cannot make really good typography without exact knowledge and precise understanding of a text. The study of the meaning of texts, through special and theoretical lectures , seminars, and exercises, is completely missing in our programs. Our action-radius of typographic design’ is quite small within a theoretical model for a communications process.

As you can see from my self-critical remarks , we are aware of the deficiencies at our school. The attempt to

remedy this situation has been frustrated by many problems. Firstly, by the organization and institutional structure of our school. Secondly, by the very limited time at our disposal to cover the various areas of our typography program. And finally, the entire problem is embedded in the general social process of changing consciousness and the new order of social and cultural values. Thus, we are again confronted with the questions of the definition and goals of ‘school,’ and with the value and nature of typography.

WHAT SHOULD THE CORRECT TYPOGRAPHY EDUCATION CONTAIN What should an ideal design school be like? And with reference to my own field of activity, what should a ‘correct’ typography education consist of? Perhaps I can outline a definition of the goals that the typography course must fulfill. Basically, I see three categories: 1. The value of typography within the most diversified communication processes, and its efficiency as a means of communication, must be redefined. Such a redefinition would be an attempt to expand the meaning and range of the concept ‘typography.’

2. In the future, new information technology and changing forms of communication will obviously require additional new typographic standards in relation to the syntactic and semantic. The substance of typography must change, along with the information it has to convey, and the general cultural scene in which it must function.

3. Finally, although it may be a subjective and perhaps provocative statement to make, I feel strongly that this new typography must also-and I emphasize also-be the result of a very personal thought process in design. By that I mean those efforts based upon individuality, imagination and artistic qualities.

In the second half of this century, as in the first, I’ve need personalities who can influence the development of typography through their personal contributions. From the simplified goals I have outlined above, one can begin to see possibilities for change in the educational system. Certainly in the future, a study of typography must include a study of the meaning of ’text.’ If we want to

are changing at an unprecedented rate. To go slower you need an understanding of context through history and theory.

Graphic designers are predisposed to going faster or slower according to their experience and inclination, but mostly they are getting swept along in the currents of pop mediocrity.

How we communicate says a lot about who we are. Looking at much of today’s graphic design one would have to conclude that graphic designers are twelveyear-olds with an attention deficit disorder. Designers today are representing our present era as if they were using a kaleidoscope to do it. Or more precisely, a constantly mutating digital collage machine, filled with a bunch of old “sampled” parts from the past, and decorated with special effects. Ultimately what we are left with is a feeling of aggravated and ironic nostalgia. This electronic Deja-vu-doo is getting old, again.

Maybe now it is time to dive below all the hype and sound bites of the advertising industries media stream, where graphic designers can have the autonomy to set their own course, even if it means swimming against the current now and then. Postmodernism isn’t a

style; it’s an idea about the time we are living in, a time that is full of complexities, contradictions, and possibilities. It is an unwieldy and troublesome paradigm. However, I still think it is preferable to the reassuring limitations of Modernism.

Unfortunately most graphic designers are currently not up to the challenge. A few postmodern ideas like deconstruction, multiculturalism, complexity, pastiche, build upon the theme of ‘text,’ and expand in the direction of conceptual ,work and communications planned, we will need input from new fields such as: sociology, communications theory, semantics, semiotics, computers, and planning methods.

Furthermore-as experience has shown in the more advanced schools- we need flexible technicians who are capable of combining specialized knowledge with an understanding of design problems.

But first and foremost, we need schools in which such challenges can be instigated and realized. I know that these challenges are not new, but I place them here at the end of my statement because they are derived from personal experiences within my typography course. My own work and that of my students, as a typographic development process, can only logically progress, when, with the aid of our acquired experiences and knowledge, we can

and critical theory could be useful to graphic designers if they could get beyond thinking about their work in terms of formal categories, technology, and media. reform both the educational system and its teaching methods. Concepts   In the postmodern era, as information architects, media directors, of typography, such as those we are trying to develop in Basle, contain design consultants, editor/authors, and design entrepreneurs, we more than simply the expansion of the syntactic and semantic vocabularhave been chasing after the new and the next to sustain excitement ies. We do not want to produce a kind of ‘ design cream’ to be skimmed and assert our growing relevance in the world. But inevitably the cutoff by the agencies and studios. We attempt to educate human beings ting edge will get dull, and the next wave will be like all the previous who can, with imagination and intelligence, make responsible typographwaves, and even the new media will become the old media. Then the

ic contributions to the formation of the environment, especially the future

only thing left will be the graphic design, and what and why we think

environment, whose problems are already becoming evident.

about it.

In continuum .......