Week 10: Lecture – Typography
This week’s lecture will introduce typography. We will explore examples of type design and applications of type. We shall compare and contrast hand and machine, structure and hierarchy, tension and space, tone of voice and more.
We will also explore the appropriateness of how form and material contribute to the overall message.
1. Type and Press
868 – The Diamond Sutra, the world’s oldest known printed book was ‘made’.
1455 – Gutenberg printed his first book, a Latin Bible.
1475 – Englishman William Caxton produced the first book printed in English, The Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye.
‘If you wanted to make a book, you had to do it yourself’
Before printing, books were laboriously hand written by scribes and monks, so any book around was probably the Bible, that’s even the case with the first printed book.
In 1455 the printing press as we know it was invented by adapting existing technologies to create a way of printing with moveable type, drastically reducing the cost of producing books and other documents. Moveable type meant that printers could quickly produce different documents by re-using existing individual characters to compose new texts.
More commonly used letters were placed close together in the case making the compositor more efficient by keeping them in-reach.
Image: Letters in a composing stick.
Above: A pair of printers’ cases, used to hold the individual metal characters.
Below: Example of an early printing press
Technology progressed by working out ways to make printing faster, cheaper and easier.
The next leap forward was the invention of the Linotype machine. This was a system which injected molten lead into a mould to produce what was called a ‘slug’, the text was controlled via a keyboard or by a paper tape system. This meant that instead of composing text letter by letter, printers could use the Linotype system to produce type one line at a time, hence the name Linotype (a line o’type).
This became the standard technology for mass-market printing, newspapers for example, until the 1950’s with the arrival of phototypesetting (below).
This new development worked by projecting light through a film which showed the characters of your chosen typeface through a lens so that it could be magnified or reduced in size to allow much greater flexibility. It had many advantages over metal type, one being that there was no need to keep a huge library or stock of metal type and another was that there was a much greater range of fonts easily available.
By the 1980’s the transition to computers for typesetting started to appear.
Initially the computers were used to create the data used to drive the phototypesetting machines, software was later developed to interface between personal computers and the phototypesetting machines finally bringing us to desktop publishing.
2. Type and Design
With smartphones, tablets, laptops and computers and a plethora of DIY-design software in every home. Whether it’s for making a poster for your lost cat or designing the blog for your MA course, type and design is available to pretty-much anyone who needs to use it.
Type and design, or the art and technique of arranging type, before the digital age was a highly-skilled occupation but since then the use of their principals and practice from generations of skilled workers and professionals has diminished. The design of typefaces was to create readable, coherent and clear text which worked ‘invisibly’, with minimum distraction to the reader.
Traditionally these Roman, or Serif, typefaces were considered the best for clarity an so were the most commonly used.
Right: A specimen sheet by William Caslon shows printed examples of Roman typefaces.
Changes – a new look
Typefaces such as Breite Grotesque, an early example of a sans serif typeface from the late 1800’s, show a very radical change from the more typical styles of that time, this typeface would later influence other designers such as Edward Johnston and Eric Gill.
The Johnstone Sans typeface. Created exclusively for the London Underground and probably the most ignored typeface in the world, was a big influence on Eric Gill’s typeface ‘Gill Sans’, which was made to be widely available.
The Gill Sans lower case ‘g’ – a particular favourite of mine…
Type as art
In the early 1900’s, art movements such as the Dadaists started to use type in different ways to the norm. The start of the movement was around the time of the outbreak of WWI, they saw their movement as a way of protesting against what they saw as the cause of the War.
A Bonset sound-poem, “Passing troop”, 1916
Dadaglobe solicitation form letter signed by Francis Picabia, Tristan Tzara, Georges Ribemont-Dessaignes, and Walter Serner, c. week of November 8, 1920
Francis Picabia, Dame! Illustration for the cover of the periodical Dadaphone, n. 7, Paris, March 1920
Artists in the movement started to experiment with type using different techniques like collage or photomontage. One artist, Tristan Tzara describes a way of using type as collage to make your own Dadaist poem, published in their manifesto:
To Make A Dadaist Poem:
- Take a newspaper.
- Take some scissors.
- Choose from this paper an article of the length you want to make your poem.
- Cut out the article.
- Next carefully cut out each of the words that makes up this article and put them all in a bag.
- Shake gently.
- Next take out each cutting one after the other.
- Copy conscientiously in the order in which they left the bag.
- The poem will resemble you.
And there you are – an infinitely original author of charming sensibility, even though unappreciated by the vulgar herd.
Choosing the closest text on my desk, I had a go…
Title: Tax Payer Reference
The Bauhaus
Another source we recognise it the Bauhaus art school in Germany, 1919 to 1933, and it’s influence on artists and designers. After the school was closed down in 1933, some of its members are forced to leave Germany and go to Switzerland where a new, more refined and systematic approach to designing with type develops. ‘Swiss’ now known as style of typography (also known as the International Typographic Style), using strict grid systems is in complete contrast to the style of the Dadaists.
Examples of the International Typographic Style from the 1930’s – 1960’s
Titlepage for Typographische Gestaltung written and designed by Jan Tschichold, 1932.
Poster by Carlo Vivarelli, 1949.
A poster by Armin Hofmann, 1959.
Wim Crouwel, Vormgevers exhibition, Stedelijk Museum poster, 1968.
In pushing the boundaries of communication, and testing ‘dis-information’ we’re starting to see styles of graphic design and typography which are familiar to us today and with the combination of this aesthetic, desktop publishing and digital technology the possibilities for graphic designer are pretty-much infinite.
Type favourites
There’s an endless list of influential designers practicing today and it would be a huge task to cover all the developments in styles and fashion up to today. I’ve chosen to show examples from designers and publications I’ve been influenced by whilst working in graphic design, picking a favourite would depend what I’m reading, what I’m listening to and what day it might be…
Peter Saville
Education: Manchester Polytechnic.
Co-founder of Factory Recored in 1978 after he was commissioned to design their first poster, it was late. Whilst there he designed some of the most recognisable album covers for the bands Joy Division and New Order.
In 1983 he formed the design agency Peter Saville Associates in partnership with Brett Wickens with music industry clients such as Roxy Music, Ultravox, Peter Gabriel and New Order. Clients outside the music industry were the Whitechapel Art Gallery, the Pompidou Centre, and the French Ministry of Culture. Fashion clients includined Yohji Yamamoto, Martine Sitbon and Jil Sander.
He still works for high-profile brands around the world.
Paula Scher
Education: Tyler School of Art and Architecture (1970).
Her first job was as a layout artist for Random House’s children’s books in New York City. Now a partner in the New York office of Pentagram since 1991.
Her approach to typography is highly influential, her landmark identity for The Public Theatre in New York became a turning point in identity design. Her graphic identities for Citibank and Tiffany & Co. have become case studies for the contemporary regeneration of American brands.
Chris Ashworth
Education: York College of Arts & Technology (1990)
Leaving art school, he set up a design studio called Orange with some friends, where they created black and white photocopiable flyers for local nightclubs.
Art director of the magazine Ray Gun in 1997 as well as lifestyle monthly Blah Blah Blah, a joint venture between MTV Europe and American Ray Gun Publishing in 1996.
Inspired by Swiss design, describing his own style as “Swiss grit”.
David Carson
Education: Oregon College of Commercial Art
Best known for his magazine design and use of experimental typography. He was the art director for the magazine Ray Gun, his designs tripled the magazine’s circulation. In the spirit of the magazine, he published a tedious interview with Bryan Ferry in Zapf Dingbats, a font made only of symbols. Carson left Ray Gun and started his own studio with a host of major corporate clients: Nike, Pepsi Cola, Ray Bans, Levi Strauss and MTV Global among others.
He is claimed to be the godfather of ‘grunge typography’.
Week 10: Workshop Challenge
Take an excerpt from a national poet or writer and translate into a new typographic form;
- Take the first line – draw it, typeset it, build it;
- Then take the body of the text and typeset it.
- How does leading, positioning, stresses on particular words and detailing affect the power of the piece?
- How is meaning affected by interpretation in a tangible way?
- What is the relationship of the page?
Poem: Dulce et Decorum est
By Wilfred Owen
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.
Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime.—
Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.
Setting the tone
The call-up, the tone of encouragement to ‘do you duty’. The latin in the poem translates to: “It is sweet and proper to die for one’s country”.
I want to avoid the flag-waving, triumphant ‘come on boys’ message of the call-up posters and the mood of monuments such as the Cenotaph, this isn’t because of any political or moralistic feelings towards that glorification of those who die in wars but simply to illustrate a poem by a man who experienced events first-hand, written to tell the reality of the front line. I want to show that part with just type and layout.
Take the first line
This has to be a piece away from the setting of the whole poem, to illustrate a meaning to just the first line can only separate it from the body of the poem if they are shown together.
“Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,”
Remove all punctuation; mindless, unfeeling.
Line one.
Set to show the mindless monotony of just getting from A to B. The soldiers are putting one foot in front of the other with no regard for any surroundings.
It’s a square with the type forced full-width and full-height, no punctuation, no caps, just how it is…
The body of the text
Two approaches, either:
- as simple as possible: same sizes, same font, same colour
- use varying sizes and weights for emphasis
Message needs to stay simple in terms of where to start and where it ends – varying sizes and weights will but more emphasis on single words or lines.
Start top left, finish bottom right: gives a natural flow for the reader.
Decision is the lighter setting: same sizes and weights, same feelings from the single line. It gives a detached, more matter of fact message. Just move the type.
Trials:
- Positions
- Typeface
- Colour
Positions: Spread verses across the page – initially kept the space between verses fairly constant but later felt the the space between the relative calm of the first section and the sudden panic from the gas attack should be as large as possible without spoiling things. Larger blank spaces put more time between the events.
Typeface: Avoided type which could be seen as following the ‘glorification’ of events. The poem does not do that.
Colour: Avoided colour – saw it as an unnecessary decorative detail.
Chosen layout
Detail:
Type positioning helps to add meaning, spaces show relative calm where nothing new is happening
Adding the date of the event gives it something for the reader to relate to, some context
The shock of the attack. Tension between ‘Gas!’ and ‘GAS!’ as the danger is realised, followed by panic as the solders struggle to get their masks on in time, slowly coming under control. There’s no effect when they see the ‘drowning’ man, looking, detached, ‘glad it wasn’t me’.
Back to the matter-of-fact. Carrying on in the same vain as the first verse.
Cross out the ‘Lie’. “It is sweet and proper to die for ones country”, there is no glory there.
Application
To give further meaning to the piece, engrave it as a monument. Not to oppose the ones celebrated, but to give it the same emphasis and context.
This was given a project feature on Creativepool
Reflection
Whilst developing the layout, I had an idea in my head of not wanting to show anything unless it was absolutely necessary, it was quite a task to pin down how that was going to work, I didn’t want to alter the scale of the words, it would just bring more attention to some areas over others. Giving meaning to the empty spaces of the layout was the main leap forward in getting the layout right, I’d been trying to space sections out logically but it wasn’t looking right.
Once the idea of using the space came, I could force the type apart at the second verse and use it to create the tension I was looking for.
A really enjoyable piece this week, despite it’s sombre tone. Using type as a way of emphasising a message it a fantastic way to try and create a mood for the reader and war poetry especially, fits perfectly.
