Typography Timeline (Typography II)

TYPOLOGICAL ACCESS, The State of Typography from the Industrial Revolution to the Twenty-First Century

Not Just An Akzidenz

W.R. Martin Company rotary press, 1928.

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Introduction Businesses have always

made customers their focus. Prior to the nineteenth century, businesses had a more personal connection with their customers due technology limiting businesses to only localized regions. Thus businesses had to focus on pleasing the needs of the customer. Although type foundries were the sole source for typeface design, they were still reliant on pleasing local printers. The technology of ninetieth century Industrial Revolution gave businesses the products and the means to interact with customers internationally. During the Industrial Revolution, while type foundries remained the sole proprietor of typefaces, they gained the ability to choose new locations and target printers. The Industrial Revolution took power out of the customers’ hands. Online technology of the twentieth and twenty-first century Digital Age led to a variety of typefaces being available to customers. Likewise customers came to expect the ability to have access to and chose from a diverse range of typefaces. The twentieth century technology redirected type foundWhile the Industrial ries’ attention to the customer’s ability to choose. Thus the Digital Revolution of the Age dwindled the power out of nineteenth to twentieth type foundries’ hands.

century involved the rapid

spread of typefaces internationally, the Digital Age of the twentieth to twenty-first century led to the decentralization and accessibility of typefaces for the individual.

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THE HISTORIC

Baseline T he mass production of the Industrial Revolution brought about the need for poster advertising at an unprecedented level. Businesses needed their advertising posters to be read at a distance, thus business sought highly competitive typefaces that were bold and loud. The new demands of advertising inspired the creation of the typeface Egyptian Slab in Britain (Annand 103). Egyptian Slab letterforms evolved from fat-face types to be comprised of thick stems and thinner serif weights (97). While the san serif took predominance in the twentieth century, san serifs actually started appearing in the nineteenth century. William Caslon IV is credited with the creating the first sans serif printing typeface in 1816 (Alessio). Caslon’s typeface contained only capitals and was called Egyptian (despite early slab serifs also being marketed as Egyptians). However, in addition to Egyptian, the names used for the early san serif typefaces also included Gothic, Grotesque and Antique (Stock-Allen). The Egyptian name was likely attached to slab serif type around the Egyptian craze of the 1830’s, when the Egyptian artifacts from Napoleonic conquest were sweeping the western world.

Advertising for Oxbridge Fair 1878.

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Much like Egyptian Slab typefaces, san serifs before World War II were iniappeared in 1815 with the Antique typetially based on classical face by Vincent Figgins. By 1821, Six Pica proportions. In 1913, Egyptian, with its strong square strokes, the Underground Electric became a standard display typeface. Railways Company of London commissioned Edward Johnston for their transportation system. Similar to the Egyptian Slab typefaces, the Johnston typeface designs focused on legibility at a distance, thus the letterforms were based on the proportions of the capitals of the Trajan Columns. Humanist typefaces have a more organic san serif structure. Analogous to Egyptian Slab letterforms, the humanistic san serif Johnston contains line strokes of varied width, based on Johnston’s calligraphic skills. Just prior to World War II, designers began to use modernism and the avant garde to experiment with san serifs. By the 1920’s Paul Renner had been influenced by the Bauhaus (Stock-Allen). He sought to devise an alphabet with geometric shapes and lines and thus created the typeface Futura. Unlike Egyptian Slab and Clarendon typefaces, Geometric typefaces are based on geometric shapes. After World War II, the design of san serifs were based on a harmonious gray line. In contrast to the disharmony of Egyptian Slab and Clarendon typefaces, these san serif letterforms when placed in a row aligned to a harmonious gray line. Adrian Frutiger crafted the Univers typeface based on geometry, but with such complexity and organic qualities that allowed for a smoother fit on the line.

The Egyptian Slab typefaces first

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A TYPE OF

Reaction Artistic movements that reacted to impacted typeface design of the nineteenth century to twentieth century. The Industrial Revolution began in Britain and led to the production of shoddy mass-produced consumer goods (Harskamp). Traditionally manual workers learned their trade

George W. Jones, Dorothy decorative caps.

by progression through apprenticeship under a craftsman. However,the critical eye and skill of the craftsman was sacrificed for speed, lower cost, and inferior products (Stock-Allen). Likewise, type and graphic design also went into decline during the Industrial Revolution. The Arts and Crafts Movement, a loosely linked group of artisans, craftsmen, architects, and designers; sought to elevate the applied arts in a revolt against Victorian tastes and industrial manufactures. While the movement began in the late 1800s in England, the movement spread to the United States in the early 1900s. Medieval designs provided a model for the Arts and Crafts Movement’s craft production and type design. William Morris was a prominent figure in the Arts and Crafts movement. Morris was particularly influenced by the early Roman letterforms of French designer Nicholas Jenson.

The typefaces of Arts and Crafts and Art Nouveau movements both sought to reconcile the decrease of craftsmanship during the Industrial Revolution. 8

The Ideal Book by William Morris.

Morris photographed and enlarged Jenson’s letterforms in order to use them as a structural basis for his Golden Type. Similar to the Arts and Crafts Movement, Art Nouveau was an art movement that existed from the late nineteenth until the early twentieth century (Barnhart). Although Art Nouveau means “new art”, much like the Arts and Crafts movement, it borrowed elements from medieval manuscripts and Persian pottery. The Art Nouveau style had a significant impact on graphic design, specifically posters; which allowed for a greater accessibility of the art movement to the general public. The curved linear patterns found in the posters were a hallmark of the Art Nouveau style and the typography served an integral part of the design. The Art Nouveau style was inspired by the curved lines of organic shapes and had a calligraphic look. Art Nouveau typography often contained letters that were elongated and embellished.

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MORE THAN

Justified Artistic movements that reacted to the World

Wars, impacted the typeface design of the twentieth century. World War I, from 1914-1918, killed two million Germans and left Germany’s large economy in shambles (Davis). By 1918, the German Empire had become the German Republic, although turmoil between political parties and police still persisted. Thus the cooperative aspects of artisans and utilitarianism approach to design make sense in the context of war and revolution. Similar to Arts and Crafts and Art Nouveau Movements, the Bauhaus art school in Germany sought to bridge the gap between art and industry (Stock-Allen). While Arts and Crafts and Art Nouveau celebrated the countryside and fought against mass production, the Bauhaus embraced the urban landscape and industrial process. Although Arts and Crafts and Art Nouveau Movements were influenced by medieval design, the Modern Style’s visual reduction had erased links to historical traditions and avoided any references to culture or geography. After an extensive Pop Art exhibition at the Sidney Janis Gallery in New York in 1962, was seen as the end of modernism and the beginning of the postmodern era. In contrast to the Arts and Crafts Movement, Postmodernism embraced deskilled means of making artwork and focused more on the concept. The freedom of the Postmodern art movement aligned with the digital freedom of electronic type. Postmodernist typograWhereas the industrial phers started a movement where the designer’s hand mechanization brought was more prominent in out ideals of organic line each letter (Righthand).

and craft in the Arts and

Crafts Movement, war mechanization created ideals of simplicity and free thought.

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Herbert Bayer design for a poster, 1923.

April Greiman ‘Does it Make sense?’

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Type set on a Vandercook press.

Slab serif wood type.

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PRESSING

Matters Letterpress and Lithograph technology were pre-

dominant means of printing from the nineteenth to twentieth century. William Morris succeeded in establishing a profitable private press, which led to the creation of a breadth of private presses throughout England and Europe (Harskamp). The peak of the ‘private press movement’ took place during the late nineteenth to early twentieth century. Letterpress printing was a relief method where a raised surface prints onto a material (Dodd 154). Many kinds of raised surfaces were used, such as metal, wood, zinc and halftone, plastic, and rubber blocks. Letterpress was excellent at printing text and offered a chance for corrections late in the process (155). However, Letterpress needed high-quality paper to Lithography allowed for all sorts of print half-toned photographs correctly. In addition, the curves and formatives in typefaces thin lines of metal letterpress that metal type of Letterpress could images required light type not replicate. faces (Stock-Allen). Alois Senefielder invented lithogaphy in the late 18th century (Dodd 154). Lithography was a planographic method that used virtually flat surface to print onto a material. Lithography used a “water loving” substance to create the negative space of the image thus when water and an oil-based ink are applied, the ink only adheres to the positive space (Stock-Allen). Offset Lithography used thin aluminum plates (Dodd 154). Offset Lithography was able to print half-tone photographs on less expensive paper than Letterpress (155). Although lithography initially was more expensive than letterpress, by the end of the 1960s, new photochemical procedures for plates and new varieties of paper brought greater precision and better economic results. Lithography allowed for all sorts of curves and formatives in typefaces that metal type of Letterpress. Offset Lithography and Phototypesetting both gave greater freedom and refinement of typological design than Letterpress (168).

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Apple IIc and ImageWriter.

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LIVE AND Kern Phototypesetting was a printing method where type existed on photographic images and was exposed to paper or film (Baines 103). The final generation of Phototypesetting was introduced in 1966 with the Digitset, the first true digital system. Amazingly, the Digitset could image 1000 characters

Time line of printing technology.

per second. With Lithography and Phototypesetting, manipulation of type was no longer limited to the heavy and clunky Letterpress (Dodd 168). Since Lithography and Phototypesetting both lacked metal type, these methods allowed for tracking, kerning, and space between words and letters. In 1984, Apple computers introduced the Macintosh computer. In 1985, Apple joined Adobe and Aldus companies to produce a personal laser printer. Thus, in contrast to Letterpress, with Lithography and Phototypesetting any individual could print type. Unlike Letterpress, electronic type doesn’t exist as a physical type, just data stored in the computer’s memory (Baines 109).

While the original Egyptian Slab and Clarendon typefaces were limited to private printers, the late twentieth century electronic typefaces could possibly be owned and printed by any individual.

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Colophon Designer:

Mark Delboy

Project:

Typographers Timeline Book

Course:

Typography 2

Faculty:

Francheska Guerrero

School:

Corcoran School of Arts and Design, George Washington University

Typefaces:

News Gothic, Egyptienne

Photography: APH for the Blind Crystal Vaughan Designosopher Hewlett-Packard Lawrence Wallis NEMO-Erfgoedcollectie Simon Goode Simon Ellis Southern California Institute of Architecture Texturez

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WORKS

Cited Alessio, Joseph. “Making Sense Of Type Classification (Part 2).” Smashing Magazine. N.p., 19 June 2013. Web. 14 Jan. 2015. Annand, Carolyn, Philip B. Meggs, Roy McKelvey, and Ben Day. Revival of the Fittest: Digital Versions of Classic Typefaces. New York: RC Publications, 2000. Print. Baines, Phil, and Andrew Haslam. Type & Typography. New York: Watson Guptill Media, 2005. Print. Barnhart, Debra, and Kaci Lane Hindman. “What Are the Characteristics of Art Nouveau Typography?” WiseGeek. Conjecture, 04 Jan. 2015. Web. 18 Jan. 2015. Boardley, John. “A Brief History of Type-Part 5.” I Love Typography RSS. N.p., 20 June 2008. Web. 17 Jan. 2015. Davis, Ben. “The Bauhaus and the Contradictions of Artistic Utopia Artnet Magazine.” Artnet. Artnet Worldwide Corporation. n.d. Web. 19 Jan. 2015 Dodd, Robin. From Gutenberg to Opentype: An Illustrated History of Type from the Earliest Letterforms to the Latest Digital Fonts. Vancouver: Hartley & Marks, 2006. Print. Gambino, Megan. “Ask an Expert: What Is the Difference Between Modern and Postmodern Art?” Smithsonian Mag. Smithsonian, 22 Sept. 2011. Web. 19 Jan. 2015. Harskamp, Jaap. “A Pocket Cathedral — I Love Typography.” I Love Typography RSS. N.p., 09 May 2012. Web. 18 Jan. 2015. Righthand, Jess. “Postmodernism’s New Typography.” Smithsonian. Smithsonian.com, 20 Dec. 2010. Web. 17 Jan. 2015. Stock-Allen, Nancy. “An Introduction to the History of Graphic Design.” An Introduction to the History of Graphic Design. N.p., n.d. Web. 17 Jan. 2015.

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