Typography: A Manual of Design

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The book has changed my views about typography in various ways and i totally agree with the author's statements like "Typography has one plain duty before it and that is to convey information in writing. No argument or consideration can absolve typography from this duty.". WW: For me technology is the ultimate challenge: it’s both a partner and a friend. But I’ll never be completely under its control, because I know how to do things by hand, how to draw. If you know about only the technical side, you’ll never produce a complete design. For me, the B4 format [90.5 x 128cm] posters were a technical highpoint, and also a kind of summing up of my creative activity, confirming my feeling that each thing made is an important element of a whole, that different aspects of my work are interlinked. Over the years, I’ve been able to apply the collage technique I learned in the 1970s to film montage. I work out every visual and technical detail for the printer, from the design concept to the final artwork – the screen nuances and structures, line elements, surfaces. These recurrent visual elements have now become something of a trademark. The lithographic half-tone dot, which I saw as a new, self-contained graphic element, has possibly become part of my personal image. In 1927 the German foundry D. Stempel GmbH acquired a partial interest in the Haas Type Foundry. This is one of two reasons that Eduard Hoffmann turned to Stempel in 1959 to broaden the sales of his new sans serif. More importantly, Stempel made the first matrices for Mergenthaler-Setzmaschinen-Fabrik GmbH (the German Linotype company) [2] in 1900 and subsequently became half-owned by the latter. It was this relationship that Hoffmann had in mind, because adapting Neue Haas Grotesk for the linotype was the best way to spread the design.

Helvetica is, by all accounts, a typographic celebrity. But how did it get there…and why didn’t Univers get the spotlight instead? Staatliches Bauhaus commonly known as Bauhaus was a school in Germany which operated from 1919 to 1933 that combined crafts and the fine arts, and was known for the approach to design that it publicized and taught. The Bauhaus school was founded by Walter Gropius in Weimar. It had a intense influence upon subsequent developments in art, architecture, graphic design, interior design, industrial design, and typography. Besides, even reproductive design is a necessary step in the process of human development, for it gives rise to new creativity. The problem with design today is that it often has little to do with content. It’s more about the designer’s ego, full of references only the initiated can understand. The general public doesn’t get the information. Because of this, I find myself in an incredible state of conflict. I’m not designing any more. Swiss designers chose to repeat simple shapes to create structure and highlight certain design elements. Sometimes, these shapes added a sense of depth or broke the grid structure that made designs dynamic. But contrary to the implications of the eponymous 2007 movie by Gary Hustwit, this success was neither immediate nor pre-ordained. There were a handful of moments in Helvetica’s history that have proved to be crucial. Swiss BeginningsHollis R. Swiss Graphic Design: The Origins and Growth of an International Style, 1920—1965. New Haven: Yale University Press: 2001. From 1946, Emil Ruder slowly emerged in Typografische Monatsblätter as an exponent of Modernism. Between 1957 and 1959 he contributed a series of four articles with the title 'Wesentliches' (Fundamentals):'The Plane', 'The Line', 'The Word' and 'Rhythm'. Ruder began his education in design at the age of fifteen when he took a compositor's apprenticeship. By his late twenties, he began attending the Kunstgewerbeschule Zürich where the principles of Bauhaus and Tschichold's new typography were taught. [7] Also Ruder was a significant member who helped establishing the International Center for the Typographic Arts, New York (ICTA). Emil Ruder passed away in the spring of 1970.

Two main Swiss design schools were big contributors to the International Typographic Style history: the Basel Design School that changed their methods to use grid systems in their design work, and the Kunstgewerbeschule led by Ernst Keller, known as the father of Swiss Design. Many of his students became influential Swiss Style graphic designers. Keller preferred impactful posters, unusual layouts, and sans serif typefaces. He believed that design should adapt to the content and not the other way around. The New Home by Ernst Keller, 1928 licensed under CC BY 4.0 What Is Swiss Style? YSS: Are you saying that you can extract personal style out of a technical process? Shouldn’t it be the other way around, with the tool as the servant of the creative mind?

The common denominator of these styles is the use of simple geometric shapes and sans serif typography with very unusual placements. Grids became an essential tool for organization. "Alexander Rodchenko Dobrolyot Poster Soviet USSR CCCP Early Aeronautics & Aviation" by russian_constructivism is licensed under CC BY 2.0. In 1957 three typefaces, all designed in the same neo-grotesque manner, were released: Neue Haas Grotesk by Eduard Hoffmann and Max Miedinger, Univers by Adrian Frutiger, and Folio by Konrad F. Bauer and Walter Baum. The first of them, eventually under the name Helvetica, emerged as the most popular. Ruder's insistence that the primary aim of typography was communication did not exclude aesthetic effects. Contrast was one of his methods. [5] :218 He was essentially devoted to the craft of letterpress printing. [5] :219 Typografische Monatsblätter [ edit ] Cover design by Emil Ruder for a 1953 issue of TM. The Industrial Revolution had changed the quality of craft work. William Morris, the pioneer of the Arts and Crafts movement that originated in Britain, encouraged the return to craftsmanship. Many examples of these three similar styles included intricate patterns, floral motifs, and heavily illustrated designs. These movements also emphasised the designer's point of view and personal take on any creation. Snakeshead printed cotton designed by William Morris, Public Domain. Moreover, Neue Haas Grotesk would never have been renamed Helvetica. Univers was intrinsically superior to Helvetica. It had a much larger family at the outset, with 21 members compared to four in 1960. More importantly, its family was logically designed with consistent weights and widths, something that Helvetica never achieved until its redesign as Neue Helvetica in 1982. Univers’ characters, stripped of “unnecessary” elements such as the beard on ‘G’ or the curve on the tail of ‘y,’ were also more rationally designed. It had the powerful support of Ruder, who wrote about it in Typographische Monatsblätter (TM), both upon its release and again in 1961.

In this series of articles, free of the confines of any single, narrow, specialized field, Ruder discusses at will the formation principles of typography in relation to the cultures,natural sciences, politics and societies of all times and places” adds Idea magazine’s Kiyonori Muroga, who translated the texts in Japanese. The style of decoration of the Arts and Crafts Movement was similar to medieval times. The style was influential in many different types of design, like architecture, typography, textile design, and books. Univers had one other thing in its favor. It had been designed as a foundry type for the French foundry Deberny & Peignot and as a film type for the Lumitype machine. But photocomposition was not yet widely accepted in 1957, and the way to broader acceptance, as Hoffmann knew, was via adoption by one of the large composing-machine companies. From 1946, Emil Ruder slowly emerged in Typografische Monatsblätter as an exponent of Modernism. Between 1957 and 1959 he contributed a series of four articles with the title 'Wesentliches' (Fundamentals):'The Plane', 'The Line', 'The Word' and 'Rhythm'. They formed the basis of his thinking, summed up in 1967 in the book Typography. [5] :222

What If We Altered The Grid?

Hofmann also allows the serif on the number “1” to hang off the grid line so that the body of each number aligns with the letters below, thus creating a more satisfying visual rhythm. Armin Hofmann (HonRDI) (29 June 1920 – 18 December 2020) was a Swiss graphic designer. One of the leading masters of Swiss design.He began his career in 1947 as a teacher at the Allgemeine Gewerbeschule Basel School of Art and Crafts at the age of twenty-six. Hofmann followed Emil Ruder as head of the graphic design department at the Schule für Gestaltung Basel (Basel School of Design) and was instrumental in developing the graphic design style known as the Swiss Style. His teaching methods were unorthodox and broad based, setting new standards that became widely known in design education institutions throughout the world. His independent insights as an educator, married with his rich and innovative powers of visual expression, created a body of work enormously varied – books, exhibitions, stage sets, logotypes, symbols, typography, posters, sign systems, and environmental graphics. His work is recognized for its reliance on the fundamental elements of graphic form – point, line, and shape – while subtly conveying simplicity, complexity, representation, and abstraction. Originating in Russia, Germany and The Netherlands in the 1920s, stimulated by the artistic avant-garde and alongside the International Style in architecture. He is well known for his posters, which emphasized economical use of colour and fonts, in reaction to what Hofmann regarded as the "trivialization of colour." His posters have been widely exhibited as works of art in major galleries, such as the New York Museum of Modern Art. In addition, Ruder's fundamental thinking always sheds light on the relationship between human life and technology.Half a century has passed since this work was published. It is precisely because historic styles are today consumed superficially that it is worthwhile to review afresh the attitude the author takes in this work dealing with the principles of the creation of typography in terms of the relationship between society and technology.” Beyond that, it is a comprehensive masterpiece seen in its overall structure: in the themes presented, in the comparison of similarities and contrasts, in the richness of the illustrations and the harmoniously inserted types. Behind the purely pedagogic examples of exact proportions, a rich, philosophical thinking shines through. Today, more than forty years after this book was first published, it is still widely used and referenced. Later, with its TrueType release in 1991, Apple licensed the core set fonts from the respective mfgrs, although Courier was once again made without IBM. For Apple’s 1991 TrueType release, Kris Holmes and I designed TT versions of Chicago, Geneva, New York, and Monaco. We told the story of the development in “ Notes on Apple 4 Fonts .”

Everything that defined the International Typographic Style began with a grid. The mathematical grid served as a structural tool. By carefully placing text flushed left, designers could have organized and legible information. The grid also helped distribute content in a meaningful, consistent, and logical way. Groups of text were spread across a grid and later analyzed by the designer. Often, the question was "Where do my eyes go first?" to understand hierarchy. Bringing a holistic approach to designing and teaching that consisted of philosophy, theory and a systematic practical methodology for Ruder graphic design and type design have tofunction properly,promoting “the good and the beautiful in word and image and to open the way to the arts.” Three articles, in February 1952, established Ruder as a supporter of radical change. In January 1952, the first issue of the combined magazines retained Times as the text typeface; He introduced Monotype in the February issue that included his Bauhaus article. [5] :197 Poster design by Emil Ruder for an exhibition, 1952. Notable works [ edit ] Some of the bitterness in this statement surely comes from the fact that the development of Neue Helvetica in 1983 ironically followed the blueprint Frutiger had established for Univers in 1957, right down to the numbering of each member of the family. BUT… What if the financial entanglement among Haas, Stempel and German Linotype had not existed? If a German foundry other than Stempel had owned part of Haas, the deal with German Linotype may never have happened. Both Bauer and Berthold, viewing Neue Haas Grotesk as a rival to their own types Folio and Akzidenz Grotesk, respectively, would not have supported a license.Armin Hofmann's poster below uses a grid system to place the text. Hierarchy is emphasized by using a different text size. The top shapes are slightly skewed to add movement and also to add weight towards the right side of the poster. If the shapes were straight, the balance would favour the left side of the poster because the title of the poster uses a bigger point size. Poster designed by Armin Hofmann for an exhibition at the Gewerbemuseum Basel (Museum of Arts and Crafts), Public Domain. The International Typographic Style: History and Importance