![]() The design evolved slowly, taking shape over several decades, and underwent several changes up until its publication in 1968. As he wrote, Meier also worked on the design of what would become Syntax, a font combining the modernity of sans letters with certain characteristics of Roman types of the 15th and 16th century such as Bembo, Jenson or Garamond. His 1959 compendium The Development of Writing is a study of the evolution of writing forms, starting with Greek lapidary inscriptions from the 5th century BC and continuing through modern sans typefaces. The work of Swiss graphic designer and calligrapher Hans Eduard Meier, on the other hand, is informed by his understanding of history and of type’s calligraphic heritage. Universal, Futura and their contemporary, Erbar-Grotesk (1926), paved the way for countless other sans serifs that explored the possibilities of modular geometric construction, including the popular typefaces of the 1950s, Neue Haas Grotesk, Helvetica and Univers. Just like Bayer’s Universal, Futura was more outward looking, intentionally international, a contrast to the nationalistic tendencies of the time. Heinrich Jost and his staff at the Bauer type foundry, which published Futura, introduced careful optical adjustments and stroke modulations, breaking the strict geometry and bringing an overall consistency to what was otherwise a rather quirky design.įutura advertising in the German trade magazine Archiv für Buchgewerbe, issue 10/12, 1927 Initially drawn with a compass and ruler, using circles, squares and triangles as basic elements, it still retained classical proportions rooted in Roman inscriptional capitals. Renner’s Futura (1927) is one of the most influential type designs of 20th century. The script of the future will have to be an honest expression of all these technical processes,” wrote Renner in 1927. “The impression of our printing types is not thrown onto the paper from left to right like handwriting, rather it descends with an impression from above. As an inevitable consequence of modern manufacturing processes, the new typography, just like the new architecture, was the not just an evolution of the old, but a rejection of it, pitting modernity against antiquity. Paul Renner expounded a general theory about reductionist letterforms for the mechanised era, sharing the views of architects such as Le Corbusier, that an era’s arts are affected by its technologies. While Bayer’s stark geometric forms were driven by ideology rather than aesthetics, subsequent typefaces were more pragmatic, reflecting a search for clean forms suited to the mechanised process of printing. Herbert Bayer, proposal for the Universal type, 1925 It was a radical step in Germany, where Gothic script was still widely used and where all nouns are capitalised, and although it was never cut as type, the concepts behind it had a lasting influence on the following generation of typefaces. Herbert Bayer’s Proposal for a Universal Type (1925) presented idealised, minimalistic letterforms, advocating not only a simplified, lower-case-only alphabet, but also a complete reform of orthography. Specimen of Printing Types, Vincent Figgins, 1834 In the early 20th century, a new generation of artists, designers and architects took a different approach to sans serif design, rejecting existing conventions and searching for letterforms that would reflect the technological developments of the era. ![]() These rather unrefined letterforms were based on the skeletons and structures of previous serif text typefaces, characterised more by the absence of serifs than by the introduction of any fresh, unique feature. Some two decades later, a very heavy serifless font appeared under the name that we use today, sans serif, in the Vincent Figgins specimen book from 1832. The first low-contrast Latin letters without serif terminations appeared on jubilee coins from 1809, and later under the name ‘Egyptian’ in the 1816 William Caslon IV type specimens.
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