Schlagwort: english

Bauhaus, but not in Bauhaus

Type

Certainly Bauhaus and Avantgarde are the most common cases of LTypI (Lacking Typographic Imagination aka choosing a font because of its name for an application of that name).

ITC Bauhausstraße 2

It might disappoint you vastly but the initial Bauhaus manifest 1919 and most of their printed matter in early years were set in art-nouveau flavoured seriffed faces, in the case below Ohio by Schriftguss AG/Brüder Butter. Back then one had to content oneself with the fonts a printer had in stock.

Bauhaus Weimar 1919

Later the typefaces chosen better complied with the ideas of the New Typography:
a clear, modern, industrial atmosphere achieved with anonymously designed, rather dark Grotesque faces — stripped of all unneccessary decorative elements.
A font often used f.e. was Breite Halbfette Grotesk by Schelter & Giesecke, recently revived as FF Bau by Christian Schwartz. Others were Ideal-Grotesk and Venus, recycled in Monotype Grotesque.

Grotesk breit hfett Grotesk breit mager vor 1900

above: Breite Halbfette Grotesk by Schelter & Gieseke ca. 1895
below: Venus by Bauer, 1907 and Ideal-Grotesk by Klinkhardt, 1908 

Venus hfett 1907Ideal-Grotesk Seemann

But the typographic ideas of the Bauhaus, above all Herbert Bayer and Joost Schmidt, went further. The radical constructivist designs we now immediately connect with “Bauhaus” however were only carried out in drafts, drawings and lettering, never in a typeface.
Paul Renners Futura was clearly inspired by the concepts of the Bauhaus (see alternative letters) but came out not earlier than 1928. Then however it was accepted as the “type of our time”.

futura1927

The typeface ITC Bauhaus is a design from 1975 by Ed Benguiat and Victor Caruso inspired by the ideas of Bayer, Schmidt et al, but it is not a revival of any Bauhaus design.

So, what typefaces should we choose to be more imaginative?

Typefaces like the ones used by the Bauhaus: for example
FF Bau, Venus, Monotype Grotesque, Basic Commercial, Gothic 726, ARS Region

Geometric, contructivist typefaces based on the design ideas of the Bauhaus:
Albers, Bayer Universal, Joost, Erbar, Futura, Dessau, Neuzeit, Nobel, Super and more Futura alternatives like Avenir, Faricy, Superla, Twentieth Century.

Also check out this Bauhaus-fontlist at FontShop.


The Difference between Humanist, Transitional and Modern Typefaces

Ask, Type

Some key-characters for classifying typefaces are a, e, and R.

Humanist (Serifs, Sans, Slab) a’s mostly have an open upper counter and a rather small bowl; the lower half of the e has an open, friendly »mouth«, whereas the eye in the upper half is usually small. R has a diagonal, often long, maybe swashy tail. The uppercase letters are all of different widths, following the proportions of inscriptional Imperial Roman capitals (Capitalis Monumentalis).
If the typeface has contrast the stroke is likely to be thickest north-east and south-west (rotational symmetric, you can draw a diagonal line trough the thinnest parts). In the venetian subclass the e has a diagonal crossbar.
If the typeface has serifs they are bracketed and often asymmetric.

Transitional typefaces have more regular forms. The a and e are rather open, but in general the letters are not as lively and divers as in a humanist face. R has a diagonal tail, the widths of the uppercase are more equal. Stroke contrast is mostly symmetrical to a vertical axis. Serifs are bracketed and also more symmetrical. These typefaces stand inbetween Humanist and Modern, hence the name.

Modern typefaces, like Didones but also Grotesques have rather closed forms of e and a. Caps are of the same widths and more narrow, also the lowercase letters look comparatively alike (b, d, p, q). The R has a more vertical leg [I miss the proper english terms for that].
In the Didone style the stroke contrast is extremely high with a vertical axis, serifs are very thin and not bracketed. There is a subclass with bracketed serifs, like Century for instance, for which we are all still looking for a good name.

noch mal Helvetica

Type

Funny, while browsing some reviews of Helvetica forever I found this one on Designboom, which is featuring almost only my tiny little article on typesetting methods. Five pictures of one spread*, a boring side note in a thrilling story. Must have made an impression.
No pic of the historic essay, none of the comparisons, only one of the Hoffmann-booklet …

Buried deep down on this blog you can find some posts from the time I was working on the book. And maybe one day I will write about the making of and the contributers involved.

*Originally I had one page per technique but it got halved and halved further during the process. Understandable. Could be a book on it’s own.

fresh from Frankfurt book fair I+II

Type, unterwegs

It’s a good year in (design-)books.
Although I always think, it’s getting harder and harder to surprise or intrigue me, I brought back at least as many kg of books as in the past years.

Outstanding finds and developments: More

In Defense of Helvetica

Type

I just read a fitting comparison of type and food in connection with Helvetica.

To me Helvetica feels to typography a bit like Japanese white rice feels to traditional Japanese cuisine. That is, on its own it may seem pretty bland to most people. […] Yet, as a balanced complement to all other elements in a washoku meal, rice is truly a delicious and harmonious amplifier of the entire culinary experience. Helvetica is a bit like this in that the typeface is a great complement to other design elements on a page or poster or slide, etc. Helvetica is a great amplifier of clarity without drawing attention to its own form. (source)

The writer may have had the different elements of a layout in mind, but the metaphor fits the task of combining typefaces with Helvetica just as adequately (I don’t know about the last point though) (and his others).

What keeps puzzling me: why do I feel like I have to defend Helvetica since that Helvetica Forever project? Paying attention to mentions like this, continuously giving advice on how to use it. I didn’t even liked H before. Now, as soon as you know so much about a topic, you can’t really hate it anymore …

no pics

Allgemeines

Ever wondered why this here is so – sagen wir mal – typographic?
I just don’t get it. I do not manage to upload pictures, neither with browser- nor flashupload, not via gallery or uploads-menu. The photos are listed in the gallery, but not displayed, like this:

Ahhhh! had to shake lightly to level wp-content.

What typefaces to combine with Helvetica?

Ask, Type

Because I was asked this several times in the last months and today this question also appeared on typophile, here are my suggestions (further ideas welcome):

Transitional and Modern Serifs should work quite well with Helvetica, but also Garaldes like Garamond – depends on what kind of atmosphere you aim at. If you are looking for a more human, legible, friendly touch, choose an open typeface from the Garalde subclass like Plantin, Galliard, Swift or Proforma. For more neutrality browse the Transitionals/Baroques like Utopia, Rotation, Farnham. More classy, austere? look in the areas of Modern (bracketed) typefaces. More

Thoughts on Classification of Typefaces

Type

Master of cross-references and typedirector at Fontshop San Francisco Stephen Coles posted a question recently that bothers me for some years as well: How can we name typefaces with modern, classicistic structure like Didones but with bracketed serifs instead of straight, hairline ones?

There are subclasses like “Scotch” within this group, typefaces designed for the tricky printing conditions of newspapers like Ionic and the Legibility Group, or some sturdy workhorses derived from typewriters. But more importantly – where do we draw the line between bracketed Modern and bracketed Slabs like Clarendon (for which we need a good term as well)? At Madison? More