TYPOGRAPHICTIMES

BEYONDTYPOGRAPHYLike enraged citizens, long denied political rights, bursting into the palace, graphic designers have broken down the walls of the hitherto closed enclave of letterform design and seized control. The digital reformation of the type founding industry is complete and the story of typographic democratisation, with its Thatcherite undertones of deregulation and free- market capitalism, is old news.Type will never again be produced by a guild-like fraternity; the craft republicanism and labour unionism that chracterised letter-making are gone forever. But as exciting as the results of the type revolution have been, it is hard not to feel a speck of remorse for the decimation of another craft, and another organised group of craftsmen, by a handful of young punks with personal computers.

Now the means of type production have been decentralised, the integrity of a letterform can longer be measured by traditional yardsticks of mastery of tools and processes, quality of handwork and historical continuity. But a new typographic rhetoric has filled the gap. The stabilising influence of the apprentice system has been replaced by an order that sees the letterform as a site for visual experimentation and the alphabet as a screen on to which designers project their creativity. The contemporary type designer carries the baton of Van Doesburg and Bayer in a quest for originality.

For the past three years, Fuse magazine has been an unofficial mouthpiece for the supporters of digital typography. Conceived and created by Neville Brody and Jon Wozencroft, and distributed as a quasi-promotional piece by FontShop International, Fuse is marketed (at £25 an issue) as an “interactive” magazine-on-diskette with experimental typefaces, printed specimen sheets, an editorial essay and biographical and creative notes by the designers. Fuse fonts — usually four to a set, although there tends to be a bonus font or two thrown in for good measure — are offered as works in progress and subscribers are encouraged to customize them at will. That is apparently where the interactivity comes in, thought apart from the designer’s approval, there is nothing inherent in a Fuse font that makes it more malleable than any other PostScript font for the electronic doodler with a copy of Fontographer and time to spare.

The typefaces in each set reflect, more or less, a general idea — religion, exuberance, (dis)information, and so on — that serves as the theme for each issue. Editor Jon

Wozencroft opens issue 1 optimistically anticipating that “A dynamic new forum for typography will stimulate a new sensibility in visual expression, one grounded in ideas, not just image.” He closes his inaugural essay with “we must clear the cobwebs that cover the type that has so quickly been digitalised and dumped in the system folder. Otherwise we will be left deeper in a digital nightmare, plundering as many hot metal typefaces as possible to compensate for our lack of imagination. We will pretend to be in command of our language, but will actually be locked in a museum.”

The first issue reiterates a familiar lament: the typographic establishment — perhaps the repressed memory of an overbearing father figure in the form of curmudgeonly typography professor — is inherently conservative and restrictive. Some unnamed mafia of Modernists is insisting on legibility without understanding that times are a- changing. It is a classic generational conflict in which the parents cannot relate to the new music that drives the kids wild.

The idea is revisited in issue 4. Using the language of anti- establishment youth rebellion, Phil Baines writes “Typeface designers today are Modernist law-abiding citizens who police their forms within the strict confines of function.” In the same issue, Jeff Keedy evokes the age gap, bemoaning the longevity of “an exhausted Modernism that refuses to die.” But even a cursory glance through a typehouse manual or popular magazine from the last 30 years should dash the idea that the world ever tottered on the brink of a global Helevetican domination. The stranglehold of a single, homogeneous Modernist theory is a designer’s fantasy. Talk of timeless letterforms and rational organization has never made it far beyond the typography class, the corporate design consultancy and the airport signage system. And letterforms have never been inviolate – it is more that the tools to tamper with them have changed: from brush and ink to camera to computer.

After Fuse’s first couple of issues, the subject of Wozencroft’s essay and the idea of “a dynamic new forum for typography” part company. Typography itself is rarely discussed and Wozencroft seems intent on linking the formal gestures of l etterforms to larger issues of contemporary culture, not by direct reference but by juxtaposition. The editor muses on a range of subjects from virtual reality (issue 5) to violent cinema (issue 7) — the connection between theme, type and essay getting

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But the alphabet presents a unique contradiction to the quest for originality. The alphabet is a given that predates all who come to it. Every designer that works with the conventional forms of the alphabet is condemned to endless repetition of those ac-cepted forms. The designer can manipulate them only insofar as the end result still falls within the realm of what is known to be the letter. Once that boundary has been crossed, the design-er becomes a skillful maker of plastic form, but can no longer claim to work in the domain of the linguistic. While the creators of Fuse may gaze longingly toward an antediluvian paradise of magical pictorial languages, it is unyielding persistence of the al-phabetic structure that becomes the benchmark against which the genius of the contemporary type designer is measured.

Viewed in this light, Fuse is a project about the brilliance of its par-ticipants and the clever manner in which they redefine the bound-aries of the project. In lionising the experimental, Fuse promotes popular notions of artistic genius, originality and authenticity; terms that, following Walter Benjamin, traditionally invest art and the institutions that house it with value. But in the case of type design, that originality is always undermined by the fact that the alphabet itself can never be re-invented, it can only be endless-ly repeated. In addition, the popular sentiment that places formal innovation squarely in the hands of the artist and the authentic artistic object, is confounded by a product, a typeface, that can exist only in multiple and only through the mass-production pro-cess of typefounding; manual, mechanical, optical or digital. This contradiction is borne out by the losing battle to protect the prop-erty rights that govern the intellectual ownership of a letterform.

Modernist promotion of characterless or timeless typeforms is in fact a self-serving endeavour to protect the precious commodity of originality ascribed to the designed object. If artistic originality is key to the notion of Modernism, the Modernist object must, by its very nature, speak of the genius of its maker. The generic letter, like Helvetica, functioned through transparency: by not interfering with the “signature” that allowed the work to be traced to its maker. The authority of the designer lay in his or her ability to manipu-late standard forms into images which told of individual originality.

As letterforms have become more personal, and have in them-selves become intimately connected to their makers, the author-ship of the designed object is increasingly muddled. At the same time, the genius of the type designer is dissipated as his or her fonts become widely available, allowing their signature style to be eas-ily appropriated. As typefaces increasingly become design state-ments in themselves, the crisis of design authorship intensifies.

As with much of the rhetoric that surrounds these experiments, what that primary convergence is remains murky. Like the indecipherable shapes that appear on the screen, the connection between intention and form is increasingly vague. After ten issues of fervent pursuit, Fuse has come full circle. The hope for “a new sensibility in visual expression, one grounded in ideas, not just image” seems more pre-carious than ever. Fuse is faced with a difficult problem; once the gov-erning force of the alphabet has been abandoned, what comes next?

increasingly tenuous — until Fuse 9 (“Auto”) which features a polemic on negotiating London traffic.

But while the intention of the writing is occasionally nebulous, the real focus is the type itself, and the list of Fuse contributors reads like a litany of famous young designers: Phil Baines, Neville Brody, Malcolm Garrett, Ian Swift, Peter Saville, Rick Vermuelen, Rick Valecenti, David Carson, and so on. Fuse’s gift is not for prose but for visual play and it affords the opportunity for a series of talented designers to explore aspects of form-making outside of the restrictions of the typical design brief. The fonts range from the purely formal to the highly conceptual to the completely irrational. While some stand as viable headline faces — and turn up in the most unexpected places — others openly defy the possibility of use.

The openly defiant ones — such as Tobias Frere Jones’ Reactor (issue 7), in which each character gradually bespeckles earlier lines with “noise fields” as typing progresses (“the more you type, the worse it gets...”) — are the most interesting in that they suggest an experimentation that works both on the level of idea and form. My favorite is Paul Elliman’s performance based font Alphabet (issue 5), produced in a London photo-booth with 26 participants playing the letters. These fonts question the very idea of repetition made possible by new technology, the meaning of formal choices, and the linguistic contingencies of the media.

Other faces evoke historical precedents outside of the canon of fine typography, such as Victorian display faces (Keedy’s Lush Us)or the goofy, round-cornered futurism of the early 1970s (Moonbase Alpha by Cornell Weidler.) The conflict between the systematic and the decorative is evident in the contradictory methods the type designers bring to bear on their projects. An undying fascination with the modular is still clearly present in fonts such as Erik Spiekermann’s Grid, Decoder by Gerard Unger, and InTegel by Martin Wenzel. A continued fixation with the overtly irrational present in Pierre DiSciullo’s Scratched Out and Rick Valicenti’s Uck N Pretty.

Perhaps the most curious aspect of the magazine is the poster collection that serves as a showcase for each issue’s assembled talent. Each poster is a two-colour font specimen demonstrating one of the featured alphabets, thought most of the posters seem to shirk that aspect of their job. Next to the lively type design, the compositions appear loose and unfocused. Almost uniformly uninteresting and with no real function to perform, the posters slip into dilettantish formalism, resorting to frivolous competition among themselves.

Not far below the surface of all this furious experimentation lurks a stated desire to remystify modes of linguistic expression, an almost palatable longing for some spiritual past in which alphabets possessed a totemic significance. Fuse is a conscious effort to reinvest letters with magical power. All the rhetoric about new forms of writing obscures the real significance of experimental type design. Fuse is not a project about type at all: the alphabet is not a vehicle for communication so much as a backdrop against which designers spin their elaborate narratives. While the forms assume the variegated surface of post-modernism, the underlying issues indicate that projects such as Fuse are deeply rooted in Modernist goals of avant-garde experimentation and artistic originality.

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WHEN TYPOGRAPHYSPEAKS LOUDERTHAN WORDS

Clever graphic designers love to use typography to explore the interaction between the look of type and what type actually says. In communicating a message, a balance has to be achieved between the visual and the verbal aspects of a design.

Sometimes, however, designers explore the visual aspect of type to a much greater extent than the verbal. In these cases, the visual language does all the talking. This article explores when the visual elements of typography speak louder than words.

Cal Swan, author of Language and Typography, makes this point well when he says, “These two distinct areas often come together in practice as there is clearly a very strong relationship between the conception of the words as a message and their transmission in visible form.”

To avoid any misunderstanding, let’s clarify what the terms “visual language” and “verbal language” mean. In professional graphic design, visual language refers to the meanings created by the visual appearance of both text and image. In this article, the term “visual language” refers to the character and significance created by carefully selected typography. Verbal language is the literal meaning of words, phrases and sentences.

In this first of a two-part series, we will look at the powerful effect that typography has in taking control of meaning. We will discuss a range of examples, from verbal language that inspires and shapes visual treatment to visual language that dominates verbal meaning. The implications of typographic choices in meaning and interpretation will also be examined. And we will show how the same message can be presented in a number of ways to convey and encourage a diversity of responses.

We all have different cultural backgrounds and experiences that affect our perception of type one way or another. So, regardless of the designer’s skill and effort, a number of uncontrollable aspects remain, including the viewer’s perception, expectations, knowledge, experiences and preferences. And while accounting for all such unpredictable responses to type is impossible, awareness is critical.

By C. Knight, J. Glaser

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The visual language established when designing with type can bring into play not only emotions, but also physical responses. The following examples are simple illustrations of the varied and emotive effects and highly dominant control that can be achieved by changing the visual language of a message, while still presenting the same verbal language.

This first of a pair of illustrations shows a single large bold word, set in lowercase and closely kerned. The positioning in the frame makes the word dominant and loud, and the message comes across as enthusiastic, friendly and confident. The person speaking is pleased to see you and is coming towards you with a big smile on their face.

The second illustration contrasts dramatically with the first, despite featuring the exact same greeting. The font, case, scale, color and positioning all suggest a considerably more distant and hesitant meeting. In fact, you would be forgiven for thinking that the person speaking here is not at all sure they even want to acknowledge you and would have preferred to ignore you completely.

Reading these examples aloud helps us instantly appreciate the different effects of visual language. If you read the first example out loud, it would be a loud enthusiastic call that exudes genuine delight, friendliness and openness. Reading aloud the second example, the exact same word, it would be delivered in a much quieter tone, an almost hesitant voice, lacking the assurance and delight of the first. There is an infinite range of typographic alternatives that achieve subtle or dramatic changes in volume and tone of voice.

Verbal language is often used to inspire and shape design and typography in order to get a message across, with the goal being to make the most of the viewer’s reaction. Carefully mixing a design’s implication with literal meaning can lead to a memorable outcome. The following designs are great examples of the effects that can be achieved by employing verbal language that has helped to inspire a visual treatment.

Our first illustration is taken from the work of renowned American graphic designer Herb Lubalin,

who was described in a monograph about him by Gertrude Snyder and Alan Peckolick as being “a tenacious typographer, whose graphic concept employed copy, art and typography, and he used available production methods to underline the drama inherent in the message. Idea preceded design.”

Given the subject of this article, this quote is especially fitting. It shows Lubalin as a designer who valued the combined communicative power of language, typography and composition. The book goes on to explain that he used production methods not just for effect but also as a way to emphasize the meaning and message of a project. In Lubalin’s time, these decisions would have entailed manual labor, posing greater limitations than we face today. Finally, this quote confirms that, for Lubalin, concept was of paramount importance and always came before design.One of his many entries in the Visual Graphics Corporation’s 1964 competition features a carefully selected quote by US editor and writer Caskie Stinnett.

Using delicate and well-considered composition of typographic detailing, Lubalin has succeeded in making an unpleasant message seem attractive and pleasing. The quote states “A diplomat is a person who can tell you to go to hell in such a way that you actually look forward to the trip.” The focal point of this statement, being told to “go to hell,” is shown in an elaborate and elegant calligraphic form, enabling this mildly offensive statement to be mistaken for something that could be looked forward to with great anticipation at first sight.

The work of hand-lettering designer Alison Carmichael provides a range of current examples that beautifully illustrate the powerful effect of typography when it takes control of meaning. One such design is her award-winning self-promotional ad for the Creative Circle. Carmichael’s hand- lettering is engraved and inked in an elaborate style on the lid of an old school desk. At first sight, we seem to be looking at a beautiful, possibly historic, work of gothic lettering; seconds later, reality strikes and the rather unpleasant meaning of the text becomes clear.

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Helvetica //

What is it about

the Swiss? Or, to be precise: what is

it about the Swiss and their sans serif typefaces?

Helvetica and Univers both emerged from Switzerland

in the same year—1957—and went out to shape the modern

world. They would sort out not just transport systems but whole cities,

and no typefaces ever looked more sure of themselves or their purpose.

The two fonts appeared at a time when Europe had thrown off all shackles

of postwar austerity and had already made a strong contribution to midcentury

modernism. You could sit in your Bertoia Diamond chair (Italy, 1952) and read about

a forthcoming concept called Ikea (Sweden, 1958), while all around you buildings began to get squarer and more functional.

Helvetica and Univers were perfectly suited to this period, and their use reflected another pervasive force of the age—the coming

of mass travel and modern consumerism. Helvetica is a font of such practica lity —and, its adherents would suggest, such beauty— that is both ubiquitous and something of a cult. The typeface even inspired a compelling and successful movie (Gary Hustwit’s Helvetica), whose premise is that on the streets of the world, the font is like oxygen. You have little choice but to breathe it in.

A few years

ago, a New Yorker called Cyrus

Highsmith put his life on the line by trying to spend a day without Helvetica. As a type designer himself, he knew it would be a challenge. Whenever he saw something spelled out in the typeface he would have to avert his eyes. He wouldn’t take any Helvetica-signed transport, nor buy any Helvetica-branded products. He might have to walk into New York City from its suburbs; possibly go hungry all day.His troubles began as soon as he climbed out of bed. Most of his clothes had washing instructions in Helvetica, and he struggled to find something that didn’t; he settled, eventually, on an old T-shirt and army fatigues. For breakfast he had Japanese tea and some fruit, foregoing his usual yogurt (Helvetica label). He couldn’t read The New York Times as that had Helvetica in its tables. The subway was out of the question, though to his relief he found a Helvetica-free bus.At lunch he thought he’d try Chinatown but had to switch restaurants as the first had

a familiar-looking menu. At work he had, in advance, deleted Helvetica from his

computer, but he couldn’t— obviously—browse the Internet. He was late

back home because he couldn’t consult the timetable,

and had to be highly selective about his

cash, as

How Helvetica Conquered The World With Its Cool, Comforting Logic

// by Simon Garfield

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BREATHEIT IN

YOU HAVECHOICELI

TTLE

BUT TO

Helvetica graces the new U.S. dollar bills. Inevitably, there was Helvetica on his credit cards, too. In the evening he thought he’d watch TV but the controls had Helvetica on them. So he read The Long Goodbye by Raymond Chandler, set in Electra.

After he undertook his non-Helvetica day, Highsmith posed himself a philosophical question. “Do you need type to live?” The answer of course is no, not in the way one needs food and water. But do you need Helvetica to conduct contemporary urban activity? That’s harder to answer.

Gary Hustwit’s Helvetica movie would suggest you do. His film examines how the font took over the world, opening with shots of the font in Manhattan—on the Times Square tkts booth, Bloomingdale’s, Gap, Knoll, the subway, mailboxes. Then come images of BMW, Jeep, Toyota, Kawasaki, Panasonic, Urban Outfitters, Nestlé, Verizon, Lufthansa, Saab, Oral B, The North Face, Energizer, and on and on. The film also tracks the font’s genesis, talking to its key surviving creators, none of whom could really comprehend how such a clean little alphabet got so big.

The best section in the movie occurs a third of the way through. The designer Michael Bierut

is explaining why Helvetica had such a deep impact on advertising and corporate branding in the 1960s, imagining how remarkable it must have been for an identity consultant to have taken a traditional company like Amalgamated Widget, which was previously represented on its letterheads by a goofy script typeface and a line-drawing of a factory belching smoke, and then sweeping it all away in favor of just one word in Helvetica: Widgco. “Can you imagine how bracing and thrilling that was?” Bierut asks. “That must have felt like you had crawled through a desert with your mouth caked with filthy dust, and then someone offers you a clear, refreshing distilled icy glass of water … it must have just been fantastic.”

Bierut then demonstrates his thoughts by flicking through two contrasting adverts for Coca-Cola, one before Helvetica, and one after. The first one features a smiling family and curly cursive lettering. The second one only shows a big glass of Coke and ice, with vapor bubbles on the glass. The slogan beneath it reads “It’s the real thing. Coke.” Or as Bierut puts it, “It’s the real thing, period. Coke, period. In Helvetica, period. Any questions? Of course not. Drink Coke. Period.”

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HIf you think about it, the craft of typography is little more than the combination of three very simple things: attention to detail, common sense and visual acuity. Sure, there are typographic rules and guidelines, but they are, for the most part, just based on what is sensible and pleasing to the eye. Learning to identify the parts of a character may increase a designer’s business vocabulary, and knowing the lineage of Garamond designs may aid in the choosing of a good modern revival of the face, but the real key to typographic success is basically just “sweating the details” and a simple coordination of mind and eye.

Take, for instance, the typographic rule of avoiding all cap copy. The tenet about not setting all capitals is really based on little more than simple logic. Capital letters take up more space than lowercase letters – up to 30% more space. Headlines, subheads and pull-quotes are about setting brief blocks of copy in a relatively small space. It’s only common sense to use the most space-efficient letters: lowercase. Sure, there’s all that stuff about how “word shapes” (made from ascending, descending and x-height lowercase letters) might help us read faster and that all capitals only create rectangles as visual identifiers,

but just the fact that the little letters can pack more information into a given piece of design real estate than capitals, ought to be enough reason to rely on them.

Correcting typographic widows, orphans is also just about making things look right; as is the idea of not cluttering the right edge of a column with a bunch of hyphens. Keeping word-spacing tight and even is simply to create an inviting block of copy that doesn’t have visually disrupting white-space gaps that also slow down the reading process.

Common sense and what looks good even applies to the basic issue of choosing the correct typeface. Some typefaces are better in one size than another. One may be bad for lengthy text in a book or brochure but good for short blocks of promotional copy. The best typeface for a particular occasion can depend upon its size, weight or its position on the page. The best typefaces, however, are always those that are appropriate for the time, the reader and the situation. All one has to do to make the correct choice is look at the design and think about how it will be used. If it looks right – it probably is.

Look at the headline after it has been set. Does it space well? Is it easy to read? Does it lead naturally into the text copy that follows? If it is more than two lines of copy, does

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the line spacing look even? Is the message enhanced by the type-

face? Is the text copy inviting? Is it an even texture? If columns

are set rag-right, do all the lines end in about the same place?

If they are set justified, is the copy-block free from ribbons of

white running through it? Are the lines short enough and is there

enough line spacing so that the reader won’t read the same line

twice? All are simple questions to answer – if the designer looks

at the type, uses a little common sense and sweats the details.

OK, an appreciation and understanding of the basis of

good typography is a strong f oundation to build on. But all

the typographic education in the world is of little value, if designers

do not use a little common sense – and look at the work they

produce. The job is not done when the headline is dropped

into the layout or the text copy poured into a column. It is only

complete when the d esigner has looked at the finished product

– really looked at it – and made sure that the type looks

correct, is handled consistently and makes visual sense.

Points, picas, line spacing, and kerning are only the mechanics.

Software applications are just tools. It takes a concentrated

effort to create typography. It takes common sense

and a careful eye to create communication that is inviting,

makes an impact, focuses attention, organizes information

and creates a mood – ultimately giving life and personality to the

printed word. It also takes the time and attention necessary

to ensure that the job is done right – really right. That is

what typography is all about.H8

What isTypographyall about?

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So you’re a brilliant designer, a master calligrapher, and you’ve learned all about serifs, side-bearings, and kerning. Now you want to create your own font. (What! You haven’t learned all about serifs, side-bearings, and kerning? Well, make sure you read all of the articles on iLT before you embark on font creation! You’ll need all of the knowledge you can get if you plan on being successful! And if you’re not a brilliant designer or a master calligrapher, well, don’t worry—you can still create some beautiful fonts with a little hard work, a lot of knowledge, and a little inspiration.)

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Following the Bauhaus design philosophy,

German type designer Paul Renner first created Futura between 1924 and 1926. Although

Renner was not a member of the Bauhaus, he shared many of its views, believing that a modern typeface should express

modern models rather than be a rivial of a previous design. Futura was commercially released in 1927, commissioned by the Bauer type foundry.

While designing Futura, Renner avoided creating any non-essential elements, making use of basic geometric proportions with no serifs or frills. Futura’s crisp,

clean forms reflect the appearance of efficiency and forwardness even today.

Renner’s initial design experimented with several geometrically constructed character alternatives and old-style figures, which can be found in the typeface Architype Renner. The success of Futura spawned a range of new geometric sans-serif typefaces, such as Kabel and Century Gothic, among others. Now over 80 years since its creation, many foundries have released variations of Futura in the digital form, Adobe being the one of the most commonly used. Several international companies also use their own customized version of Futura, including Volkswagen (visible in their renowned advertising) and IKEA.

Futura had the honor of being the first typeface on the moon, chosen for a commemorative plaque left by the astronauts of Apollo 11 in 1969. Iconic filmmaker Stanley Kubrick used Futura religiously in many of his films, notably 2001: A Space Odyssey and Eyes Wide Shut. More recently, Wes Anderson has done the same with his films (The Royal Tenenbaums, The Life Aquatic, etc), using Futura (specifically Futura Bold) almost exclusively in the artwork, credits, and even within the films.

Futura (and its variants) have become an extremely popular typeface for countless corporate logos, commercial products, films and advertisements

for years. In fact, so popular that certain art directors had began boycotting its use in with Art Directors Against Futura Extra Bold

Condensed, published in 1992’s TDC Typography 13.

Regardless, Futura remains one of the most used (and loved) sans-serif fonts today with no

signs of slowing down.

GEOMETRICSA

NSSERIF

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FUTURA

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Beauty...and Ugliness

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In 2010 I was invited to a design conference in Copenhagen to speak on the subject of

conceptual type. The organisers were interested in examples of typefaces whose principal design feature was not related to aesthetic considerations or legibility, but

rather some underlying non-typographical idea. In my address I argued that there is no such thing as conceptual type, since type design is a discipline defined by its

ability to execute an outcome; the process that transforms the pure idea into a functional font is a critical part of the discipline. Having rejected the topic of

the conference, I nevertheless went on to speculate on what a true example of a conceptual typeface might be like.

At the time I was also interested in the idea of irreconcilable differences and how two extremes could be combined into a

coherent whole. As an example, I looked for the most beautiful typeface in the history of typography — as well as the ugliest one

— and for a way to meld them.

While any choice representing beauty is bound to be very personal and subjective, many agree that the high-contrast typefaces created by Giambattista Bodoni and the Didot clan are some of the most beautiful in existence. Bodoni was one of the most widely-admired printers of his time and considered amongst the finest in the history of the craft.

Thomas Curson Hansard wrote in 1825 that Bodoni’s types had “that beautiful and perfect appearance, which we find

it difficult and highly expensive to equal.” In his Manuale Tipografico of 1818, Bodoni laid down the four principles

of type design “from which all beauty would seem to proceed”, namely: regularity, clarity, good taste, and charm.

His close competitors in France were the Didots. Not only did François-Ambroise Didot invent many of the machines

used in printing, but his foundry endeavoured to render the types more beautifully than his rivals Baskerville and (later)

Bodoni. Some considered Didot’s works the most beautiful types that had ever been used in France (up to that period),

though others found them delicate but lifeless.

I have to admit that dealing with ugliness was a lot more interesting than revisiting the beauty contests of

the classicist printers. The search for ugliness triggers a certain primal, voyeuristic curiosity, and from the design-

er’s perspective there is simply a lot more space to ex-plore. Capturing beauty has always been considered the

primary responsibility of the traditional artist, and even now it is rare to find examples of skilled and deliberate

ugliness in type design, (although examples of inexpe-rience and naïveté abound).The eccentric ‘Italian’ from the middle of the Industrial Revolution was a clear choice. This reversed-contrast typeface was designed to

deliberately attract readers’ attention by defying their expectations. Strokes that were thick in classi-

cal models were thin, and vice versa — a dirty trick to create freakish letterforms that stood out in the increasingly

saturated world of commercial messages.

No other style in the history of typography has provoked such negative reactions as the Italian. It was first presented in Caslon & Catherwood’s 1821 type specimen,

and as early as 1825, in his Typographia Thomas Hansard called the type a “typographic monstrosity”. Nicolete Gray called it “a crude expression of the idea of perversity”,

while others labeled it as “degenerate”.

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&Without a doubt, the most beautiful character in the English language is the ampersand. The single character comes in so many fashions – from the simple & to the casual E- to T-style representations.

But where did this character come from? What does it mean? And most importantly how can you take advantage of using it in your design projects? Here we will take a look at my favorite character from its history to uses and a gallery of great ampersands to inspire you.

The ampersand is a visual representation of the phrase “and, per se and.” It is a graphic ­representation­ of­ the­ Latin­ “et,”­ which­ translates­ to­ “and.”­ That­ definition­ is­ how­ the­ ampersand is most commonly used today — as an inclusionary symbol meaning “and.”

The character dates to 45 A.D., according to a history of the letter by type designer Max Caflish­for­Adobe.­The­character­appeared­on­papyrus­and­was­handwritten­in­the­­Roman­cursive style. The earliest representations of the character were a combination of the letters ET (in the form of a ligature) and evolved into the more common & single-character representation over the course of the next 700 years.

Key points in ampersand history can be pinpointed to characters found in various writings, pictorial depictions and some even trace the ampersand back to a common phrase that came at the end of the alphabet. Here are some of the most well-documented highlights:

63 B.C.: Marcus Tullius Tiro included the phrase “and, per se and” at the end of his alphabet recitals and included a shorthand character to represent the phrase, but that character looked more like a 7 than modern ampersand.45­A.D.:­One­of­the­first­written­ampersands­was­found­on­papyrus.79­A.D.:­A­representation­of­ET­was­scribbled­in­Pompeian­graffiti.775­A.D.:­The­ET­ligature­becomes­a­part­of­the­Roman­alphabet­and­was­more commonly depicted as a single character.The­ampersand­was­included,­albeit­unofficially,­in­a­character­set­written­by Anglo-Saxon monk Byrhtferth, the author of many historical textbooks.1440:­Johannes­Gutenberg­ includes­ the­ampersand­on­his­ first­printing­press.1499: Francesco Colonna’s “Hypnerotomachia Polophili,” printed by Aldus Manutius, used 25 different ampersands (and several representations) on one page of text.1837: Modern dictionaries begin to include an entry for “ampersand.”1899: The “Concise Manual on Typography” calls the ampersand “a sign interchangeable with the conjunction and.”

The­ampersand­is­now­a­common­character­in­Roman­lettering­and­typefaces­created­for­the­English­language.­Many­of­today’s­ampersands­are­influenced­by­handwriting­styles­–­much like the original characters – and calligraphy, making italic styles especially popular.

WHY WE LOVE AMPERSANDSYOU SHOULD TOO

http://designshack.net/articles/typography/why-i-love-ampersands-you-should-too/

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While am-persands are quite common,

there is a set of standard usage for the character. Proper usage, while sometimes debated,

is important to maintaining the integrity of the character. Ampersands can be used to represent “and” in phrases and

names, but should not be used in the structure of a sentence as a substitute for and. Ampersands should be generally avoided in longer

blocks of text. Ampersands can be used as a designation for a two-part name in a list to avoid confusion. Ampersands are commonly used in titles

and business names (especially in the areas of law, consulting, engineering and architecture Ampersands do not need to be preceded or followed by a comma

in a list. An ampersand followed by “c.” can be used to represent the phrase “et cetera,” although this usage is rather uncommon. The preferred usage is “etc.”

Typically designers use one of four different styles of ampersands in projects: Calligraphy or italic, traditional, contemporary or casual. Each style can include vast numbers of representations but can be identified by a few specific characteristics.

Calligraphy: The calligraphic style of ampersands is among the oldest style of the character. Many ampersands of this style still have a look that includes the letters E and T combined by a ligature in some way. The merged letters can appear as uppercase,

lowercase or a combination of the two. The elaborate letterform is often created using multiple strokes and in- cludes various serifs and decoration.

Traditional: The traditional style of the character is what most designers know and use today. The typefaces are more simple and direct than

the calligraphic style, but still frequently include serifs and some decoration. Traditionally-styled ampersands appear in

a variety of weights and with varying stroke widths as well.

Contemporary: The most simple style of ampersand is the contemporary look. In this style, characters often lack

serifs and can often (but not always) be drawn with a single stroke and have a uniform stroke width. The characters can

be bold or narrow and are commonly used in posters and logos.

Casual: The casual style of ampersand follows very few of the rules of a m p e r sands and may not even quite look like what most designers would label the character to

be. The most casual styling look like a uppercase cursive-style E, often with small strokes above and below the letter, or as an almost cursive lowercase t. These character forms are more

commonly seen in handwriting styles.

The ampersand is a common character in quite a few famous brands and logos including television network A&E, clothing brand H&M, phone­company­AT&T,­ tax­preparation­company­H&R­Block,­ fast­ food­chain A&W, typography company Hoefler & Frere-Jones, the famous D&G used for Dolce and Gabbana. There are so many common brands with an ampersand in the name that quiz network Sporcle even has a game devoted to naming brands that contain the & character. (Take the quiz and let us know how you scored. It was a little tougher than I expected.)

My personal love affair with the ampersand is long-standing. I love the curves of a calligraphic or traditionally-style character. And the simplicity of the contemporary style just makes me want to create logos filled with ampersands. Even my own handwriting and shorthand style is filled with the casual E style ampersand.

One of the things that really draws me to the character is the intrigue behind it. The ampersand is one of the few characters in the English language that stands alone with a distinct meaning. Think about

it, other characters have to be combined to mean something specific. The ampersand does it all.

In terms of space and design, the ampersand can be both an economical character in terms of space or a point of display. The ampersand is visually appealing and versatile enough to be used as a simple

character or as design element of its own. I have my own small collection of ampersands that I use for inspiration as well. You can find that collection on Pinterest, and I am adding new characters all the time.

The ampersand has a long history as more than just a letter than can help you pretty a logo. It has distinct meanings, rules for proper usage and includes four pretty distinct styles. The character is

relatively versatile in terms of design use as well, as a character used to save space or as a graphical design element.

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