TOC 9, the next book for TOC The Other Collection, is Wolfgang Eilenberger’s Time of the Magicians – The Great Decade of Philosophy 1919 – 1929. The original book was written in German and the translation keeps many words and concepts that are difficult or impossible to translate, like Sein or Dasein or even more difficult: Es gibt. No point trying to explain those expression here – just get the book. A lot of the pro­tagonists are German: Benjamin, Cassirer, Heidegger, Wittgenstein and others appear, while Hegel, Nietzsche, Kant et al are frequently quoted. 

The decade after World War I was exciting, messy, wild, new. The survivors of the terrific fighting in the world’s first fully mechanised war had often been wounded and traumatised. It was a time to explore how human thinking might have to be re-invented and how the world should be re-built. Art, design and architecture were re-imagined – the Bauhaus in Weimar and Dessau defined those movements, including a new look at type and typography. 

Shouldn’t a book about New Thinking be set in a New Typeface? New ideas about typography also reflected new thinking, integrating images and finding its own expressions, away from ornamentation and decoration.

The Bauhaus experimented with new typefaces, but never managed the step from theory and sketches to working, legible type. It took until 1927 for the first really new typeface to be released, appropriately named Futura and advertised as the Type for the new Age – Die Schrift der neuen Zeit.

The registration with the Association of German Typefoundries from November 1927 shows it as Renner-Futura, named for its designer, Paul Renner. The version intended to be used for long text in books and magazined was Futura Buchschrift, released much later, in 1933. It was made available for all line-casting machines of the day – Intertype, Linotype, and Typograph, making it suitable for setting books and other long text.

Its radical departure from the traditional serif faces hadn’t initially suggested its use for long text. German books, newspapers and magazines were set in Fraktur, with only foreign languages and names in serif type – which the non-German world called Antiqua.
Renner’s capitals are Roman capitals, its serifs and the contrast removed. He himself called Futura a Serifenlose Antiqua – a non-serif Roman.
The illu­stra­­tion of the basic geometric shapes – square, triangle, circle – is a nod to the Zeitgeist which was trying to make new typefaces just using those shapes but which never yielded any usable text faces.

The books I have so far designed for TOC are set in traditional serif faces, albeit those that are digital re-interpretations by today’s type-designers. Futura was the obvious candidate for this text which looks at the first decade after WW1, but I could not remember seeing that typeface work in longer text, printed offset. Type is never black enough when printed with water, as offset does, and neither photosetting nor digital versions of Futura had managed to overcome the pale impression that its skeletal letterforms left on the page.

Then Kris Sowersby came to my rescue. He had already shown how to manage to revive a perfect typeface with his Söhne, a contemporary interpretation of my favourite typeface, Akzidenz Grotesk. And I had used his Signifier (also the type this column is set in) to set our third book, John Banville’s The Sea. I am in the middle of setting the Eilenberger book, using Kris’s version of the Type for the New Age which he calls The Future. I’m using the weight he calls Regular. 

A Regular or Book weight did not exist when Futura was first announced at the end of 1927 (it wasn’t cast until 1928), there were only the mager (light), halbfett (medium) and fett (bold) weights. In 1933 Futura Buchschrift came out – appropriately named for setting long text. It was available for machine setting on all three existing systems: Intertype, Linotype, and Typograph.

When we print on our 1954 Heidelberg Cylinder press from polymer plates, we get exactly the same impression you would have seen when printing from metal type. Before I commit to a new, untried typeface, we print a signature – 8 pages – on the Heidelberg, from our polymer plates, and on the original paper. When I design for offset printing, I always look for a typeface with a good text weight because offset printing tends to make the type look lighter than it will do on screen or on an office printer. One of our favourite typefaces has therefore always been Kai Bernau’s Lyon: it features two weights for text: Lyon Text Regular and Lyon Text Regular No2. No2 has that little extra heft necessary for setting text sizes up to 14pt and printing offset. Printed letterpress on the Heidelberg, however, the lighter Lyon Text Regular will gain a little weight from the slight impression into the paper and the resulting blackness of the type. The two weights have to be different to appear the same.

Futura Buchschrift was designed for letterpress printing, because that is how books were made at the time, and it ended up looking slightly emaciated when photoset and printed offset from the 70s onwards. Some of that had to do with the design of photosetting fonts which had often been adapted from the original drawings – in theory a good thing, but usually not taking into account the distortions occuring during reproduction, plate-making and printing. The first digital types from the 80s after the arrival of PostScript technology suffered from the same malaise. Today once again we see fonts with size-specific design, sometimes made using the Variable Type format.

Kris did his homework when he designed The Future, and I’m expecting his version to show that this new Futura can be used for setting long text again, as long as it fits the topic and all the design parameters consider its simple yet complex character. Printing it letterpress will help give the Type for the New Age a new life. It certainly fits today’s requirements if handled well.

Vor der Erfindung des Schreibens lebten die Menschen in einer akustischen Welt, ihren dunklen Gedanken überlassen. Erst die Erfindung des Schreibens befreite die Menschheit aus ihrer Ahnungslosigkeit. Der Gänsekeil machte dem Sprechen ein End.

So formulierte es Marshall McLuhan. Das Geheimnisvolle war abgeschafft; jetzt entstanden Bauten und Städte, Straßen und Armeen, Bürokratie. Die Zivilisation begann, der Schritt aus dem Dunklen der Vorgeschichte in das Licht des Bewusstseins. Die seman­tische Übereinstimmung von Schrift und schreiben ist nicht verwirrend, sondern prak­tisch. Wir schreiben mit Schrift, und was wir schriftlich haben, können wir – wie Mephistos Student – getrost in schwarz auf weiß nach Hause tragen. Ein Schriftstück kann eine Anklageschrift sein, eine Streitschrift oder eine Zeitschrift. Die Druckschrift bezeichnet sowohl das gedruckte Dokument als auch die Schrift, in der es ge­setzt und gedruckt wurde. Der Setzer setzt den Satz mit der Satzschrift auf einer Setzmaschine. Ein Schreiber schreibt Schrift. Wir können auf­schreiben, abschreiben, anschreiben, hinschreiben, fort­schreiben, unter- und überschreiben, zuschreiben, hand­schreiben oder in Druck­buch­staben schreiben, etwas schriftlich festhalten, also verschriftlichen oder in Schrift­form bringen. 

Viele andere Sprachen beneiden uns um dieses wunderbare Wort. Auf englisch gibt es mehrere Bezeichnungen dafür. Druckschrift: typeface oder font oder printing type; Geschriebenes, Schreiben: writing; schreiben: to write; Schriftstück: writ; Schreiber: writer oder scribe.

Der Handel brachte die Mechani­sierung des Schreibens; von den in Tontafeln ge­ritzten Listen gelieferter Gegenstände brauchte es einige Jahrtausende, bis aus den gezeichneten Tieren, Tonkrügen und Weizen­bündeln abstrakte Zeichen wurden. Der Kopf des Rindes mit seinen Hörnern wurde auf der Reise über das Mittelmeer zum Aleph als erster Buchstabe unseres Alphabetes.

Lange blieb der Umgang mit Schrift und die Verbreitung des Wissens wenigen Klassen vorbehalten. Selbst als Gutenberg den Druck von beweglichen und damit wiederverwendbaren Lettern erfand, dauerte es lange, eher nicht nur lateinische Texte gesetzt und gedruckt worden. Gutenberg verdiente sein erstes Geld da­mit, Ablasszettel für den Mainzer Bischof zu drucken, indem er die Handschrift der Mönche nachmachte. Die Kirche hielt das zuerst für Hexerei, denn die gedruckten Zettel waren einander so ähnlich, wie es selbst der geschickteste Schreiber nicht hinbekam. 

Mit der Erfindung der Druckschrift begann die Neuzeit – ohne Gutenberg wären Luthers 99 Thesen eine Notiz an der Kirchentür geblieben, die der Küster in Wittenberg am nächsten Tag verbrannt hätte. Aber verviel­fältigt und in Umlauf gebracht, waren die Forderungen bald beim Papst in Rom angekommen und die alleinige Macht der katholi­schen Kirche gebrochen. Noch heute gilt für Juristen der Spruch Quod non legitur, non creditur: Was nicht gelesen wird, wird nicht geglaubt, beziehungsweise was nicht in den Akten steht, ist auch nicht in der Welt: Quod non est in actis non est in mundo. Das galt schon, als noch kaum ein Mensch lesen konnte. Als so gefährlich sahen die Herrschenden die Verbreitung von Wissen an, dass lange jede Druck­sache mit einem Privileg des Fürsten oder gar Königs versehen sein musste. Alles, was man zu Goethes Zeiten schwarz-weiß nach Hause tragen konnte, war der Zensur unterworfen. 

Der Buchdruck hatte die Sprache von einem Mittel der Wahrnehmung zu einer tragbaren Ware verändert. Anfang des 19. Jahrhunderts begann mit der industriellen Revolution auch die Mechanisierung des Druckens. 1814, also achtzehn Jahre vor Goethes Tod, wurde von den beiden deutschen Mechanikern König und Bauer in London die erste Rotationsdruckmaschine bei der Times aufgestellt. Mit ihr ließen sich über Nacht genügend Zeitungen drucken um ganz London zu versorgen. Noch jedoch wurde jeder Buch­stabe, jede Zeile von Hand gesetzt und zu Seiten zusammengefügt. Vor der Konstruktion der Linotype Setzmaschine durch den Ottmar Mergenthaler im Jahre 1886 gab es keine wirtschaftliche Lösung zur Beschleunigung der Satzherstellung. Auch die Herstellung von Satzschriften aus Blei wurde nun mechanisch beschleunigt. Schrift­gießereien stellten die Schriften her für den wachsenden Markt an Druckerzeugnissen.

Die allgemeine Schulpflicht hatte bereits dafür gesorgt, dass in Deutschland jedes Kind lesen und schreiben konnte. Wie bei den Mönchen in Mainz gab es auch hier (und gibt es heute noch) einen großen Unterschied zwischen geschriebenen und gedruckten Schriften. Ludwig Sütterlin, ein deutscher Grafiker und Buchgestalter, hatte 1911 im Auftrag des preußischen Kultur- und Schulministeriums die erste deutsche Einheitsschrift für den Schulunterricht entwickelt, die sich nicht an Druck­schriften, sondern an Hand­schriften orientierte, wie sie in Kanzleien und Schreibstuben geschrieben wurden. 

Gedruckte Texte wurden in Deutschland bis zum Zweiten Weltkrieg in zwei verschiedenen Schriften gesetzt. Alle deutschsprachigen aus Fraktur, alle nichtdeutschen aus Antiqua. Die dunkle, strenge gotische Schrift hatte sich auf ihrem Weg von Mainz über Straßburg, Augs­burg und Nürnberg nach Venedig mit den flüssigeren Handschriften gemischt, die aus der römischen Capitalis entstanden waren. Noch heute berufen sich unsere Druckschriften auf die Formen, die sich Ende des 16. Jahrhunderts bei den italieni­schen Druckern gefestigt hatten und dort zur Blüte gebracht wurden. Auf englisch werden die kursiven Schnitte einer Druckschrift immer noch als Italics bezeichnet.

Mit der mechanischen Satz­herstellung entstand auch der Beruf des Schriftkünstlers, der für die Umsetzung seiner Entwürfe auf Graveure, Stempel­schneider und andere Spezialisten in den Schrift­gießereien angewiesen war. Sie fertigten nicht nur die nötigen Schriften für den Buch- und Zeitungs­markt, sondern bedienten zunehmend den typografischen Zeitgeist. Das ausgehende 19. Jahrhundert sah eine Explosion von neuen Schrift­typen, denen man sehr deutlich ihre Entstehungsepoche ansah. Die Werbung hatte schnell begriffen, dass unterschiedliche Schriften sehr geeignet waren als Ausdruck und zur Unterscheidung von Marken und Produkten. 

Unter den Schriftgießereien weltweit gab es Anfang des 20. Jahrhundert einen ausgeprägtem Wettbewerb, der sich in umfangreichen, aufwendig gestalteten und gedruckten Katalogen äußerte, neben denen eine gewöhnliche Bibel verblasste.

Bis in die 1960^er waren Satz- beziehungsweise Druck­schriften an einen mechanischen Träger gebunden – ob aus Metall oder als Filmnegativ. Und immer musste die Schrift von einem physischen Träger mit Farbe aufs Papier gebracht werden, ganz wie die Handschrift. Erst die Digitalisierung machte die Schrift körperlos. Ein Buchstabe ist heute die mathe­ma­tische Beschreibung einer Kontur, deren Parameter sich durch einfache Befehle ändern lassen. Größer – kleiner, schmaler – breiter, leichter – fetter. Im Rechner entstehen die Formen, die als für uns unsichtbare Pixel auf den Bildschirm, die Drucker­­trommel oder irgendein anderes Substrat geschickt werden. 

Um eine Schrift zu entwerfen, braucht man nur einen Computer, ein Programm und im besten Fall etwas Übung. Weltweit gibt es heute etliche tausend Schrift­­ent­werfer und ‑innen, die oft ihre Entwürfe selbst verbreiten und diesen Vertriebsweg auf englisch noch immer Typefoundry, also Schrift­gießerei nennen. Das Entwerfen von Schriften ist damit demokratisiert, wie auch das Herstellen von Videos, Ton­aufnahmen und anderen medialen Ausdrucks­formen. Jeder Mensch kann sich nun auch typografisch darstellen. Die eigene Handschrift kann man gegen geringe Gebühr digitalisieren lassen. Was vor vielen tausend Jahren am Euphrat in Tontafeln geritzt wurde, sind heute TikTok Videos. 

Tröstlich oder nicht, aber trotz aller Bilderflut wird mehr geschrieben als je zuvor. Ob alles Geschriebene auch gelesen wird, sei dahingestellt. ★

Dieser Artikel ist ein Vorabdruck aus:
Updating Roland Barthes’ Mythologies (edited by Hans Leo Höger), Verlag bu,press
(Bozen / Bolzano University Press) https://bupress.unibz.it/en/­kategorie/fachbereiche/­design-und-kuenste/ – erscheint im Herbst 2024

Meine erste kleine Braun ​„Anlage“ kaufte ich mir 1968. Einen Verstärker CSV 250 und den Empfänger CE 250. Der passende Plattenspieler kam erst später dazu. Ich war damals Student der Kunstgeschichte und der Preis von DM 800 allein für den Verstärker entsprach einem Monatslohn. Ich hatte aber keinen Monatslohn, sondern schlug mich und meine kleine Familie (unser Sohn kam kurz nach der Braun Anlage dazu) mit meiner kleinen Druckerei und Aufträgen als Grafiker durch. Ich weiss nicht mehr, welche Fabel ich meiner Frau erzählte (die bis heute nicht ahnt, wieviel ich damals ausgegeben hatte) und auch nicht, woher das Geld kam. Den kleinen Laden in Charlottenburg, wo ich die Geräte im Schaufenster gesehen hatte, gibt es schon lange nicht mehr. Aufgeräumte Typografie wie auf einer Braun-Anlage hingegen mache ich immer noch.

Ich weiss noch genau, dass ich so etwas vorher nicht gesehen hatte. Bei meinen Eltern in Bonn stand in den 50ern eine Musik­truhe, wie sie damals üblich war: eine Mischung aus Kontiki-Bambusfloß und Kindersarg aus dunklem, sehr glänzendem Holz. Das passte zur Pussta-Tapete, was ich damals schon fürchterlich fand. Als ungelernter, aber nicht ungeübter Grafiker überzeugten mich die Fronten der Geräte – sie sahen aus wie eine aufgeräumte Prospektseite: man konnte sie lesen. Die Beschriftung aus Akzidenz Grotesk von Berthold passte nach Berlin, denn damals war die H. Berthold AG am Mehringdamm noch eine große Schrift­gießerei und ich hatte diese Buchstaben oft in der Hand gehabt.

Mitte der 60^er Jahre war das Grafik Design vom Übergang des Bleisatzes zum Fotosatz geprägt. Wie bei jeder neuen Entwicklung waren viele der ersten Versuche in der neuen Technik oft nett gemeint, aber schlecht gemacht. Ungewöhnliche Schriften und Seitenlayouts im Hippy-Stil brachten neuen Wind in die Gestal­tung von Werbung und kulturnahen Einrichtungen und manche Anzeigen von japanischen HiFi-Marken versuchten sich in ​„krea­tiven“ Äußerungen, aber Braun blieb bei seinem nüchternen Stil, der geprägt war vom Einfluss der Ulmer Schule, sowohl im Produkt- als auch Grafik-Design.

Mir gefiel die Überein­stimmung der ​„Fassaden­gestaltung“ der Geräte – also dessen, was wir heute als Interface Design bezeichnen – mit dem Layout der Prospekte und Produktinformationen. Es herrschte die Akzidenz Grotesk im nüchternen Layout mit schmalen, linksbündig gesetzten Spalten (was damals durchaus noch ungewöhnlich war; Flattersatz war sogar im Verdacht, anti-autoritär zu sein!), viel Weißraum und kleinen, sauberen Fotos. Mitunter hätten Produktfotos durchaus etwas größer sein können, aber Anfang der 60^er Jahre wurde noch im Buch­druck produziert und Fotos mussten als Klischees geätzt werden, was aufwendig und teuer war, denn sie wurden per Quadrat­zentimeter berechnet. Farbdruck war noch teurer und ein Luxus, der bei der Dar­stellung von fast einfarbigen Geräten kaum Mehrwert gebracht hätte. Die gedruckten Seiten waren gewissermaßen die Entsprechung der Geräte­fronten: weißes Papier statt Aluminium, knappe Informationen in einer einzigen Schriftgröße und nüchterner Anordnung. Heute, nach vielen Jahrzehnten, erscheint dieser aus den technischen und wirtschaftlichen Bedingungen entstandene Stil wieder erfrischend klar und angemessen.

Lautsprecher von Braun hätte ich auch gerne gehabt, aber das war nicht drin. Wir haben sie uns damals alle selbst gebaut – zum einen, weil das Geld nicht für die von Braun reichte, und zum anderen, weil es einen kleinen Wettbewerb gab zwischen meinen Freunden, die fast alle Musik machten und in Bands spielten. Also zimmerten wir Kisten aus Spanplatten, bauten Pappröhren als Bassausgleich ein und verschraubten Lautsprecher. Ein Kollege von der TU rechnete die Größe der Bass-Reflexröhre aus und wir dachten damals, dass unsere Boxen die tollsten waren. Die größten waren sie auf jeden Fall, denn raffinierte Schaltungen hatten wir nicht, also ent­sprach die Power dem Volumen. Anders als unsere 100-Watt-Gitarrenverstärker hatten die Braun Geräte ohnehin nur sehr geringe Ausgangsleistungen.

Mit der kleinen Anlage zog ich von Berlin nach London und wieder zurück nach Berlin, wo ich mir allmählich den Ruf als ​„Braun-Fuzzi“ erwarb. Dabei war ich nie Sammler und kann bis heute nicht alle Typenschilder auswendig. Aber immer wieder tauchte jemand auf, der bei einem Umzug oder auf dem Trödel­markt ein Braun Gerät gesehen oder sogar schon erworben hatte. Ein Schneewittchensarg war dabei, dann ältere Modelle aus den frühen 60ern, ein Weltempfänger und so fort.

Als dann 1987 die Atelier Serie als letzte Kollektion heraus­kam, musste ich sie haben. Mit zwei bei Quad überholten LE Elektro­­staten bildet sie immer noch die Anlage, die in meinem Heimbüro (sorry: home office) für Klang sorgt. Derweil habe ich einen Kollegen gefunden, der meine sechs Braun-Plattenspieler wiederherstellt und auch die teilweise verharzten Innereien aller Verstärker repariert. Natürlich sind die meisten meiner Braun Geräte in von Dieter Rams entworfenen Vitsoe Regalen untergebracht.

Immer noch überzeugen mich die Geräte durch ihre schlich­te, unaufgeregte Aufmachung. Meine Freunde haben noch ihre Marantz-Aquarien oder andere exotischen Japaner, aber ich bleibe bei Braun. Mit Dieter Rams bin ich seit seiner Zeit als Präsident des Rat für Formgebung bekannt und sogar befreundet. Für den Film über ihn von Gary Hustwit führte ich die Interviews (off-camera, wie der Fach­mann sagt).

Gerade habe ich mit meinem Kollegen Alex Roth die Schrift­familie als digitalen Font neu herausgebracht, aus der alle Braun-Prospekte der 60^er Jahre gesetzt waren und die als Beschriftung der Front­platten meinen ersten Eindruck 1968 geprägt hatten: Die Akzidenz Grotesk Serie 57 heißt bei uns Serie57. Für mich hat sich ein Kreis geschlossen. ★

Dieser Artikel ist ein Vorabdruck aus:
Braun erleben, Verlag www​.avedi​tion​.de
erscheint im Herbst 2024

The Atlantic is one of my favourite magazines in the USA: a long read, well researched and well written. They layout is classic in a pleasant way. Type is Adobe Garamond Pro. All text is justified, and there start the problems. Very long reads are set in a 2‑column layout with approx. 65 characters per line is perfect for comfortable reading. Type looks even, with no large gaps nor uneven letter­spacing. The 3‑column layout,however, already gets to look a little uneven: some lines look too loose because the hyphenation algorithm wasn’t adjusted to provide larger word spaces, opening up the space between letters instead. That can be avoided by changing the preferences, but I suspect the people doing the typesetting couldn’t be bothered to change the setting or simply don’t know that you can easily change the defaults.

This lack of attention to detail becomes more obvious with the 4‑column layout. Less than 30 characters fit into a line, resulting in every paragraph showing some very loose lines with increased letterspacing, preceded or followed by dense lines, where the space between letters has been reduced. A paragraph then looks uneven, suggesting priorities that are not intended.

The remedy is simple: disallow changes to tracking (the space between letters) – neither tighter nor looser. Allow as extremes a fairly tight minimum word space and a generously large one, plus set the hyphenation to let words be separated even after and before just two characters. In narrow columns the eye can quickly return from a hyphenated end of a line to the beginning of the next one.

The best thing to do, however, is not to use justified setting: In my more than 50 years of designing magazines, reports, books, etc, I’ve found that most authors think that serious writing needs to appear in justified setting. I don’t know whether schools of journalism teach that and I have never got a proper explanation for this tradition. Some have said that a justified line fits more characters because the words always go to the end of the line, but that is, of course, nonsense. Unjustified, range-left setting provides equal space between every word and puts the left-over space at the end of the line instead of distributing it between the words, accommodating just as many words.

I took one short paragraph and reset it. First with even tracking but varying word spaces, then unjustified. In that setting, all words are tracked evenly and word spaces are the same throughout. In a short column like this, we anticipate the end of the line and our eyes go to the beginning of the next line without any interruption even when there is a little gap at the end of the line.

The example shown above can, however, be a little misleading, because the first paragraph is reproduced from the printed magazine, showing the effect of ink spread where the type hits the paper, resulting in heavier colour and thus making the type look bigger. The other two columns were set in InDesign and exported as jpegs, without going from digital to analog and back. I still think it makes my point: there is no reason to be afraid of unjustified setting. The two columns do run one line longer, but over a whole page that would probably not make much of a difference. The columns just look better.

Another tip: InDesign has a feature which lets you ​“hang” hyphens, full points, commas, etc out to the right or left – just a little, making the edge of the column look more even – in other words: properly justified. The second column shows the result of that tweak.

As Mies van der Rohe said: God is in the details. It’s the little things that make a difference, especially in typography. It doesn’t take much extra effort, just a little atten­tion, and will please the reader. ★

Before the invention of writing, men lived in an acoustic world, left to their dark thoughts.
Mankind was only freed from its ignorance with the invention of writing.

The goose quill meant that speaking had an end, as Marshall McLuhan put it. Mystery was abolished, now there were buildings and cities, streets and armies, bureaucracy. Civilization began, the step from the darkness of prehistory into the light of consciousness.

The invention of movable type was the next major leap in the development. What up until then an individual could only write once, or at best chisel in stone, was now applicable anywhere and everywhere. The separation of action and function was the condition for most of the developments of the modern age; individualism, democracy, protestantism, capitalism, and nationalism. The technology of printing and typesetting has fundamentally altered our habits of perception. 

The general term typography refers to the functions of typeface design and the arrangement of type and other elements on a page. This page can also be a computer screen or the wall of a building. Up until the introduction of mechanized typesetting, compositors were the only typographers: they were also responsible for designing the pages.

The history of typography is both a history of technology and of culture. Each technical development left its trace in design and in the typographic layout. The classification of typefaces employs the same descriptions as the ones we use for stylistic periods in architecture. 

Printing using movable characters originated in China in the early 11^th century. The characters were made of clay, and thus not particularly durable. 200 years later in Korea entire pages were cut in wood or cast in metal. Although this meant type was reproducible, each page could only be used once. It was the goldsmith Johannes Gutenberg (ca. 1398 – 1468) who first had the idea of cutting single letters as steel punches. These were stamped into metal to make moulds, which, in turn, were filled with a soft metal. Working in Mainz, around 1450, Gutenberg also developed the tools for type founding, which remained in use almost unchanged until the mid 19^th century, and the first printing press. It consisted of a screw press, like those used to press grapes. The thin liquid inks which had been used to print wooden panels weren’t right for printing lead characters. Gutenberg had to invent an emulsion using linseed oil and soot which was sufficiently thick and dried quickly. Each sheet of paper had to be inserted and removed by hand. It wasn’t until 1814 that the Times became the first newspaper in the world to be printed on a steam-powered press made by the German mechanics Koenig & Bauer, allowing the production of up to 1100 copies per hour. Twenty years later the industrial manufacture of type using casting machines would also become a practical reality, culminating in the introduction of the Linotype machine in 1886, invented by Ottmar Mergenthaler (1854 – 1899). This machine produced lines of type (!) for newspapers and book publishers. It survived in various forms into the 1970s, when it was replaced by photosetting machines. 

Gutenberg’s first printed bible was an attempt at imitating the contemporary style of handwriting without making the mechanical origin of the print obvious. He cut several hundred ligatures that made it possible to set each line at the same width so that the reading flow would not be interrupted by varied word spacing. The type used in the Gutenberg bible was the narrow, steep Gothic script. In Germany tall, narrow Gothic arches were being built, whose shapes were reflected in type. However, in Italy the shapes of the Renaissance were already predominant. 

The punchcutters in Italy of the late 15^th fifteenth century, such as Nicolas Jenson (1420 – 1480) or Aldus Manutius (1449 – 1515), based the design of their lowercase characters on the cursive humanistic minuscule. Due to their geographic and historical origin they’re classified as Venetian Renaissance Antiqua. Like it still is to this day, the uppercase was modelled on the unrivalled Roman Capitalis, as represented on the Trajan column in Rome. Named after a cardinal, Bembo (ca. 1495) by Aldus Manutius and his punch­cutter Francesco Griffo (1449 – 1518) marks the end of the development and is the prototype for Renaissance Antiqua of Italian origin. It took several centuries for the cursive forms to be integrated into complete type families. To this day they are known in English as Italics.

The most famous representative of the French Renaissance Antiqua was the Parisian punchcutter Claude Garamond (1499 – 1561). He and his contemporary Robert Granjon (1513 – 1589) are the originators of the typefaces described as Garamonds which became the most common book faces around 1600, which they remain today.

At the beginning of the seventeenth 17^th century the Netherlands became the centre for type founding. The types at the height of the Baroque period are more casual, more robust and therefore more functional than the Renaissance typefaces. Towards the end of the 17^th century punchcutters were becoming increasingly influenced by the shapes of contemporary copper engravings. The contrast between stem and hairline became more pronounced, letters looked more clinical, their shapes more precise. The punchcutters’ work was deeply influenced by Cartesian thinking and improved tools for punchcutting and type founding, in addition to higher quality paper available for setting, thanks to superior printing machines. The typefaces of William Caslon (1692 – 1766) re­present the peak of this development. His designs may not be particularly innovative or original but so pragmatically British that they soon spread successfully. Britain’s expansion as a colonial power certainly helped the matter, leading to the very Declaration of Independence of the United States of America actually being set in Caslon. The end of this period is marked by John Baskerville (1706 – 1775), a skilled tombstone engraver in Birmingham who greatly influenced the classical typeface designers with his type, rich in contrast and itself influenced by copper engraving. 

Classicism in typography, as in architecture, was never very inclined toward luxurious adornment. The ideals of the Enlightenment also required clarity and generosity of typography. Symmetry and reduction were the overriding principles of design. Thanks to the ability to print larger forms with higher precision, books became bigger (the first all-iron Stanhope press was built in 1800). Technology allowed serifs to be designed very delicately and express a lot of detail in the characters. Constructing letters with compass and ruler may have led to the desired ideal shapes, but the typefaces were actually harder to read than their Renaissance and Baroque predecessors.

Giovanni Battista (‘Giambattista’) Bodoni (1740 – 1813) was called the King of Printers and Printer of Kings. Bodoni devised and cut 270 different alphabets, for which he had to engrave some 55.000 steel punches by hand. Critics have described Bodoni’s typefaces as the expression of feudalism, even though most of them were created long after the French Revolution. He stayed away from politics, although his books were kept in Napoleon Bonaparte’s own private library. There was, however, criticism of Bodoni’s typefaces at the time – particularly in France where he had competitors who deemed themselves sole re­presentatives of classicism in typography. The English artist, draughtsman, type designer and woodcutter William Morris complained about the coldness and poor legibility of the typefaces from Parma. Bodoni himself, as far as his typefaces were concerned, was not especially inclined towards any theories. He created what he considered to be beautiful and useful. His typography is determined by the maxim ​“A book becomes exemplary when the purity of the simple beauty of the type is most effective”.

The beginning of the industrial revolution in the early 19^th nineteenth century led to different production requirements, and with that came an overproduction of goods. Typefaces from previous centuries were neither technically nor formally suitable for the large-format printing of product and services advertisements. Now headlines had to scream and mercilessly use up what little space there was. Fast steam-powered printing machines like the press for the Times (1814) enabled large editions to be printed quickly, but weren’t too gentle on the printed material. The platen presses in particular, first introduced by Isaak Adam in Boston in 1830, really damaged the fine lines of classicist typefaces.

Nonexistent serifs can’t break off, while bold serifs withstand printing better. Sans serif typefaces also take up less space while slab serif letters appear loud and impressive. The first sans serif typeface appeared in 1816 in a catalogue from the Caslon type foundry called Egyptian of all things. We actually use that term to describe slab serif typefaces, while Figgins still called a serif an Antique. The term Egyptian reflects the fashion of the time, as there had been a craze for all things Egyptian in England only a few years previously. In the Treaty of Amiens of 1802 Napoleon ceded Egypt to the British, who promptly sent the first pieces of booty from the Nile to London. Like every other fashion, it soon influenced the output of the type foundries. 

Typography soon changed to fit the new advertisement typefaces. Simple pure beauty, as Bodoni had stipulated a few years before, was no longer in demand. Loudness, size, and variety were instead the order of the day. White space became expensive, sheets had to be crammed full of print up to the edges. Newspapers had narrow columns in order to squeeze many different topics onto one page, so narrower, more robust typefaces were cut for that purpose. Technology kept up with the increasingly diverse contents of printed material. Around 1829 Firmin Didot in Paris introduced the stereotype, a process of producing letterpress plates by making a mould of a complete page and then casting it in an alloy. The use of several casts made larger print runs possible and meant less wear for the original fonts. In 1838 Moritz Hermann von Jacobi invented galvanizing, with which artwork such as woodcuts could be ​“lifted” and then copied to make a durable block. Typographers now had to integrate illustrations into their pages because text and image were easily printable in one forme. The invention of the process block in 1840 made it possible to insert handwritten typefaces or company logos into the page for printing. Around the end of the century, the invention of the halftone screen by Meisenbach meant that photographs could also be reproduced.

Typography toward the end of the 19^th century could graciously be called eclectic. Everything was technically possible, so everything that could be done was done. The Arts & Crafts movement arose in England as a reaction to the historicism of the Victorian era and the machine-made products of the Industrial Revolution. William Morris (1834−1896) founded the Kelmscott Press in Hammersmith near London in 1891 in order to produce high quality books. He designed some typefaces of his own because he found all of the existing ones too cold and insipid (see Bodoni). His Golden Type was inspired by the early Venetian printer Nicolas Jenson. The ornamentation followed mediaeval woodcuts. The handmade approach to materials and the simplicity of form influenced movements such as Art Nouveau, the Vienna Secession, the Deutscher Werkbund, and even Bauhaus. A new kind of book art also developed in Germany. Fritz Helmut Ehmcke (1878−1965) and Friedrich Wilhelm Kleukens (1878 – 1956) were young type designers before the First World War. They rejected both the ornate style of Art Nouveau and the late classicism that was equally prevalent at the time. Their idea of a modern, tidy typographic design was more akin to the ideal of the Renaissance. This outlook was shared by the most important teachers of type and typography, who were at the same time typeface designers. Walter Tiemann (1876 – 1951) taught at Leipzig, F. H. Schneidler (1882 – 1956) at Stuttgart, and Rudolf Koch (1876 – 1934) at Offenbach. Their ideas remained significant until after the Second World War. 

Manufacturing techniques around this time determined both the design and production of type. Just one year after the Linotype, the Lanston Monotype hit the market, invented by Tolbert Lanston. It cast single letters and was operated by a keyboard. Typographic design was thus subject to the changing parameters of typesetting machines. New typefaces had to be designed that could match the technical requirements of the new machines as well as the prevailing fashions, which changed ever more regularly due to the increasingly shorter period between the design and production of type. The pantograph enabled engraved designs of any size to be duplicated from a draft, even if some aesthetic compromises had to be made. In the USA William Leavenworth constructed the first cutter for wooden type characters in 1834 to meet the huge demand for large wooden poster fonts used for billboards. 

The first machine for engraving steel punches was patented by Lynn Boyd Benton (1844 – 1932) in 1885, just at the right time to develop the typefaces the market demanded. Monotype and Linotype were responsible for many reissues of classic typefaces which later served as drafts for the phototypesetting of the 1960s and the first generation of digital typesetting machines in the 80s. Times New Roman, the most famous of all Antiquas, was designed by Stanley Morison (1889 – 1967) and Victor Lardent in 1932 at Monotype in England. It was based on Plantin, which F. H. Pierpont had already designed in 1913, also for Monotype, and which in turn drew on Dutch Baroque typefaces of the 17^th seven­teenth Century.

There was a new form of type being used at the start of the 20^th twentieth Century, although it still played a minor role. To get a taste of how unusual and alien this new type seemed at the time, we need only note the description ​“Grotesk”, given to these typefaces on their first appearance at the start of the Industrial Revolution in the early 19^th nineteenth Century. In the USA the sans serif typefaces were deemed equally strange, earning them the name ​“Gothic”. In Germany, Akzidenz Grotesk, first released in a single weight in Berlin in 1896, is regarded as the mother of its genre. Its roots are fairly obscure, but one of its siblings was Royal Grotesk, made in the 1880s at Ferd. Theinhardt. Meanwhile in the USA, in 1904, Morris Fuller Benton (1872 – 1948) created Franklin Gothic, which could be considered its American counterpart. Benton was responsible for many other classic typefaces including Garamond, Bodoni, Cheltenham, Century, News Gothic, Bank Gothic, Clearface, and Cloister.

Sans serif typefaces such as Akzidenz Grotesk and Franklin Gothic trace back to the classicist ideal. Univers, designed by Adrian Frutiger (1928 – 2015) and released in 1957, the first typeface to be systematically constructed and named as a family, also adheres to this model. Frutiger’s later design of a classicist Antiqua, Centennial, is therefore also a Univers with serifs. 

The sans serifs from England conform to the Renaissance model, the best known being Gill Sans by Eric Gill (1882 – 1940) from 1928, which coined the term for these typefaces in English. It was only in the 90s that there was a major reemergence of sans serif faces, which — like FF Meta by Erik Spiekermann — recall Syntax by Hans Eduard Meier (1922 – 2014), released in 1969. In the Netherlands in particular this kind of typeface design is strongly encouraged. It is closely linked to the movement of the hand when writing, thereby creating rhythm and contrast. This direction is the most common among contemporary designs. 

Sans serif typeface design can also be defined by its pure geometric forms. In the 1920s every major type foundry in Germany had such a Grotesk on offer. The most successful of these typefaces was Futura by Paul Renner (1878 – 1956), released by Bauer in 1928. Even though Futura exactly fit the kind of typeface for the modern age espoused by the Bauhaus representatives of Elementary Typography, it came out too late to be used for the school’s typesetting.

In the Twenties typography became an important discipline because it merged communication and expression. Dadaists like Kurt Schwitters didn’t set their work in cumbersome lead type, but made montages of prints, photos, and words on shreds of paper. On the other hand De Stijl in the Netherlands and Moholy-Nagy, Joost Schmidt, and Herbert Bayer of the Bauhaus used typefaces, colours and halftone images for book pages, catalogues, and posters. The artist El Lissitzky (1890 – 1941) was the Soviet cultural delegate in Weimar. There he developed his form of expression, the ​“typophoto”, and strongly influenced the Bauhaus colleagues and De Stijl. In 1925 a young Jan Tschichold (1902 – 1974) published an essay (using the first name of Iwan) in a special edition of ​‘Typographische Mitteilungen’ (Typographic News) under the title ​‘Elementary Typography.’ This was his manifest for a ​“New Typography“. In 1933 he emigrated to Switzerland whereupon he soon vehemently rejected the tenets of the New Typography. He returned to the traditional way, promoting the use of older Antiqua typefaces and the symmetric arrangement of page elements, which he had previously dismissed as outdated. 

After the end of the Second World War, Swiss graphic design became the prevailing trendsetter, first spreading from Zurich to Germany and then throughout the world. The search for a rational and straightforward typeface led most graphic designers to Akzidenz Grotesk, cast and sold by Berthold in Berlin. The Haas’sche type foundry in Münchenstein had its Haas Grotesk on offer, which could be traced back to Scheltersche Grotesk by Schelter & Giesecke in Leipzig. Scheltersche was the font which lay in the cases at the Bauhaus workshops and in which much of the material was set that represented the eponymous style. It nevertheless didn’t quite match the expectations of designers who were looking for a typeface free of historical ballast and which didn’t push its way to the foreground.

The success of Akzidenz Grotesk prompted Eduard Hofmann, business director at Haas, to commission his colleague Miedinger to finalise sketches for a typeface that would compete in the same market. The Haas’sche type foundry belonged to D. Stempel AG in Frankfurt, which in turn was owned by Linotype. It was Stempel who suggested they find a popular name to help sell the new typeface. As there were sewing machines and an insurance company already using the name Helvetia (Switzerland), Hoffmann suggested Helvetica, meaning ​“Swiss”. It was released as Helvetica in 1957, the same year as Univers. That year also saw the Treaty of Rome and the Citroën DS.

The featureless typeface became world famous in the mid 60s, particularly as American businesses sought to lend themselves an air of modernity and cosmopolitanism by adopting it as their company typeface. It was no surprise then that it was an American who saw to it that Helvetica would become the standard typeface for the new tool of the graphic industry. In 1984 Steve Jobs selected the thirteen fonts to be installed on the first Apple laser printer. Among them Helvetica was the neutral, objective business font, with which one couldn’t go wrong.

The ironic thing is that most computers don’t have the original but the fake. In order to save license fees, Microsoft installed a clone in 1990 which has the same widths as Helvetica and – like all imitations – is formally inferior. But it can be found under the name Arial in all font menus and has thus become the most used system font.

The type foundries had already once reworked the classic typefaces for new typesetting systems. They had to do so again in the late 60s, when the first phototypesetting machines came on the market. The designs were no longer cut in steel and cast in lead, but drawn and transferred photographically onto carriers from which each letter was projected onto film. Seeing as the new material was not subject to any mechanical limitations, typeface designers were free from creative restrictions. Nowadays we can compare many of the 70s seventies typefaces with typography toward the end of the 19^th nineteenth Century. The International Typeface Corporation ITC in New York did not only release many typefaces which reflected the spirit of advertising on Madison Avenue, they also had a new distribution model. Up until then all manufacturers of typesetting systems had their own type formats which wouldn’t work on their competitors’ machines. That gave graphic designers and typographers an incentive to favour one particular system because it exclusively offered certain fonts. At the same time it allowed many companies to prosper by either copying typefaces and selling poor imitations cheaply or altering them slightly and releasing them under different names. Now ITC delivered artwork to all manufacturers who paid license fees, and consequently these were the only fonts that were available on all machines. 

Phototypesetting systems were still so complicated to use and so dear that a whole industry of layout typesetters emerged, selling their know-how at lucrative prices. At least the device operators were still skilled typesetters who had learnt the rules and would apply a certain standard to their intermediate product. Graphic designers, on the other hand, were keen to intervene and add their mark before sending the final artwork to the printers.

Phototypesetting fonts could be made to any size and placed in any position on a page by paper- or film make-up. The right angle was no longer all-important for the layout. For the design hippies of the flower power era this was excellent news.

The end of the design process always required a piece of film from which the printing plate was exposed. For this, apart from the typesetter, a reproduction photographer was required to capture the images on film, a lithographer or finished artist to copy together type and images for each individual colour, and graphic designers to have the ideas and specify layouts.

This mode of production became outdated virtually from one day to the next in the mid 80s eighties with the invention of Adobe’s page description language PostScript by John Warnock (1940 – 2023) and Chuck Geschke (1939 – 2021). This computer language allows every point on a page to be defined and marked to within a thousandth of a millimeter. Be it image, graphic element, or type, everything is composed of tiny pixels that are transferred to paper, film or printing plate by laser beam or ink jet.

The appearance of the Apple Macintosh along with the first laser typesetter by Linotype established desktop publishing, DTP. The job description of typesetters transformed into that of digital media designer. Graphic designers today no longer merely need to have ideas and visualize them, instead they are usually also responsible for the entire page, which they hand over ready to print and which goes to the printing plate without film exposure or any other final visual manifestation involved. The end of the division of labour meant that much expertise disappeared and new generations of designers had learn the rules all over again. A phase of deconstruction ensued in the mid 90s, when all the old rules were put into question without any new ones to replace them. Like punk in the 70s, the grunge movement of the time found its typographic expression in the wild splicing together of illegible spontaneous typefaces, blurry images and overlapping areas and backgrounds. Software such as Photoshop created the conditions in which the distinction between image and type could disappear. 

Along with the liberation of page design from any kind of mechanical constraint, there’s the possibility of manipulating any of the fonts available in Postscript format. Now anyone can become a type designer, providing they can pay for one of the programs with which letters can be drawn and fonts produced.

Like in all previous phases of typographic history, after these developments it took a while for new rules to be developed (which surprisingly often turned out identical to the traditional ones) and readers and users of visual communications were put back into the focus of design activities. In the mid 80s the fonts for the new format were converted — initially by the traditional type manufacturers — without which no newspapers, magazines or books can be published. The first versions suffered from teething problems, and have since all been reworked. 

Even young type designers couldn’t get enough of the new possibilities in the beginning. Graphic designers like Neville Brody or David Carson oriented their typefaces and layouts according to the Zeitgeist, erasing the separation of image and type. They painted digitally. In The Hague in 1990 Erik van Blokland and Just van Rossum programmed the first typeface with a random generator that changed its outlines each time it was printed. Beowulf was the first random font, and its dirty edges were an antidote to the perfect but often soulless Postscript fonts. In 1986 the type designer Zuzana Licko from Berkeley used the rough pixels of early screen displays to make typefaces that merrily show off their crude outlines. She also ended up returning to the classics and designed her version of Baskerville under the name of Mrs Eaves – John Baskerville’s housekeeper. Well-established designers like Adrian Frutiger and Hermann Zapf oversaw the redigitalization of their old typefaces, while masters like Matthew Carter designed fonts for the computer screen on that medium. His Georgia is not only perfectly legible on screen but can also stand up to the classics as a proper text face. 

In 1988, Erik Spiekermann started FontShop, the first independent distributor of fonts. They offered fonts from many freelance designers as well as small digital ​“foundries”. FontShop also curated their own label, FontFont, as ​“type for designers by designers”. His own FF Meta heralded the arrival of a new kind of sans serif which anticipated the trends of that decade and was called ​“the Helvetica of the 90s”.

The new distribution model enabled freelance type-designers to bring their own designs to market without the help (or interference) of large companies. Innovation now came mostly from those individuals who often had to support their typedesign activities with ​“normal” design work. This brought the design of typefaces closer to the normal practise of communication design, increasing type’s visibility and acceptance.

Nearly all major brands now have their own typefaces. Newspapers and magazines can have special typefaces designed for them which not only reinforce their brands but may be specifically tailored to suit production requirements such as paper or printing machines, and even match the readers’ habits and expectations. 

Huge font clans with over 144 members offer every kind of possible use, even for complex printing matter. Most new text typefaces are offered with at least seven weights, a feature enabled by software for interpolating between the thinnest and the heaviest weight. Variable fonts are the latest development, giving designers more choices than most can handle.

At the start of the 21^st twenty-first century better tools exist than ever for the design of printed matter and other media. The differences between traditional book typography, functional design concepts and sophisticated, colourful advertisements are no longer the guiding factor, but rather the synthesis of these varying strands. Different typefaces may be mixed, justified type exists alongside ragged type, freeform page layout alongside strict grid systems. And for headlines, packaging, flyers and other forms of disposable printed matter, websites and videos, there are more than 250,000 typefaces that are sold or given away as fonts. And if it isn’t legible, it serves to boost the creative expression of its originators.

Technical possibilities today mean that anyone with a PC and a printer can be a typographer, programmer, typesetter, designer, lithographer, print technician, editor and corrector. Business has also changed together with production. Alongside the major manufacturers such as Adobe and Monotype – which has bought up every other successful digital foundry – there are now hundreds of tiny digital foundries that often have no more than a couple of fonts and a website. Everyone is in competition with one another, but almost everyone gets along. Google Fonts is another major player, offering ​“libre” fonts – you don’t pay a license fee, but Google gets a look at your font server data. 

Designers have great choices: there have never been such useful tools for creating good typography. Nor so few excuses for doing something badly. ★

This article needs more illustrations. Not every reader will be able to visualize every typeface, machine or person mentioned.
I’ve added that to my list …

This new typeface is neither a revival nor a reworking of an old type. It is a discovery – or rather a rediscovery. 

Of course I had seen Akzidenz Grotesk Serie 57 in the Berthold specimens and knew that the weights from 14 point onwards looked different from the smaller text weights, which had been made available for the Linotype. But I had never thought about the design process, even though 1957 was such an important year for typography: Helvetica, Univers! 

We do know that the first publication of a hot metal typeface rarely marks the beginning nor the end of a years-long process of development, but there must have been a reason why Günter Gerhard Lange chose exactly this year to name the face. 

The design of the text sizes for machine setting was not changed, only the widths were adapted for the Linotype system. They were available as early as 1957 and could be combined with the Akzidenz Grotesk weights for handsetting. But the spirit of the times wanted more of a system: the members of the AG family had never been coordinated, they had just come together over decades. Adrian Frutiger’s Univers, on the other hand, was designed as a system: tidy, comprehensive, modern, while Neue Haas Grotesk was not yet called Helvetica but had been planned to end the dominance of AG.

In 1959, AG 57 sizes from 14 to 48 point were released. GGL had caught the spirit of the times and tidied up, smoothed out and simplified the youngest child of the family. Unfortunately, it was never made into a complete family of faces. Until we discovered a mis-labelled case with AG 57 in 16 and 20 point

The neue Serie57® is not a revival, but a new digital typeface. It is dedicated to Günter Gerhard Lange, my teacher and role model. 

We printed a 64-page brochure describing the development process from the first digital version to the complete family which can be ordered from Alex Roth’s website here:

Our friend Stefan Nitzsche made a short video: