Notes on typography – articles from the archive
Scholarly and beautiful
Frederic W. Goudy’s 1918 book on typography
Frederic W. Goudy was one of the most prolific type designers of the twentieth century. At a time when Europe was contending with social, technical and cultural revolution, Goudy remained an uncompromising and unapologetic defender of the classical typographic faith. (See ‘Goudy, the good ol’ boy’, Matthew Carter’s review of D. J. R. Bruckner’s biography, in Eye 3.)
His life’s work revolved around perfecting the roman letterform and railed against the increasing mechanisation of rampant early twentieth-century capitalism. Depending on the strictness of the typographic classification system, Goudy is credited with anything between 80 and 120 distinct type designs. He saw himself initially as a titling designer, so it is no sleight of hand that he classified an italic design as a distinct face.
Goudy’s The Alphabet: fifteen interpretative designs, published in 1918 in the USA and Britain, is an excellent account of both the history of the profession and the man. Its beauty as a piece of publishing is only surpassed by the scholarly nature of the work.
Above: Black hardback cover with gold foil embossed symbol including each letter of the alphabet.
Above: Frontispiece is in gothic lettering from c. fifteenth century manuscript. Title page, the capital ‘A’ is a Lombardic capital.
Below: Left page is text from the Arch of Titus at Rome (AD 72) and is set in Goudy’s ‘Forum’ capitals. Chapter 1 with ornamental capital ‘A’.
Above: Chapter 3 shows Lombardic capitals (fourth century) illustrating the rise of national ‘hands’ with the decline of the Roman Empire. Lombardic capitals developed from northern Italy.
Below: Chapter 7 introduces the book plates and a description of each letterform.
Below: Plates show ‘A’, ‘Z’ and ‘&’ in the following letterforms: Trajan column, Slanted pen, Blackletter capital, Lombardic Gothic versal, Italian round-hand minuscule, Blackletter minuscule, the second type of Sweynheym and Pannartz, Jenson, Kennerly (Goudy), Caslon and Bodoni.
The book was typeset by Bertha M. Goudy (Goudy’s wife) at The Village Press, New York. Typefaces were designed by Goudy and plates and illustrations by The Walker Engraving Co.
First published in Eye.com
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Birth of a typeface
A sketchbook preview of Jeremy Tankard’s new type family Fenland
After almost twenty years working in graphic design and a studious attitude to the subject of design and typography, I thought I understood type. That was until a three-hour conversation with British type designer Jeremy Tankard convinced me otherwise. His enthusiasm about type is more than matched by the depth of his knowledge on the subject. He peppered our discussion with historical references, noted individual contributions and gave insights into contemporary problems still to be resolved. He comes across as a one-man typographic tour de force. The conversation was instigated by my excitement at the forthcoming release on 19 March of Tankard’s latest type family, Fenland.
The release coincides with a launch party and exhibition at the Kemistry Gallery, London and will show his sources of inspiration and the development of the typeface through thirteen A1 typographic panels. Parties and exhibitions to celebrate the release of a new type family are rare, but if anyone deserves to throw one it is the consistently productive and innovative Tankard.
The idea behind Fenland has contemporary relevance but is firmly rooted in historical practice. Considering a typographic conundrum – is a pen-written structure necessary to produce a typeface intended for text use? – it follows that if we are increasingly reading on screen, a calligraphic metaphor may not be appropriate or relevant for modern type design.
Getting even virtual access to Tankard’s notebooks is an exciting and illuminating experience. We can see in his sketches the progressive development of ideas on form but also the questioning of received notions. Particularly strong is the question of the degradation of type, both natural and manufactured, and the impact these occurrences have on our understanding of a typeface’s structure and form. For Tankard it is ‘how these concepts can ignite a fresh approach to a lettershape’s construction.’
Through Fenland, Tankard is questioning some fundamental typographic design criteria. In the latter stages of his notebooks, we see him overturn the convention of conjoining thick and thin strokes. As he notes: ‘thicks can join thicks as long as there is relief somewhere.’
As Tankard would have it, ‘in order to balance the pressure across the typeface … in order to maintain a rhythm and sparkle to the text setting, something has to give – there needs to be “relief” of the “pressure” within the shape and across the typeface, otherwise you end up with an unbalanced collection of elements.’
How close these early sketches are to the final rendering of the Fenland family we will know soon enough, but whatever the answer, the insights they offer into the still much misunderstood world of type design is thanks to the dedicated Jeremy Tankard.
Tankard’s new type family Fenland questions the ‘calligraphic metaphor’.
The launch party for Jeremy Tankard’s new type family was packed to capacity with gallery regulars and friends and colleagues of the designer.
While busy private views in London galleries are not that unusual, what set this one apart was the atmosphere and the excited buzz of guests poking, pointing and poring over the results of Tankard’s labour.
The exhibition matter offered more than oversized specimen sheets, and there was a welcome lack of patronising posters suggesting how to use Fenland. The exhibition panels assumed that the viewer was interested, capable and engaged.
The success of the launch was partly due to good curatorial thinking, but more because the idea behind Fenland is also a critique of mainstream contemporary type design. The target in Tankard’s sights is the prevalence of the calligraphic metaphor: ‘We read printed text. We read shapes described by pixels. So what purpose does the pen have in their construction?’ he asks.
In the weeks following the launch, considered reactions continued on type forums online. While there was overall praise for Tankard, Fenland had its share of detractors. Some questioned the legitimacy of Tankard’s rejection of the calligraphic metaphor as the only approach to type design, while others asked, ‘what’s the big deal?’ in response to his final letterforms. Both views are too one-sided. A more fruitful line of enquiry is to be found in conjoining both questions of idea and form. Tankard met this head-on through Fenland.
Behind Fenland’s beautiful shapes lie anger and disappointment with much of contemporary type design, with its backward-looking type revivals, soft rounded sans and calligraphic rhetoric.‘Fenland began as a way to find new shapes that didn’t rely on the usual method of structure,’ Tankard writes. ‘The constraints of what makes a text typeface work are still the same; these could include rhythm, pattern, texture and balance. As long as this is respected then how can a shape be constructed in a fresh way?’
Asking such questions should be integral to the design process, but the market seems to tell another story. Fenland, in this respect, is something of an antidote. Tankard says, ‘a fundamental question … deserves more than a cosmetic answer’.
First published in Eye.com
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The New Art School Rules!
Design Manchester 19. Bury Museum & Sculpture Centre, Moss Street, Bury BL9 0DR, UK. 2019.
‘The New Art School Rules!’ – 121 type-based images designed by current practitioners. The brief to each contributor was to express an enduring maxim from the designer’s experience that might inspire and inform others: it is a ‘collective manifesto’ for the next generation.
The collection – curated by John Rooney, Malcolm Garrett, Kat Au and John Owens – provides something of a barometer of concerns for contemporary practitioners. It also serves as a platform for discussion and debate for designers about design, without infantilising ideological parameters such as ‘difference’, ‘sustainability’, ‘identity’ and ‘tolerance’, which speak of an audience that is in need of social re-education.
We live in changing, challenging and exciting times. While designers must engage with political and social issues, they cannot afford to be slaves to them. Therefore, a better and clearer understanding of the role of design and the designer is urgent. The exhibition asks us to consider commonality and convergence. It does not require us to wade through ideological impositions mentioned above, as so many ‘design’ events do today, before we get to actual design issues. The politicisation of design permeates discourse, writing and events. It is a problem our elite institutions have so much to answer for.
In ‘The New Art School Rules!’ we can, unsurprisingly, identify familiar and important themes that emerge from many of the contributions, including: ‘play’, ‘rule-breaking’, ‘critical practice’, ‘intellectual approach’, ‘craft’ and ‘collaboration’. But there are others that don’t fit and require unpacking. It is the sheer range of intelligent insights and diverse formal approaches that make this collection dynamic and vital. Many of the ‘Rules’ deserve studious engagement and need time to percolate – longer than the show itself can allow.
We see pieces that are ‘hand-crafted’ but are far from typographic or painterly abstractions. ‘Ask’, by Jenni Bennett is direct, unambiguous and honest in the extreme. Marion Deuchars’s, ‘Learn Something’ is a painterly typographic piece that petitions us to engage with other creative pursuits to improve our own – her lettering is beautifully drawn and perfectly balanced. Patrick Murphy’s ‘Dsegin int’s waht yuo see’ is a witty typographic conundrum; ‘Absorb’ by Chris Clarke is unforgettable – a cryptic, slow-burning presentation of an important design attribute. There is a wealth of approaches to form: pictorial, diagrammatic, abstraction, minimalist and conceptual pieces. One such conceptual work – ‘Give yourself space to think’ by Josef Minta – absolutely nails the brief and goes beyond it to capture the essence of the exhibition.
Minta’s is an important rule. The message is direct while the form adds depth to its meaning. A perfect synthesis of text and image. The Planning Unit’s ‘DIP’ (Do It Properly) reminds us that graphic design is a craft. Some of the contributions are not without fault, but as a collection, this series of typographic images is challenging, considered and a necessary intervention in the design landscape. For some, the exhibition’s design-centrism will prove challenging – but it is precisely what we need. A universal and essentialist approach to the practice of graphic design – concepts sadly missing in much design discourse – are prerequisites for engagement with a mass audience, if we believe the masses to be active participants rather than empty vessels.
The exhibition is timely, the concept urgent – it deserves a wide audience. It also needs a life beyond Design Manchester 19 Festival and hopefully, it gets one – we need debate, dissent and new rules of engagement about design; more than ever.
First published in Eye.com
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