Function and Form: Exploring and Expanding the Parameters of Expressive Typography

THIS MASTER’S THESIS IS THE CULMINATION OF MY GRADUATE STUDIES AT THE PRATT INSTITUTEIN THE FIELD OF COMMUNICATIONS DESIGN.

SPRING 2011PROFESSOR TONY DI SPIGNA

Very big thanks to Seymour Chwast, Ed Fella, Alan Peckolick, GradComD, W18 studios, Village Copier, the Hollywood Diner, the Greenwich Treehouse, K Dog and Dunebuggy Café, Tillie’s of Brooklyn, Flatbush Latin Grill, Bergen Bagels, Wai Ling/Fresco Tortillas II, SeamlessWeb, Blizzageddon 2010, Red Bull, Nespresso, Google Reader, internet cats, actual cats, Netflix Instant, Animal Planet, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, Family Guy, Mom, Dad, Nick, Other Nick, and Tony.

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

BACKGROUNDEarly Examples

The Turn Of The Century: From Presentation to ExpressionModern Typography: Expression and Abstraction

The 1950s to Today

DIALOGUEFunctional Typography: A Brief Overview

The Argument for FunctionalismThe Argument for Expressive TypographyThe Limitations of Expressive Typography

A Further Nuance: Separating Legibility and ReadabilityAssessing the Dialogue

Conclusions

NEW DIRECTIONSExamples and Inspiration

Moving Forward

2

6141824

34383941414343

4852

INTRODUCTION

The advent of written language is considered one of the most – perhaps the most – significant utilitarian innovations in the history of human

communication. Yet, even looking toward the very outset of the development of writing, it is clear that letterforms and alphabets have never existed as purely functional elements. Nearly as soon as written language emerged, those responsible for producing written documents began using written forms as

explored the expressive potential of letterforms. Today, it seems that words and letters have been deconstructed, distressed, arranged, and rearranged in every way imaginable. However, these many expressive typographic experiments exist alongside an equally large body of crisp, clean designs – designs that rely on smooth bodies of Helvetica and balanced columns of text to communicate their message. While some designers have sought to push the artistic boundaries of typography, others have opted to

The historical dialogue among designers and critics regarding the expressive use of typography contains a wide range of opinions concerning the essential function of type and the ideal ways in which this function can be achieved.

artistic and graphic elements, and not simply as communicative tools. After all, the earliest alphabetic systems – Mesopotamian cuneiform, Egyptian hierogyphics, and Chinese calligraphic symbols, for instance – are drawn directly from pictographic illustrations of the words and sounds they are intended to represent. Even after these typographic systems were simplified, losing their directly pictographic nature and evolving into the alphabets we use today, they have continued to be used in a decorative manner.

From the elaborate first initials seen in the illuminated Celtic scrolls of the Christian period to Herb Lubalin’s highly abstracted layouts for Avant Garde magazine, we can see that artists and designers throughout history have

let it serve a purely utilitarian purpose. It would seem that, for every expressive typographic design that is created, one exists that is as unexpressive as possible. Regarding the artistic potential of typography, two very polarized schools of thought have emerged.

The historical dialogue among designers and critics regarding the expressive use of typography contains a wide range of opinions concerning the essential function of type and the ideal ways in which this function can be achieved. On one side of the debate are Beatrice Warde’s “crystal goblet” metaphor (that typography, like a crystal goblet, should remain invisible to the viewer while showcasing its contents), Jan Tschichold’s 1928 essay

2

“The New Typography” and the modernist and Swiss-inspired typographers and designers who share his minimalist and functionalist approach to design, and Massimo Vignelli’s powerful statement in the 2007 film Helvetica that “there are people that think that type should be expressive. They have a different point of view from mine.” Yet there are also those on the other side of the argument who disagree with the strictly utilitarian role of typography. From the warped and abstracted arrangement of words and letterforms in F.T. Marinetti’s Futurist poetry to David Carson’s deconstructed, grunge-inspired layouts for Ray Gun magazine, a range of experimental, and therefore largely non-utilitarian, applications of typographic form have emerged from designers who argue for the communicative and expressive power of typography in and of itself.

Whether type is meant to quietly showcase the message it embodies or communicate its own message is not a question that can definitively be answered. Still, my research continues to explore this question, as well as the countless answers that past designers have attempted to provide, in order to lead me to my own opinion of the ultimate purpose of typography and the potential functionality of expressive – or even illegible – typography.

The possibility of functional illegibility points to a potential dichotomy between legibility and readability. Whether the two words mean different things is up for debate, and I aim to determine for myself what, if any, difference separates the two factors in terms of typographic function. In his 1986 typographic

handbook Letters of Credit, Walter Tracy defines legibility as “the quality of being decipherable and recognizable” (referring to the nature of individual letterforms) and readability as “the quality of visual comfort” (referring to the reader’s overall ability to comprehend a body of text in its entirety). Tracy’s distinction between the two qualities offers one possible understanding of their relationship, but it is certainly not the only set of definitions one can imagine for the two terms. After all, there are many individuals who would equate the two visual qualities. My research further explores the differences (if any) between these two terms and will ultimately allow me to determine for myself how they relate to each other, to expressive typography, and to the communicative function of typography in general.

The following presentation of my research begins by exploring the history and development of expressive typography and highlighting the designers and design movements that have provided important contributions to the field. It then addresses the ongoing debate concerning the legitimacy of expressive type and the related, larger debate surrounding the overarching function of typography. After presenting the reader with these dialogues, I will add my voice to the discussion and draw my own conclusions concerning the expressive use of typography, the legitimacy of illegible type, and the ultimate role of typography as a communicative tool.

3

BACKGROUND

6

It is difficult to locate a definitive starting point in the history and development of expressive typography. One could point to a number of design milestones: the hand-

drawn type designs that dominated New York’s ad agencies over the course of the 1960s; the abstracted graphic layouts of the Fururist and Dada movements in Italy, Germany, and Russia; or even Calligrammes, Guillame Apollinaire’s 1918 collection of concrete poetry (examples that will be explained later in this chapter). There are countless relevant landmarks and turning points in the history of typography, yet nothing can truly be considered the “first” expressive typographical design. Upon careful examination of typographic history, I would assert that type has always been – to a certain extent – a highly expressive tool.

EARLY EXAMPLES

Looking toward the very early use of typography, we can already note an interest in the illustrational potential of letterforms. The monastic scriptoria responsible for producing religious and official texts over the course of the Medieval period in Europe (roughly the 5th to 15th century AD) created elaborately illuminated manuscripts that rely heavily on decorative letterforms for illustration. The Gellone Sacramentarium, a French priest’s manuscript dating from between 755 and 787, is a prime example of nature of these elaborate letterforms. The initial capitals of the text consist entirely of creative arrangements of

animals, human forms, objects, and religious symbols (fig. 1). The early 9th century Corbie Psalter, a French volume containing the Book of Psalms, contains letters constructed in a similar manner (fig. 2).1

1

2

7

Later Medieval artists drew inspiration from these initial capitals to create entire alphabets composed of decorative letterforms: the Berlin Alphabet (fig. 3), drawn c. 1400, contains human figures, animals, objects, and organic forms,2 and the Gothic Alphabet (fig. 4), drawn by a German artist in 1499, shows even more complex and detailed illustrations.3 Artists continued to draft decorative alphabets into the Renaissance – the Hieroglyphic Alphabet (fig. 5), drawn by C.V. Noorde in the Netherlands in 1751, and the Human Alphabet (fig. 6), engraved by Martin Weygel c. 1560, show a slightly more humanistic approach to decorative typography, utilizing the movements and positions of the human body to form the letters of the alphabet.4

Yet something about these letterforms causes them to fall just short of reaching their true expressive potential. They are certainly artistic in their own right – but their form does not, in any significant way, relate to the content of the texts in which they are used. As graphic designer Robert Massin explains in Letter and Image, his own exploration of the history of expressive typography,

It would seem that these early examples of expressive typography are not, in fact, truly expressive, because they do not illustrate the texts to which they belong or serve to further the writers’ message. The typography does express something, but what it expresses is essentially irrelevant. It would be more fitting to refer to this self-referential variety of expressive type as decorative or illustrational, rather than truly expressive.

However, the simultaneous development of a separate variety of expressive typography proves somewhat more expressive than novelty alphabets and illuminated letters. This body of work, often referred to as figurative verse, relies on the creative layout of larger bodies of text, rather than the decoration of individual letterforms, to render the work expressive. Dating all the way back to Ancient Greece, we see poets and writers utilizing the visual form of their work to represent the content of their writing. During the 4th century BC, Simmias of Rhodes authored a small collection of verses called The Crown of Meleager (fig. 7) in which each of the poems takes the shape of an element of its subject matter. “Wings” expresses the voice of the winged god Cupid, “Egg” tells of a nightingale’s egg, and “Axe” describes the inscription on an axe that is consecrated to the goddess Minerva. Around the same time, Diosadas of Crete composed two “altars” (fig. 8) – one dedicated to the muses and one to the King of Iolochos, who organized the legendary journey of Jason and the Argonauts.6

It is striking to note the absence of relationship between the text – usually of an edifying nature – and the image juxtaposed to it. The relation between the narrative and the visual image to which it gives rise, the phenomenon of osmosis which usually results form the word-image equation – which will be intrinsic to book illustration in future centuries – is virtually non-existent in the manuscripts of this period. A plastic unity is sought between illumination and writing, to the detriment of the most elementary symbolism.5

3

4

5 6

7

8

A number of Latin authors also created similar figurative verses. Early 4th century poet and statesman Publius Optianus Porphyrius composed an altar-shaped poem almost identical to those of Diosadas, as well as a piece shaped like a pan pipe and another shaped like a water-organ (fig. 9).7 A different form of figurative verse also emerged among Latin poets who arranged text within a perfect square or other basic geometric shape, highlighting select acrostic verses in color to form a linear pattern or shape within the greater form of the poem. Around 590, Venance Fortunatus created a series of these poems (fig. 10). Although Forunatus’s works do not form unique shapes such as eggs, wings, or altars, they present more subtle designs within a larger, more regular shape. A manuscript created between 836 and 840 by German monk Hrabanus Maurus titled De laudibus sanctae crucis (fig. 11) contains a number of similar poems. Maurus’s acrostics are, like Fortunatus’s, highlighted in red, placed within a square of text, and arranged in geometric shapes and patterns – however, Maurus’s poems also contain human forms and occasionally incorporate drawn outlines to more clearly illustrate the image. In the 10th century, Saxon artist Julius Hyginus also began to incorporate drawings into figured verses. He published a manuscript containing a Carolingian version of the Greek poem Phenomena, an astronomical volume describing the heavenly bodies and signs of the zodiac (fig. 12). However, Hyginus’s drawings are more detailed than Maurus’s outlines, and they are incorporated with text that forms part of the

10

9

10

11

12

drawing – together, the words and illustrations combine to create an entire image.8

Poets and authors continued to explore figured verse into the Enlightenment. Most of these works resemble the earlier verses of Simmias, Dosiadas, and Porphyrius rather than the work of Fortunatus, Maurus, and Hyginus – they present text arranged in a shape that illustrates the subject of the piece and tend to do so without the addition of drawn illustrations. Between 1683 and 1587, French illustrator Jaques Cellier generated a number of drawings to accompany François Merlin’s A Study of Several Peculiarities (fig. 13). Cellier uses words to trace the outlines of various scenes and figures.9 Simultaneously, a group of students at the Collège de Dôle in France produced a number of figured verses in both Greek and Latin that form simple geometric shapes as well as altars, pan pipes, and wings identical to those created by Simmias, Dosiadas, and Porphyrius (fig. 14).10 Figured verses became so popular that English author George Puttenham was inspired to take stock of all the forms that had been used in such poems and instruct future poets how best to create them in The Arte of English Poesie, published in 1589 (fig. 15).11

13

14 15

13

THE TURN OF THE CENTURY: FROM PRESENTATION TO EXPRESSION

Despite the popularity of figured verses leading up to the modern era in art and literature, these verses were commonly considered more of a novelty than a serious form of expression. After all, the most popular figured poem among English-speaking readers through the mid-19th century was a somewhat frivolous piece called “The Mouse’s Tale” (fig. 16), which was first published in Lewis Carrol’s Alice in Wonderland.12 Yet around the turn of the century, a number of more serious writers and poets began experimenting with typographic layout as well, bringing figurative verse (as well as a variety of other unique typographic forms) into the realm of scholarly literature.

In 1918, French poet and playwright Guillame Apollinaire published Calligrammes: Poems of War and Peace 1913–1916 (fig. 17). Calligrammes is a collection of figured verses that, like the early examples mentioned above, utilize creative typographic arrangement to illustrate their subject matter in a very literal fashion. Apollinaire considered calling his poems “lyrical ideograms,” yet eventually settled on the term “calligrams” as an expression of the concrete nature of his work – he considered his poems to be a direct combination of writing and thought, and believed that they presented the reader with the most immediate method of material expression.13

Apollinaire’s poetry can be considered an attempt to blend the literary with the vernacular. His work fuses poetic form with pedestrian language and subject matter in order to make poetry look and feel more like speech, thus rendering it approachable and familiar to the reader. Apollinaire’s incorporation of simple imagery as an indication of subject matter, then, is the ultimate means to this end. The calligrams’ visual form verges on the banal or the obvious in order to render the poems even more concrete, succinct, and, most importantly, accessible.14 It is in this aspect of Apollinaire’s work that we notice his strong connection to the Cubist movement. Like his Cubist contemporaries, Apollinaire sought to elevate the pedestrian in order to create a more familiar form of “high art” and to explore pure presentation as the most literal form of representation.15 The concrete materiality of Apollinaire’s calligrams reflect a strong

16

14

interest in the boldly literal nature of Cubist art – an interest that can be seen somewhat more anecdotally in the calligram he dedicated to Pablo Picasso in 1917 (fig. 18), or in his statement in the original forward to Calligrammes that “I, too, am a painter.”16

Around the same time that Apollinaire brought figured verse to the realm of serious literature, another group of poets and writers began to experiment with typography in a different way. In 1897, French poet Stéphane Mallarmé’s “Un coup de dés jamais n’abolira le hazard” (fig. 19) was published in London’s

Cosmopolis, an international literary magazine. Although the poem does not assume a literal shape in order to further its subject matter, it does utilize visual form in a creative way. Mallarmé rejected the traditional uniformity of linear typesetting and took full advantage of the page, combining different typefaces and sizes and varying the spacing of words and lines dramatically in order to create an unconventional, and therefore highly engaging, visual layout.17 Mallarmé believed that the written word was meant to reflect the random and illogical nature of human thought; in order

15

17 18

to achieve this in his own poetry, he liberated his words from the standards of printing and arranged them as freely as the concepts they represented.18 Speaking to the need for a more liberated approach to literature, Mallarmé wrote:

Although a later version of “Un coup de dés” (fig. 20), thought to more accurately reflect Mallarmé’s original manuscript, contains only one typeface (as opposed to the many different faces used in the version published in Cosmopolis), this version still utilizes varied type size and irregular spacing to generate a seemingly random, and therefore appropriately expressive, typographic layout.20

In the same year that Cosmopolis printed “Un coup de dés,” French writer Charles Péguy

Let us have no more of those successive, incessant, back and forth motions of our eyes, tracking from one line to the next and beginning all over again – otherwise we will miss that ecstasy in which we have become immortal for a brief hour, free of all reality, and raise our obsessions to the level of creation.19

19 20

21

16

published his first play, Jeanne d’Arc (fig. 21). The layout of Jeanne d’Arc is similar to that of “Un coup de dés” in that the text is arranged in an unconventional manner in order to reflect something about the work. Here, Péguy’s layout expresses time in a visual manner, utilizing blank spaces in between words and sentences – and even large spans of entirely blank pages – in order to establish lapses of time over the course of the play.21 Like Mallarmé, Péguy sought to abandon the typical standards of typographic layout in favor of an approach to page design that visualizes a significant aspect of the work.

From this point on in poetry and literature, authors continued to look toward typographic form itself to help convey the concepts behind their writing. Francophone Swiss poet Blaise Cendrars’s La prose du Transsibérien et de la petite Jeanne de France (fig. 22), considered the first “simultaneous book,” was published in 1913; it presents the poet’s long, disorienting journey across Russia through the use of 12 different fonts, irregular blocks of text in different sizes, and phrases interjected within phrases across a single 6½-foot long colorfully illustrated fold-out scroll.22 But these expressive typographic works differ from Apollinaire’s calligrams, as well as the figured verses that preceded them, in a subtle yet significant way. While both varieties of writing utilize unconventional typographic layout in order to convey something about the work, figured verses do so in a very literal manner – Ancient Greek and Latin altar-shaped poems are consecrated to the Gods, just like a physical altar; Lewis Carrol’s “The Mouse’s Tale” is shaped like a mouse’s tail; and nearly all

17

of Apollinaire’s poems take their names from the very object they represent. The typography of these works is expressive in a very direct way, and addresses purely material (rather than conceptual) subject matter. Looking at these pieces critically, it would seem that they are simply presentational rather than reaching their true expressive potential.

It is only in the experimental layouts of Péguy, Mallarmé, and those that drew inspiration from their work that typography becomes

22

truly expressive on a conceptual level. Rather than using type to represent the subject of their work in a literal way, these authors manipulated typography in order to achieve a deeper level of expression. In these works, typesetting is finally mobilized as a vehicle for true conceptual expression and harnesses its full potential as an asset to the communicative power of the written word.

MODERN TYPOGRAPHY:EXPRESSION AND ABSTRACTION

18

The Futurist and Dada movements in art, design, and writing introduced another wave of change to the realm of typographic design. These movements, centrally located in Western Europe and spanning the earlier part of the 20th century, furthered the manipulation of page layout and introduced abstraction of letterforms themselves. This progression toward greater typographic experimentation eventually resulted in the exploration of illegibility, finally introducing us to the notion that typography, perhaps, does not need to be read in order to be understood.

The Futurist movement was formally introduced when Italian writer and critic F. T. Marinetti’s Futurist Manifesto was printed on the front page of the French daily newspaper Le Figaro on February 10th, 1909. The manifesto celebrates “energy and recklessness,” demands that literature “glorify aggressive action” rather than continue to embody “a contemplative stillness, rapture, and reverie,” lauds “the beauty of speed,” and commands the poet to “do all in

23

24

19

his power, passionately, flamboyantly, and with generosity of spirit, to increase the delirious fervor of the primordial elements.”23 Marinetti’s notion of modernity revolved around speed, simultaneity, and sensation, and he believed that all forms of art and design must aggressively reject past aesthetics and instead embrace these powerful contemporary forces.24

In terms of the written word, Marinetti sought to create a synthetic reading experience that embodied the energy and force of modernity. To that end, he vowed to ignore syntax, eliminate the adjective and the adverb, and remove all punctuation, liberating his words from their traditional structure in order to convey the energy and simultaneity of human thought as directly as possible.25 Although Marinetti’s earlier compositions (fig. 23) are abstracted in a relatively tame manner, breaking with syntactic tradition while leaving some typographic conventions intact, his experimental strategies reach their expressive peak in his “parole in liberta” poems (fig. 24) – literally, “words in freedom.” These pieces, which inspired a number of similar poems among Marinetti’s contemporaries, assault the reader with a jumbled composition of sentences, words, and letters that are as disorienting visually as they are grammatically. Marinetti explains these discordant compositions as follows:

Marinetti and the Futurists sought absolute immediacy, simultaneity, and energy; the notion of parole in liberta is the ultimate visual and literary presentation of this expressive ideal.

Although the Futurist movement began to lose momentum only five years after Marinetti’s manifesto was first published, the movement’s anti-traditionalist views found their counterpart in the international phenomenon of Dada. The Dadaists, like the Futurists, rebelled vehemently against the past – yet rather than seeking energy and movement, the Dadaists veered more toward chance and nonsense. The Futurists had venerated modernity and advancement as Europe stood, more technologically prepared than ever before, at the brink of World War I; as the war came to a close, however, the Dadaists witnessed what they perceived as a total breakdown of Western Civilization. Order and logic became a thing of the past, and the Dadaists channeled their disillusionment into a subversive promotion of total chaos.27

Dada writers and designers channeled the typographic manipulation of the Futurist movement to express their artistic and literary ideals – for the Dadaists, linguistic order represented social order, and so the visual and grammatical destruction of language became an

I call for a typographic revolution directed against the idiotic and nauseating concepts of the outdated and conventional book, with its handmade paper and seventeenth century ornamentation of garlands and goddesses, huge initials and mythological vegetation,

its missal ribbons and epigraphs and roman numerals. The book must be the Futurist expression of our Futurist ideas. Even more: my revolution is directed against what is known as the typographic harmony of the page, which is contrary to the flux and movement of style. Therefore, we will employ three or four different colored inks and twenty different typefaces on the same page if necessary.26

appropriate vehicle for the rejection of political structure.28 In Russia, poet and typographer Ilia Zdanevich rejected the logic of everyday speech and instead aimed to represent primal, universal essences in his work. He believed that there existed a realm of thought beyond logic and reason, and that this realm could be apprehended through poetry.29 His typographic compositions dealing with this realm came to be known as “zaum” – a combination of the Russian words for “beyond” and “mind” – and somewhat resemble the expressive typography of the Futurist movement. Zdanevich’s one act play Ledentu le phare (fig. 25), published in Paris in 1923, is a prime example of the nearly illegible typographic arrangements that he utilized in order to represent the chaotic nature of human subconscious thought.

Other Dada writers also took advantage of typographic form in order to visually express

their ideas. Tristan Tzara’s 1916 collaboration with Richard Huelsenbeck and Marcel Janco, L’Amiral cherche une maison à louer (fig. 26), is a simultaneous poem that presents multiple voices and elements at the same time and in the same place, allowing the reader to experience every piece of the work at once – a task that becomes both engaging and disorienting.30 Kurt Schwitters coined the term “merz” for his compositions, drawing from the German word for “commerce,” as an indication of the fact that he collected visual and verbal inspiration from bits and pieces of pedestrian and commercial sources in constructing his fragmented poetic works.31 Schwitters’s mertz pieces (fig. 27), like those of his Dada contemporaries, are typographically expressive to the point of near-illegibility – a graphic strategy that furthers the principal tenets of Dada philosophy.

The Dada and Futurist movements introduced the notion of expressive illegibility to the field of typographic design. But even after the Dada movement came to a close, a number of type designers continued to experiment with illegibility, often prioritizing typographic abstraction and expression over ease of reading and understanding. In the 1940s, the Romanian-born French poet, critic, and artist Isidore Isou established the Letterist movement. The Letterists sought to reinvent the alphabet and completely merge letter with image; their resulting typographic compositions, which they referred to as “hypergraphics” (fig. 28),32 are abstracted and illegible almost to the point of losing their typographic identity. Dada also influenced the Spatialist Movement in

20

25

Western Europe, a movement that sought to unite the concepts of time, structure, energy and space in order to animate all linguistic elements through poetry. The Spatialists, like the Letterists, disposed of legibility and instead utilized letterforms as purely artistic and graphic elements. The compositions of French Spatialist Pierre Garnier (fig. 29), for example, aim to animate all linguistic elements, utilizing them as illustrational assets and seeking to create from them new signs and meanings.33

In 1952, poet and engraver Camille Bryen (along with Raymond Hains and Jacques de

21

la Villeglé) authored the first “poem à délire” – a play on words that can be interpreted as “frenzied poem” or “non-read poem.” The piece, called “Hépérile éclaté” (fig. 30), strips the writing of its original meaning and seeks to create a new form of verbal communication in which words splinter into “ultra-words,” small fragments of written meaning that recombine in new and unique ways.34 Although the reader can detect some bits and pieces of typographic imagery, words and letters are almost impossible to decipher and the meaning of the poem must be interpreted rather than simply read.

26

By the middle of the 20th century, the concept of near or total illegibility had become a popular experimental springboard for avant-garde artists, writers, and typographic designers. The use of illegible type in graphic design began to call into question the purpose of typography itself – that is, whether it was

always meant to be read, or whether letterforms could serve an illustrational or expressive purpose beyond that of displaying the written word. Yet this questioning was limited to the work of more progressive and unconventional designers, whose work steered clear of the mainstream – until the 1950s.

27

22

28 29

30

THE 1950S TO TODAY

The end of World War II heralded a number of significant cultural changes in America – many of which, because of their relationship to consumer culture, affected the advertising industry, and, in so doing, altered the design world as well. Of course, some important technological changes also took place: the 1950s saw a dramatic rise in the sale of televisions, promoting the development of motion graphics in advertising; and both filmsetting and transfer technology were developed, allowing for quicker and easier production techniques and allowing designers to experiment more freely in their work. But is was the dramatic shift in consumer culture following the end of the war that changed America’s advertising industry forever.

After the war, American soldiers came home to the loans, compensation, and benefits provided by the G.I. Bill. Simultaneously, women who had taken their husbands’ place in the workforce were able to return to the home and resume their roles as mothers and homemakers. America’s newfound affluence, combined with its need for comfort after half a decade of war, revitalized the country’s idealization of cozy domestic life and family unity.35

Seeing an opportunity to capitalize on this new nationwide attitude, consumer companies began to manufacture an endless supply of new household products. Vacuum cleaners, dishwashers, refrigerators, detergents – there was no end to the number of things that one could purchase in order to create a happy home.

Yet this sudden flood of consumer products led to intense competition among manufacturers, forcing them to turn more than ever before to advertising in order to win the attention of the average American shopper.36

In the 1930s and 40s, ad agencies had favored copy as their primary method of communication. Designers were secondary, often left with the job of arranging images alongside bodies of text and creating final layouts – but never responsible for developing concepts or ideas. That all changed when companies found a need to compete more urgently for consumers’ attention. Suddenly, designers became thinkers. They were encouraged to innovate and to come up with new and unique ways of selling products. They began to integrate text and image, to work alongside copywriters in order to develop cohesive visual and verbal concepts, and to disregard the traditional rules of design. The expression and experimentation of fringe avant-garde movements seemed to be slowly seeping into the corporate design world.37

It is impossible to discuss the post-war design revolution without beginning with Herb Lubalin. A graduate of the Cooper Union in New York City, Lubalin began working as an art director in New York in 1941. His career took off when he joined Sudler & Hennessey, a studio that specialized in pharmaceutical advertising, in 1945.38 Lubalin’s fascination with typography generated work that truly elevated type to the level of image. He manipulated letterforms, words, and even entire bodies of text in ways that the commercial art world had

24

never seen – and it worked. As the Lubalin’s art department won more awards, the company gained more clients, eventually changing its name to Sudler, Hennessey, & Lubalin.39

Lubalin’s unique typographic style dominated his posters, advertisements, and logos (fig. 31). He saw the true potential of words themselves, and sought to underline the drama inherent in a message – in this way, idea preceded design in Lubalin’s creative process.40 He sought to reject the standards of typesetting, insisting that

joined him. In 1975, Alan Peckolick, a former assistant of Lubalin’s, joined the team as Vice President, with graphic designer Tony DiSpigna joining and becoming the group’s new Vice President in 1978.42 Athough many of the studio’s principal members eventually founded their own businesses – Tom Carnase opening Carnase Computer Typography studio in 197943 and DiSpigna creating Tony Dispigna, Inc. in 1980,44 Peckolick remained with the studio until Lubalin’s death in 1981, continuing to bring new designers – including Seymour Chwast of the former Push Pin Studios – on board until finally founding his own group, Peckolick, Inc., in 1991.45

With the design world’s newfound respect for, and appreciation of, typographic expression and experimentation (no doubt aided by the establishment of the Type Directors Club in 1946 in New York City46), a number of

We’ve been conditioned to read the way Gutenberg set his type, and for 500 years, people have been reading widely-spaced words on horizontal lines Gutenberg spaced far apart. Even with advances in typesetting, typesetters still maintain the pattern. We read words, not characters, and pushing letters closer of tightening space between lines doesn’t destroy legibility; it merely changes reading habits.41

Lubalin sought to be as expressive with typography in the commercial world as his avant-garde predecessors had been in their work. He obsessed over letterforms, manipulated them in every way possible, and often crossed into the realm of illegibility – all the while proving to his coworkers, clients, and viewers that typography had immense expressive and emotive power.

Lubalin’s revolutionary treatment of typography inspired many of his contemporaries to do the same, generating a number of subsequent design partnerships. Thought he left Sudler & Hennessey in 1964 to run his own studio, Herbert Lubalin, Inc., it was only three years until former Sudler & Hennessey employee Tom Carnase and fellow designer Ernie Smith

31

25

designer-run magazines and publications began to circulate. Lubalin provided innovative layouts for Eros (fig. 32) and Avant Garde (fig. 33), both magazines published by author and editor Ralph Ginzburg in the 1960s and 1970s.47 In 1970, Lubalin together with Aaron Burns launched the International Typeface Corporation, which began distributing its quarterly direct mail promotion, U&lc (an abbreviation of “upper and lowercase) three years later.48 The magazine, subtitled “The International Journal of Typographics,” presented new ITC typefaces, printed articles about the history and techniques of typography, and featured the work of up-and-coming graphic designers, all within the creative page designs of Lubalin (fig. 34).49 With entire magazines devoted to the exploration and promotion of typographic experimentation and innovation, the field of typography – and especially expressive typography – had finally come into its own.

Once solidly established within the aesthetic mainstream, typography and layout design gradually began to reflect the style and culture of the times – pop and psychedelia in the 1960s, such as the work of Peter Max (fig. 35), punk in the 1970s, such as the concert posters of Su Suttle (fig. 36), and new wave in the 1980s, such as the publication design of John Hersey (fig. 37). By the middle of the 80s, so many styles and fads had come and gone that type designers found themselves able to accumulate and combine aesthetics in countless ways – which, with the addition of digital and computer-based typesetting techniques in the 1990s, allowed for truly multistylistic typographic designs.50 Emigre

32

33

26

34

35 36 37

27

28

magazine, subtitled “The Magazine that Ignores Boundaries,” was launched in California in 1984 by designers Rudy VanderLans, Menno Meyjes, and Marc Susan. Each issue was devoted to a different subject, and the magazine featured prominent young designers and communicated the new typographic styles of the digital age – both in its content and in its unique page designs (fig. 38). Like Eros, Avant Garde, and U&lc before it, Emigre promoted design innovation and highlighted the typographic experimentation of the time.

Yet no designer has pushed the boundaries of magazine layout more than David Carson.

A former sociology teacher and surfer, Carson began designing magazines in 1983, when he was hired to work on the staff of Transworld Skateboarding. He went on to design Musician, Beach Culture (the first magazine he designed using a computer), Surfer, and, finally Ray Gun.51 Carson founded Ray Gun in 1992 as an alternative music and style magazine and designed its pages as collages of text and image without the structure an underlying grid.52 Carson’s page designs are fragmented and abstracted, often to the point of total illegibility (fig. 39) – but he insists that the traditional rules of design are irrelevant, instead basing his work on “emotion and intuition.”53 He drew entirely from personal expression, believing that

3938

29

design was not a system that could be taught or learned but a reflection of the artist’s individual reaction to the problem at hand.54

It was most likely Carson’s young and somewhat counterculture readership that permitted him at first to so thoroughly reject the traditional rules of design and challenge the importance of legibility – to that end, Carson was able to truly experiment with the degree to which Ray Gun could actually be read. This rejection of the traditional rules of legibility is most famously seen in his treatment of an interview with British singer and songwriter Bryan Ferry: Carson found the interview too dull to read, and so he printed it in Dingbats (fig. 40).55 Yet although Carson’s audience was initially limited to the young, permissive set, his innovative work soon began to intrigue more mainstream audiences as well. After leaving Ray Gun in 1995, Carson gained a number of major corporate clients such as Pepsi Cola, Microsoft, Nike, and Budweiser.56

British designer and art director Neville Brody once stated that Carson’s work signaled “the end of print.”57 By this, he meant that

Carson’s total rejection of everything that had come before him had completely reversed the traditional function of graphic design. In many ways, Brody was right. By the middle of the 90s, graphic design had pushed every boundary that there was to push – and typography alone had gone through some dramatic changes as well. From the purely decorative (in Medieval and Renaissance alphabets), to the presentational (in Apollinaire’s Calligrammes and other examples of figured verse), to the expressive (ranging from the work of Mallarmé to that of Lubalin), and finally to the illegible, typography has evolved from a tentative flourish to a powerfully expressive artistic tool. Designers have come a quite a long way, and the inherently communicative power of the letterform has been truly embraced.

40

Robert Massin, Letter and Image, p. 41.

Ibid., p. 58.

Ibid., p. 61.

Ibid., p. 70.

Ibid., p. 57.

Ibid., pp. 158-160.

Ibid., pp. 160-161.

Ibid., pp. 161-162.

Ibid., p. 174.

Ibid., p. 177.

Ibid., p. 182.

Ibid., p. 207.

Ibid., p. 157.

Johanna Drucker, The Visible Word, p. 142.

Ibid., p. 143.

Guillamme Apollinaire, reproduced by Johanna Drucker, The Visible Word, p. 151.

Jaroslav Andel, Avant-Garde Page Design 1900-1950, p. 24.


Stéphane Mallarmé, reproduced by Johanna Drucker, The Visible Word, p. 56


Ibid., p. 223.

Ibid.

F.T. Marinetti, Critical Writings, pp. 13-14.



F.T. Marinetti, “The Typographic Revolution,” an appendix to “The Futurist Sensibility, reproduced by Johanna Drucker, The Visible Word, p. 114.



Ibid., p. 58.

Robert Massin, Letter and Image, pp. 231-232.



Ibid., pp. 235-239.

Ibid., p. 244.

Gertrude Snyder and Alan Peckolick, Herb Lubalin: Art Director, Graphic Designer and Typographer, p. 13.

Friedrich Friedl, Nicolaus Ott, and Bernard Stein, Typography: An Encyclopedic Survey of Type Design and Techniques Throughout History, p. 34.

Ibid., pp. 34-35.


Gertrude Snyder and Alan Peckolick, Herb Lubalin: Art Director, Graphic Designer and Typographer, p. 15.

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

31

32

33

34

35

36

37

38

39

Ibid., p. 9.

Herb Lubalin, in a Cooper Union typography class, reproduced by Gertrude Snyder and Alan Peckolick in Herb Lubalin: Art Director, Graphic Designer and Typographer, p. 21.

Gertrude Snyder and Alan Peckolick, Herb Lubalin: Art Director, Graphic Designer and Typographer, pp. 13-18.


Ibid., p. 191.

Ibid., p. 423.

Ibid., p. 518.

Gertrude Snyder and Alan Peckolick, Herb Lubalin: Art Director, Graphic Designer and Typographer, pp. 18-19.


Ibid., p. 522.

Ibid., pp. 18-20.

Ibid., p. 160.

Ibid., 442-443.

David Carson, reproduced by Lewis Blackwell in David Carson: 2ndsight.

Lewis Blackwell, David Carson: 2ndsight.

Ibid.

Ibid.

Neville Brody, reproduced by Lewis Blackwell in David Carson: 2ndsight.

40

41

42

43

44

45

46

47

48

49

50

51

52

53

54

55

56

57

DIALOGUE

Expressive typography has evolved and expanded dramatically over the course of the history of graphic design – but it is certainly not the only typographic

trend that has emerged over time. Expressive type has coexisted alongside the work of typographers and designers who argue for a much more neutral and utilitarian approach to the use of letterforms. Looking back at some of the major milestones in the evolution of experimental typographic work, we see that many landmark examples of this movement’s polar opposite – functional typography – have emerged simultaneously.

FUNCTIONAL TYPOGRAPHY: A BRIEF OVERVIEW

Although the Medieval period is indeed characterized by the use of ornate initial capitals and illuminated letterforms, those singular elements were typically placed alongside fairly uniform bodies of Carolingian Miniscule – a type of handwriting based on the broad, round letterforms used in Ancient Roman writing and that utilized minimal ornamentation in order to appear legible alongside more decorative elements (fig. 1).1 Similarly, despite the highly decorative and playful alphabets that emerged during the Renaissance in Europe (such as the Hieroglyphic Alphabet and Human Alphabet discussed earlier), these more elaborate letterforms often appeared alongside bodies of text printed in Humanist Miniscule, a Roman typeface inspired by Carolingian Miniscule but further transformed into a more refined,

harmonious typeface (fig. 2).2 During the Enlightenment, while writers and illustrators such as Jacques Cellier and George Puttenham were using words and letters to create figured verses, French typographer Philippe Grandjean was designing Louis XIV’s royal typeface according to a strict grid system (fig. 3) and fellow typographic designer François Ambroise Didot was developing the typographic point

1

34

2

3

system in an effort to establish certain standards of typographic clarity.3 While some writers and designers sought to push the boundaries of typographic form, others simultaneously worked to more firmly establish those boundaries.

In 1910, just before Apollinaire’s Calligrammes brought figured verse to the mainstream of Western literature, European design also saw a rise in informative functionalism. It was most likely a combination of cultural influences (the development of industrial manufacturing techniques, the emergence of new international markets, and the first manifestations of corporate identity design) that inspired graphic designers to abandon ornamentation and strive instead for the utmost clarity in their work. Typography became clear and unadorned in an effort to produce formally consistent printed matter, especially in the creation of utilitarian pieces, and designers sought to convey their messages in the most straightforward manner possible – typically a clear and simple illustration alongside a brief, visually simple, and informative body of text. This style is exemplified by the posters and advertisements og German designer Lucian Bernhard (fig. 44).4

After the Futurist and Dada movements introduced the chaos of zaum poetry, illegibility, synthetic reading, Lettrism, and Spatialism to the design world, many designers began to crave a return to typographic order and clarity. Around 1925, the first self-proclaimed movement in functional typography – Elementare Typographie – began to take shape. The most notable designer to emerge from this movement was German designer and critic Jan Tschichold,

who aimed to end the stylistic confusion that had emerged around the turn of the century through the use of clear, reductive forms and minimal typographic variety (fig. 5). Among the major tenets of this movement was the use

35

4

5

of sans-serif typefaces – which, despite having been developed nearly a century earlier, had never gained much popularity.5 In Tschichold’s landmark essay, “The New Typography,” he commands designers to abandon ornamentation and frivolous experimentation in favor of direct and unambiguous communication:

The essence of the New Typography is clarity. This puts it into deliberate opposition to the old typography whose aim was “beauty” and whose clarity did not attain the high level we require today. This utmost clarity is necessary today because of the manifold claims for our attention made by the extraordinary amount of print, which demands the greatest economy of expression. The gentle swing of the pendulum between ornamental type, the (superficially understood) “beautiful” appearance, and “adornment” by extraneous additions (ornaments) can never produce the pure form we demand today.6

After World War II, while Herb Lubalin was honing his uniquely expressive typographic style at Sudler & Hennessey, the International Typographic Style began to develop in the United States and Switzerland. Drawing inspiration from Elementare Typographie, this movement saw the need for a progressive approach to the new demands of communication and advertising in an increasingly globalized world. To that end, the founders of the International Typographic Style sought to create designs that were clear and legible on a multinational level. They created straightforward, informative layouts and removed all traces of regional flavor. Like

Elementare Typograhie, the International Typographic Style utilized mostly sans-serif typefaces and incorporated as little variation in type size and style as possible. This style is best exemplfied in the work of Swiss designer Max Huber (fig. 6).7

A similar push for functional typography took place in the 1960s, alongside (and most likely in reaction to) the explosion in expressive typography brought about by Eros, Avant Garde, U&lc, and the pop and psychedelic movements in art and design. Again inspired by earlier movements in unadorned, utilitarian typography, designers began to advocate more than ever before for rigid grid systems and basic, sans-serif typefaces. New typefaces such as Helvetica and Univers were released, and design textbooks began to establish strict rules of typographic style and structure. On this end of the design spectrum, pioneered by the work of another Swiss designer, Josef Mueller-Brockmann (fig. 7), expression and experimentation hit an all-time low, resulting in a near bureaucratization of graphic design.8

6

36

In the 1980s, while David Carson’s deconstructed typographic style was beginning to emerge, another functionalist movement

took shape in Western graphic design – the New Functionalism. While advocates for the New Functionalism drew inspiration from earlier functionalist movements and called for simplicity and clarity in design, they did so with a bit more freedom. These designers still prioritized legibility and utilized mostly standard sans-serif typefaces, yet they allowed for more variation within the grid and encouraged a limited amount of typographic play.9 The resulting work – exemplified by the design magazine Octavo, produced by London-based graphic design firm 8vo (fig. 8) – is clearly influenced by earlier functionalist movements, yet becomes slightly more engaging and expressive than the work of earlier functionalist designers.

7

ADDRESSING THE DEBATE

Today, expressive and functionalist typography exist side by side. Both movements have a strong history and a long line of vehement advocates, and yet they represent two completely opposite approaches to design. On one side are those who believe in the inherently communicative potential of the letterform itself; on the other side are those who believe that only words – not the letters that constitute them – should do the talking. Across this broad aesthetic and theoretical spectrum, a rich debate concerning the ultimate role of typography has emerged.

After studying the history and evolution of both expressive and functional type, I set out to determine where I stood within the wide range

37

8

of typographic approaches that my research had uncovered. To this end, I began to more closely examine the opinions and arguments of designers on both sides of the debate concerning expressive typography. I spoke with, attended lectures by, and read the work of a number of very different designers in order to more fully understand the reasoning behind their respective approaches to typography. In this phase of my research, I sought to discover why the advocates for expressive type believed that letterforms possessed such broad artistic potential, and why more functionalist designers did not embrace this potential; I wanted to know what both sets of designers believed to be the ultimate role of typography, how they addressed typographic elements in their work in order to fulfill this role, and what (if any) limitations they established for themselves when working with type. Careful consideration and synthesis of these many, often disparate, opinions allowed me to formulate my own position regarding the legitimacy of typographic experimentation and to establish my own parameters for the scope of effective typographic manipulation within graphic design.

THE ARGUMENT FOR FUNCTIONALISM

One of the best-known statements on the functionalist end of the dialogue is Beatrice Warde’s 1956 essay, “The Crystal Goblet, or, Printing Should be Invisible.” In this essay, Warde constructs a clever analogy between typographic layout and wine glasses:

The essence of Warde’s argument is that typography is meant to discretely showcase the words it represents without interfering with their message – essentially, that typography should go unnoticed rather than distract the reader with an unnecessary visual element. As a critic, Warde advocates for the importance of legibility and clarity above all else, and relegates typographic experimentation to the realm of fine art.11

Modernist designer Massimo Vignelli adheres to similar principles in his design work. Vignelli launched his career in New York in the mid-1960s, and has since become a staunch advocate for clarity and functionalism across all design fields. Vignelli expounds his strict principles and theories in the “Vignelli

Imagine that you have before you a flagon of wine. You may choose your own favorite vintage for this imaginary demonstration, so that it be a deep shimmering crimson in colour. You have two goblets before you. One is of solid gold, wrought in the most exquisite patterns. The other is of crystal-clear glass, thin as a bubble, and as transparent. Pour and drink; and according to your choice of goblet, I shall know whether or not you are a connoisseur of wine. For if you have no feelings about wine one way or the other, you will want the sensation of drinking the stuff out of a vessel that may have cost thousands of pounds; but if you are a member of that vanishing tribe, the amateurs of fine vintages, you will choose the crystal, because everything about it is calculated to reveal rather than to hide the beautiful thing which it was meant to contain.10

38

Canon,” a detailed guide to design thinking and practice that was released in 2009 and is now considered one of the most influential writings on functionalist design.

Of great importance in the Vignelli Canon is the notion of pragmatism – the belief that design must be clear and understandable in order to serve its communicative function. Vignelli writes, “Clarity of intent will translate in to clarity of result and that is of paramount importance in Design. Confused, complicated designs reveal an equally confused and complicated mind.”12 Vignelli encourages designers to abstain from fads, fashion, or any sort of aesthetic accent or trend that may someday become obsolete – because only timeless design will continue to communicate clearly without interference or complication.

Relatedly, Vignelli advocates for the timeless appeal of the most basic and objective aesthetic approach. He insists that only primary shapes and colors retain their formal value indefinitely, and that that typography must “transcend subjectivity and search for objective values.”13 And on a more concrete level, Vignelli establishes a number of strict rules and limitations for the use of typography in all design fields. He insists that the sheer variety of typefaces that have become available to contemporary designers has caused “a cultural pollution of incomparable dimension,”14 and that designers only truly need to work within a very limited typographic palette. Vignelli boasts a great ability to work with only a few typefaces, stating: “Personally, I can get along well with a half a dozen, to which I can add

another half a dozen, but probably no more.”15 Regarding typographic expression,

manipulation, and experimentation, Vignelli insists that type is a structural and organizational element in design, not a decorative one:

I see typography as a discipline to organize information in the most objective way possible. I do not like typography intended as an expression of the self, as a pretext for pictorial exercises. I am aware that there is room for that too, but it is not my language and I am not interested in it. I don’t believe that when you write dog the type should bark!16

39

In terms of typographic design, Vignelli limits himself to the manipulation of type size and justification in order to create an effective hierarchy of information, which he insists that, in and of itself, is sufficient to make a design powerful and clear.17

One of the most striking aspects of the Vignelli Canon is its sheer rigidity. Vignelli insists that all designers embrace discipline in their process – defining discipline as “a set of self imposed rules, parameters within which we operate”18 – and resist straying from the limitations and regulations that they have established. Needless to say, there is no room for typographic expression or experimentation within Vignelli’s design process – or within the Modernist, functionalist design ideology in general. The functionalist approach to design – and, more specifically, to typography – seems to pit expression and clarity against each other, and consistently favors clarity as the chief goal of design.

THE ARGUMENT FOR EXPRESSIVE TYPOGRAPHY

Advocates for a more experimental approach to typography, however, do not envision expression in opposition to clarity – rather, they tend to promote a symbiotic relationship between the two elements. Designers who use expressive typography in their work believe that type can be manipulated in order to further the meaning of the words it contains, thereby contributing to (rather than distracting from) the clarity of the message.

Among the many self-proclaimed expressive typographers that I researched and contacted, a surprisingly consistent philosophy emerged regarding the power of expressive type and the most effective ways to approach it. With rare exception, their opinions form a near consensus on the use of expressive typography and provide a powerful argument for its communicative potential in design.

The chief argument in favor of expressive typography is the sheer volume of creative possibility that it yields. In my interview with artist and designer Ed Fella, known for his entirely hand-drawn approach to typography, he mused that

artistic element – essentially, their passion for typographic experimentation lies in the raw potential they see in pure typographic form. It would be a shame, then, to ignore this potential.

Yet, beyond this drive to push the boundaries of the letterform, many designers also see a practical benefit to the expressive use of typography. When executed most effectively, according to their design process, expressive typography can aid in the viewer’s comprehension of a piece. Designer Seymour Chwast best summarized this approach in a phone interview, stating that “Typography is an expressive tool. It should be used in order to reflect what the message is.” Expressive typography, then, is not merely an artistic element – it is also a useful asset in design, so long as it serves to further communicate the meaning of the words it displays. Type designer Alan Peckolick confirmed this approach in a recent conversation, explaining what he considers to be “the ultimate for expressive typography:”

What’s really amazing about type is that it’s limited to 26 forms – and you have to stay within those forms, but there’s a lot of latitude within those forms … Really, with those 26 forms, there’s endless variety.

It is this broad potential that entices so many designers to push type beyond its utilitarian role and transform it into an

If you create, let’s say, a poster or a logo, and a person who can’t read English can get the essence of what you’re saying because of what you’ve done to the letterform, that, to me, is success.

David Carson revealed a similar philosophy during a lecture at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City, insisting that typographic layout should ideally serve to inform “the emotion somebody gets before they actually start reading.” The fact that expressive typography, at its post powerful, becomes, in Fella’s words, “a way to make stuff a little more

40

understandable,” gives it an important utilitarian purpose beyond its potential for creative experimentation.

THE LIMITATIONS OF EXPRESSIVE TYPOGRAPHY

This more practical benefit of expressive typography points to the potential limitations and boundaries that even the most experimental designers have established for themselves regarding the proper applications of visual type. Despite Peckolick’s bold statement – another apparent consensus among the expressive typographers that I contacted – that “I don’t think there’s anything off-limits,” certain limitations do arise when issues of legibility and readability become a factor. Chwast, like Peckolick, initially claimed that he did not set boundaries when working with expressive typography – yet, when I asked him about the notion of legibility, he added a caveat to that statement: “If it’s illegible then it becomes fine art … If you can’t read it, then it’s something else. Then it’s a piece of artwork.” Peckolick responded similarly when asked whether expressive typography could ever become illegible:

the most experimental designers would claim. Refusing to allow type to become illegible makes way for another limitation that arose during my research – the application of expressive typography to bodies of text. Because most of the designers that I spoke with drew the line at illegibility, they also acknowledged that text could generally not be abstracted because, as Chwast explained, “It’s more meant to be read, and legibility becomes more critical.” Fella agreed, stating that “If it’s totally illegible then it just gives the impression of being a text without being a text.” According to most advocates for the expressive use of type, typography must still be legible in order to communicate to the reader – therefore, bodies of text are a design element that, as Peckolick puts it, “you don’t fool around with.”

A lot of designers designing today seem to feel that way … I do not feel that way. If you’re using it as background noise for something that overlays it, that does the communication job for you, then it’s ok if you don’t expect people to read it. But then there has to be something in the piece that people can read.

It would seem, then, that expressive typography may not be as limitless as even

41

A FUTHER NUANCE: SEPARATING LEGIBILITY AND READABILITY

The only designer I contacted who did not prescribe to these limitations is David Carson. What sets Carson apart from the other designers whom I spoke with is his frequent use of illegibility, both in display typography and body text. Carson does not prioritize legibility as highly as most other designers do because he believes that it is a more nuanced design component than one might think. Firstly, he believes that legibility correlates very strongly to the reader’s personal interest or investment in what is written. In his lecture at FIT, he used a

particularly abstract music review from Ray Gun magazine to explain this idea:

message of the written word; yet Carson pushes this belief even further by insisting that the visual aspect of typography alone is sufficient to communicate the piece’s message. In short, the words themselves do not have to be read if the piece as a whole can be “read” in a different way.

Carson’s separation of legibility and communication relates to design critic Walter Tracy’s separation of legibility and readability in his 1986 typographic manual, Letters of Credit. Letters of Credit deals mostly with the technicalities of typographic form and arrangement, and his chapter on legibility touches on the issue in a uniquely nuanced way. Tracy defines legibility as “the quality of being decipherable and recognizable,” and asserts that “legibility is the term to use when discussing the clarity of single characters.” Readability, however, “describes the quality of visual comfort” and “refers to comprehension.”19 According to these disparate definitions, legibility refers to the reader’s ability to decipher individual words and letters, while readability refers to the reader’s ability to understand the meaning of what is written. This division of the two terms gels nicely with Carson’s separation of typographic legibility and conceptual readability.

Carson also differs from other expressive typographers when determining what it is that his typography should express. While most advocates for visual type insist that typographic manipulation should only be used to further the message of the written word, Carson also feels that typography can be an appropriate medium for self-expression. He insists that “ the work needs to reflect who you are as a person” and

This one would have been a little hard to read … but I also think if you were a fan of the group, you would do that; and if you weren’t a fan you’d probably write off the whole magazine as being unreadable. And that seemed to be what happened. So what you find readable has a lot to do with what you’re interested in reading. Are you going to read the warning on your medicine bottle in 2-point type that says “Caution: You May Die?” Yeah, probably.

But this more subjective approach to the notion of legibility is only one of Carson’s justifications for the liberal use of illegibility in design. In addition to this unique reasoning, Carson also justifies his use of illegibility by separating the concepts of legibility and communication. This aspect of his design philosophy was also an important element of the lecture at FIT, as he instructed his fellow designers to avoid conflating the two concepts: “Don’t mistake legibility for communication. Just because something’s legible doesn’t mean it communicates the right thing. So what’s the message your work sends before somebody actually reads it? Legibility alone doesn’t guarantee the right communication.” According to Carson’s design process, typography can communicate without being legible – that is, so long as the design incorporates other visual cues that convey the meaning of what is written. This approach does correlate with that of the other expressive typographers I contacted, who believed that the artistic arrangement of type could (and should) be used to further the

42

encourages designers to “put yourself into the work” and “pull from your experience” in order to add another unique expressive dimension to the piece. As a designer, Carson manipulates typography not only to communicate the meaning of what is written, but also to convey his own reaction to the piece in order to create something that is truly unique.

43

ASSESSING THE DIALOGUE

Carson’s more self-expressive approach to typographic experimentation is, indeed, unique – however, after considering the fundamental purpose of design as a creative field and profession, I found that Carson’s self-insertion into his work seems to defeat this purpose. Designers are, above all, communicators; but, more specifically, they work to convey the message of a third party (in short, a client). To that end, designers are charged with the task of putting their own message aside in an effort to broadcast the message of another. Disregarding this essential task removes the defining mission of the designer and drastically undermines the power of the resulting work. In this sense, the more popular belief that expressive typography must serve to communicate the essence of what is written is the most appropriate approach to typographic experimentation.

Aside from this less successful aspect of Carson’s philosophy, however, his (and Tracy’s) division of legibility and readability is compelling. Defining these terms separately adds an intriguing nuance to the parameters set by other experimental designers, and could, in fact, mesh well with

(rather that conflicting with) their approach to type. The two philosophies, rather than existing in opposition to each other, could in fact go hand-in-hand. The other expressive typographers that I interviewed claimed that typography could never become illegible, because typography had to be read in order to function as a design element – and this is indeed an essential aspect of the role of typography that should not be overlooked or abandoned. However, if we apply separate definitions of legibility and readability to this rule, we can expand the boundaries that it establishes. If typography is permitted to become illegible, so long as it is readable by alternative, visual means, then it continues to serve its practical function as a design asset while simultaneously providing a wider range of experimental and creative possibilities in the field of typographic expression. Applying this approach to considerations of the underlying role of typography in design greatly reduces the limitations that many designers have established for themselves and expands the scope of what expressive typography can accomplish.

CONCLUSIONS

After collecting and considering the methodologies and viewpoints of a diverse range of designers, typographers, and critics, I was able to come to some of my own conclusions regarding the function and parameters of expressive typography. Firstly, I believe that the true power of expressive typography – and the ultimate justification for an expressive, rather than purely utilitarian, approach to type – it its ability to aid in the reader’s understanding of a piece by

44

visually furthering the message of what is written. Stemming from this reasoning, I would also assert that expressive typography must fulfill this role in order to serve as an effective design element. In order to truly be a communicative asset, visual type must express the message of the piece – not the message of the designer or any other tangential concept. Approaching typography in this fashion would allow designers to utilize typographic form to its fullest potential without distracting or detracting from their ultimate communicative task.

At the conclusion of my research, I was able to construct my own parameters for the applications of expressive typography and the limitations of what it is able to accomplish as a design element. The framework that I have established stems from a separation of legibility and readability that, in turn, permits the use of illegible typography where visual and conceptual readability remain intact. Removing illegibility as a typographic taboo and instead realizing its communicative potential alongside other forms of typographic manipulation eliminates many of the limitations that designers tend to face when dealing with type, and would serve to greatly expand the parameters of expressive typography. Areas of design that have been largely excluded from the realm of

The framework that I have established stems from a separation of legibility and readability that, in turn, permits the use of illegible typography where visual and conceptual readability remain intact.

expressive type – areas chiefly involving text, for instance, which many designers have banned from the realm of typographic expression for fear of illegibility – may finally be included. So long as illegibility is used to an appropriate functional communicative end, it be applied as a viable technique to a range of design fields.

Friedrich Friedl, Nicolaus Ott, and Bernard Stein, Typography: An Encyclopedic Survey of Type Design and Techniques Throughout History, pp. 70-71.

Ibid., pp. 66-67.

Ibid., pp. 64-65.

Ibid., pp. 54-55.

Ibid., pp. 40-41.

Jan Tschichold, “The New Typography.” Helen Armstrong, ed. Graphic Design Theory, p. 35

Friedrich Friedl, Nicolaus Ott, and Bernard Stein, Typography: An Encyclopedic Survey of Type Design and Techniques Throughout History, pp. 36-37.

Ibid., pp. 32-22.

Ibid., pp. 24-25.

Ward, Beatrice, “The Crystal Goblet, or, Printing Should be Invisible,” Graphic Design and Reading, p. 91.

Ibid.

Vignelli, Massimo, “The Vignelli Canon,” p. 14.

Ibid., p. 28.

Ibid., p. 54.

Ibid.

Ibid., p. 55

Ibid., pp. 66-73.

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

Ibid., p. 14.

Tracy, Walter. Letters of Credit, p. 31

16

17

18

19

DIALOGUE

NEWDIRECTIONS

48

The application of expressive typography to larger bodies of text presents a rich source of potential for future design experimentation.

According to the parameters that I establish in the previous chapter, designers may feel free to abstract and manipulate text just as they do display typography so long as the message of the text is conveyed visually. Although many examples of expressive text have presented themselves over the course of design history – from Mallarmé’s experimental page layouts to Futurist and Dada poetry to the pages of Ray Gun magazine – these pieces have emerged chiefly from avant-garde design movements and have held little influence over more mainstream design applications; after all, expressive text was the one area of typography that the majority of my interview subjects staunchly rejected. At this point, highly abstracted and expressive layouts are rarely seen in bookstores or on magazine racks – moving forward, however, I would advocate that designers and typographers further expand the scope of expressive typography by bringing the manipulation of body text into more commercial design applications. As an extension of my research into a tangible design project, I plan to create a piece that effectively inserts the expressive manipulation of body text into a more everyday, consumer-driven design field. The goals of this project are to exemplify the scope and parameters of expressive text and to demonstrate that the abstraction of text is not merely an avant-garde technique, but an expressive design asset also suitable for commercial design fields.

EXAMPLES ANDINSPIRATION

In addition to reviewing the historical examples I explored earlier – those that emerged from fringe design movements ranging from Futurism at the turn of the century to grunge in the 1980s – I sought to locate a few additional noteworthy examples of expressive and experimental text and layout before embarking on the design stage of this project. By accumulating some key examples of expressive text and studying them in a more comprehensive manner, I aimed to explore the practical scope of expressive text, to gain an understanding of the creative process that contributes to this genre of work, and to determine when and how expressive text is used most effectively.

One particularly inspirational example is French designer Robert Massin’s 1964 typographic interpretation of Eugene Ionesco’s absurdist drama The Bald Soprano. In this piece, Massin utilizes both photographic imagery and text to illustrate the story. His manipulation of typographic form helps to visually present the tone of the dialogue and ultimately serves to clarify the play – though the initial layout of the page is fairly standard, with simple changes in typeface used to represent each new character (fig. 1), the typography gradually becomes more chaotic and ultimately illegible as the dialogue becomes more absurd and the play reaches an explosive climax (fig. 2).1 In this piece, the manipulation of type and layout adds another visual element to the aspect of reading the play, helping the reader to fully understand and appreciate what Ionesco has written.

1

2

I also took a closer look at the layout design of Mallarmé’s “Un coup de dés” and Péguy’s Jeanne d’Arc in order to more deeply analyze the expressive techniques used by each writer. Because both pieces use fairly regular and readably typesetting – save for some variations in typeface in the version of “Un coup de dés” that was initially published in Cosmopolis – the chief vehicle for typographic expression is the placement of words, sentences, and stanzas on the page. In Jeanne d’Arc especially, the use of blank space – and even entire blank pages – is used to establish a visual rhythm that mimics the poetic rhythm of the play. In both pieces, variations in type size also help to stress key words and phrases. These techniques provide another means of expression that does not affect the legibility of the text or the physical form of the typography.

Although these historical examples represent more fringe movements in design and literature, I also discovered a contemporary publishing company that seeks to bring more expressive book layout to the mainstream. Visual Editions, based in London, creates what they call “visual writing” – a type of writing that incorporates a wide range of graphic and visual elements alongside text. As their website explains,

The books produced at Visual Editions – like the expressive layouts that have come before them – seek to add a visual facet to the experience of literature. Their version of Laurence Sterne’s late 18th-century novel The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman was re-imagined and re-interpreted by A Practice for Everyday Life, a graphic design studio also based in London. This new edition of the book features subtle graphics and typographic manipulations, unique folds, and overprinted text – all of which are intended to visualize the author’s voice (fig. 3).3

Visual Editions’s most recent book, Jonathan Safran Foer’s Tree of Codes, has become relatively popular among more mainstream book vendors. For this project, the publishers worked alongside the author to realize his unique vision – a story that is literally cut out of another story. The book uses a system of die-cuts to carve an entirely new narrative from the pages of Bruno Schulz’s The Street of Crocodiles (fig. 4).4 The resulting piece is a combination of literature and sculpture that explores the process of reading and the relationship of pages to one another within the traditional book format.

These various examples of the effective use of expressive textual layout all bear one significant commonality – they deal with fiction literature and creative writing. It would seem that creative literature is an ideal vehicle for the expressive use of type, as there is already an aspect of interpretation involved in the act of

50

The way we think about visual writing is this: writing that uses visual elements as an integral part of the writing itself. Visual elements can come in all shapes and guises: they could be crossed out words, or photographs, or die-cuts, or blank pages, or better yet something we haven’t seen. The main thing is that the visuals aren’t gimmicky, decorative or extraneous, they are

key to the story they are telling. And without them, that story would be something altogether different.2

3

4

reading fiction. The more open to interpretation a literary work remains, the better suited it becomes to the application of a visual aspect that may aid in the reader’s understanding of the piece; this is what renders an absurdist drama such as The Bald Soprano an especially effective vehicle for the manipulation of type.

MOVING FORWARD

In order to apply these conclusions to a practical design project of my own, I set out to create an expressive literary layout that would contribute an additional visual facet to the experience of reading the work. The ideal piece of literature would be one that allowed the reader to freely interpret the author’s words – one in which the meaning of what was written could be clarified and expressed through visual elements in an effective and meaningful way. I also wanted to select something that was at least somewhat familiar to many readers, in an effort to make the piece more approachable to those unfamiliar with expressive typographic techniques. I ultimately chose to create an expressive typographic interpretation of Allen Ginsberg’s Howl.

In creating this interpretation of Howl, I sought to clarify and intensify Ginsberg’s words through my treatment of the type. I utilize changes in typeface, color, and type size to accentuate certain words and phrases and to create variations in tone, mood, and energy. I also manipulate the placement of words and letters – at times piling them on top of each other and at times providing wide spaces or even

entire pages in between them – to convey the pace and rhythm of the poem (fig. 5). Careful research and analysis of the poem ensured that I was conveying Ginsberg’s intended meaning – after all, one of my initial conclusions was that the function of expressive type was to further the message of what was written, not to add the designer’s tangential commentary. The resulting work is a graphic presentation of Ginsberg’s words that melds verbal and visual expression into a multifaceted reading experience.

52

5

Ionesco, Eugene. The Bald Soprano, Followed by an Unpublished Scene.

Visual Editions. www.visual-editions.com

Ibid.

Ibid.

1

2

3

4

Date post:	24-Mar-2016
Category:	Documents
Upload:	sally-rinehart
View:	241 times
Download:	2 times

Function and Form: Exploring and Expanding the Parameters of Expressive Typography

Documents