Why design type?

While reading for module three chapter eight, An Epoch of Typographic Genius, stood out as the beginning of applying artistic design to type and peaked my curiosity on the subject. Image 8-1, which consists of 24 grids and the typographic layout of every letter but W, instantly reminded me of a movie I watched years ago called Helvetica. At the time I was taking a beginning cartography class and we were studying the use of type faces in maps. I remember thinking how I just took the design of type face for granted and how I didn’t really understand what drove typographers to a particular design, so I watched the movie again and will attempt to compare the motivations of typographers. My impression from the chapter and movie in that not unlike art, typography changes with demands which are driven by the trends of the time—typographers constantly want something new and fresh.

Rather the basing type on calligraphy as it was in the very early stages of design, in mid 1600s, under orders from the king, the French mathematician Louis Simoneau sparked a revolution of drafting the design of typeface using a grid. During the rococo era, French artists valued extravagance and detail, and typographers followed this trend forming decorative yet structured fonts using this new type design method. William Carlson, who trained as an engraver, designed type described as “comfortable” and easy to read. During the French Revolution the type that was popularized by kings Louis XV and XIV were rejected and an Italian designer Giambattista Bodoni was on the forefront of the modern era. Bodoni’s style demonstrated a level of precision never scene before, with repeating structure indicative of the advancements in printing. 

Helvetica was invented in post WWII Switzerland when typographers were trying to rebuild a new world through type. They wanted something clean and legible and it caught on fast. Fonts were being created daily for the immense amount of advertising perpetuated by our newly industrial society and the Swiss wanted to infiltrate the mother of this phenomena, the United States. Little did Helvetica’s designers know that they would change the face of advertising. Ads of the 30s and 40s (above) were complicated and busy, with lots of people smiling and fancy fonts explaining complicated slogans. Typeface of the 60s and 70s (above) became sleek and simple, to deliver short messages quickly. There seems to be two outlooks on Helvetica amongst the designers and typographers interviewed in the film. Some think Helvetica is the ultimate san serif font and that all the subsequent san serifs are mere inadequate versions of Helvetica. Post modern designers like Paula Scher often think Helvetica is overused and has become the capitalist font. Scher even describes it as the font that supported the Vietnam War. Rock and roll albums of the 60s and 70s (bellow) best exemplify this trend of moving away from the simplicity of Helvetica, even though it was still very popular.

 

I learned several things have motivated typographers throughout time. Everything from the political climate to artistic trends of the generation, as well as technological advancements and the simple just the urge to create something new, bring about new font designs through typography.

Alphabets and Grammar, then and now

What I found most interesting and inspiring about this week’s reading was how the evolution of the alphabet, and grammar for that matter, was directly related to communication’s ability to be written and understood more efficiently.

An alphabet’s advantage over prehistoric forms of written language (simple pictures) stems from its evolving structure and design. Even early forms of the alphabet, such as the Phoenician and Semitic alphabets, were specifically designed with a consistent structure of not only the individual symbols but also the possible combinations of these symbols to form specific words. This advancement from the earlier phonograms, basically pictures on stone walls and tablets, was simpler because of its structure and therefore was easier to learn. Phonograms could be drawn in different styles and those styles could be interpreted differently by various people, which made it difficult to learn.

The alphabet’s advancing design, contributed to by the Greeks and Romans included vowels, capital letters and ease of writing. Vowels allowed humans a more sophisticated interpretation of written language by adding a crucial element in how words sound. Capital letters evolved the structure of a written sentence. With this advanced structure, and writing implements, written communication was now faster and more portable than the early chisels and stone forms of the petroglyph era.

This evolution led me to think of advancements in the written communication in my lifetime. Since I’m 33 years old, email and text messaging have become popular within my adulthood and the alphabet has evolved yet again to accommodate these light-speed formats of written communication. Texting and emails have popularized SMS and emoticons. SMS or short message service is the acronyms we all know that make our messages faster to type but get the message across (e.g. lol, btw, ttyl). Emoticons are the emotions we express in written messages using various punctuation marks that can be deciphered, with a little imagination, as facial expressions (e.g. happy :), sad :(, sad with a tear :’(). Damn, my actual punctuation marks have distorted my example emoticons. In any case, these relatively new additions to written communication have been invented to speed up writing and reading, a lot like the addition of vowels and capital letters were during the ancient Greek and Roman times.  

In his paper, “A Critical Review of Information Visualizations for Natural Language,” Christopher Collins explains that humans are visual communicators primarily due to our advanced sight capabilities. Collins notes that throughout history, since the first known attempts at visual communication of cave drawings in Lascaux caves in France, information visualizations have evolved by “increasing the efficiency of information delivery, and reducing interpretation errors.” It’s this last bit that intrigues me because I often misinterpret an emoticon, as my girlfriend tells me. Sometimes I use the smiley face to indicate sarcasm, and sometimes I use it to show happiness.  Therefore, I’m not so sure that emoticons and SMS has truly helped humans communicate better. By monitoring subject’s texting habits and evaluates their writing skills through grammatical tests Solomon Ali Dansieh, in his paper “SMS Texting and Its Potential Impacts on Students’ Written Communication Skills,” found that on average his subject’s grammatical skills did not meet the standards set by his affiliated institution, Wa Polytechnic, when engaging in regular SMS practice through text messaging. Dansieh goes to offer several potential reasons for this correlation, like lack of saturation of SMS in the culture, not to mention there is a wide breadth of research on this phenomenon that I cannot cover here. But it begs the question, is written communication continuing to evolve in order to increase its efficiency as it's originators intended?

Works Cited:

"A Critical Review of Information Visualizations for Natural Language"

"SMS Texting and Its Potential Impacts on Students’ Written Communication Skills"