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Century

02th

WIM CROUWEL

PAUL RENNER

TYPE DESIGNERS

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20th century modernist type designers:Paul RennerWim Crouwel

MRGRIDNICMEETSMODERN

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The nineteenth century and the twenty cen-turies brought profound changes in typog-raphy. These changes would not have been possible without the continuous evolution of technology and the driving force of human experimentation. The industrial revolution in the nineteenth century brought dramatic changes in agriculture, manufacturing, min-ing, transportation, and technology, therefore in typepograpy. The introduction of powered machinery dramatically increased production capacity, which generated the need to adver-tise the new products.

Paul Renner was born in Wernigerode, Ger-many, in the Harz region, in 1879. His father was an evangelical theologian. Renner when to a very prestigious school, called Gymna-sium where studied Greek and Latin for 9 years. Afterwards, Renner decided to study Arts, and after attending several academies, completed his studies in Munich in 1900. Studying at this schools, not only left him with knowledge in arts but also with a sense of leadership, of duty and responsibility.

Renner was a member of the Deutscher Werkbund (German Work Federation), where he created a new set of guidelines for good book design. Also he has an active partici-

pant in the heated ideological and artistic debates. Renner made his opposition to the Nazis clear, and because of this he has arrested and dismissed from his post in Munich in 1933.

Wim Crouwel was born in 1928, in Gronin-gen, Netherlands, a provincial town full of live as he descried. Crouwel had an early contact with art and type, his father work preparing illustrations for letterpress printing. Growing up, he did a lot of draw-ings which felt him specially interested in 3D structures. After high school, Crouwel went art school to the Minerca art school in Groningen. This school had the first mod-ernist building in Holland, erected in 1923. And in this school Crouwel ideas of con-struction and architecture felt just right.

After Art school, Crouwel went Military service for two and a half years, and afterwards, he went to Amsterdam got a job helping an exhibition designer. While working he also took typography classes in the evening. This let him to have a deeper understanding of letterforms. Crouwel has remarkable work throughout his career and is indeed one of the leading designer of the 20th century. His graphic work is well

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known for the use of grid-based layouts, and the influence of Swiss design.

In 1925, Jan Tschichold published “Elemen-tary Typography” an article that had the first statement of constructivist graphic design principles.

Paul Renner finished his studies in the beginning twentieth century, back then ten-sions between tradition and modernity were visible in German design debates. One of the most controversial debates was about technology, the dispute between conserva-tive and modernizing elements in German society. In 1928 Renner designed Futura, one of the most successful sans serifs ever designed. Even though he contributed with

Another important invention in the end of the nineteenth century was the Linotype machine. This revolutionary machine was designed by the German, Ottmar Mergenthaler, who immigrated to the United States in 1872. The machine was released and put into operation in 1886 in the office of the New York Tribune. It was a significant improvement over the manual type setting. It allowed lines of metal type to be set from a keyboard similar to a typewriter instead of setting them piece by piece.

1886OTTOMARMERGENTHALER

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a Modern Typeface, Renner dislike many forms of the modern culture such as Jazz, dancing, and cinema but like the functionalist strain in modernism. He attempted to fuse the Gothic and the roman typefaces and can be seen as a bridge between the traditional (19th century) and the modern (20th century).

Wim Crouwel served on the military for two years, but after he was done with it in 1952, he went to Amsterdam looking for opportuni-ties. There he started working for an exhibi-tion company with the help of Dick Elffers, and artist whom Wim knew for his posters. It was just part of the Post World War II. After working for two years in exhibition design and learning typography he started his own design studio, Total Design. Back then, the atmo-sphere of great hope was spreading among citizens on the devastated cities, and desire of rebuilding Europe was taking place. Wim was fascinated by the rational aspect in Bauhaus typography, and worked his way as a Swiss Modernist.

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Paul Renner lived in a moment where changes were taking place. Technology was evolving and entertainment and communication along with it: cinema, public radio broadcasting, and sound recording were rapidly developing. A Modern world was shaping. Renner’s Futura, is typeface that capture sim-plicity and functionality on it’s geomet-ric shapes. The Bauhaus and Renner believed that a modern typeface should express modernity. Futura is commonly considered the major typeface devel-opment to come out the Constructivist movement.

Wim Crouwel working as an exhibi-tion designer helps him to learn about graphic corporate identities, he took advantage of that experience and played during the Total Design period of the 1960s and 70s. Crouwel lived in a period of many changes as well. One of the most important change that he went through was of the insertion of the computer in the creating process.

He was the last living member of the Bauhaus, he designed Univer-sal, a geometric sans-serif type face. Bayer developed a crisp vi-sual style and adopted the use of all-lowercase, sans serif typefaces for most Bauhaus publications.

HERBERT BAYER

1925

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WIMCROUWEL

A design should have some tension and some expression in itself. I like to compare it with the lines on a football field. It is a strict grid. In this grid you play a game and these can be nice games or very boring games.

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ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ123456789

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ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ123456789

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WIMCROUWEL

ABCDEFGHIJKLMHOPQRSTUVWXYZ123456789

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PAUL RENNER

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PAUL RENNER

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A design should have some tension and some expression in itself. I like to compare it with the lines on a football field. It is a strict grid. In this grid you play a game and these can be nice games or very boring games

ABCDEFGHIJKLMHOPQRSTUVWXYZ123456789

The early twentieth century looked to expand modernist sensibility, the integration of technol-ogy and the development of mass-production of aesthetics and art were vital. New technologies in telecommunications, and information technol-ogy, especially computers, change the world. Ty-pography kept evolving and adapting to the new modern and industrialized society.

The most important influence for the on Bau-haus was modernist. It was a cultural movement, which origins go as far back as the 1880s, and was present among Germans before war, despite the prevailing conservatism. Before the Bau-haus was founded, the radically simplified forms, the rationality and functionality and the idea of mass-production was already partly developed in

Germany. The Bauhaus had a major impact on art and architecture trends in Western Europe, the United States and Canada. One of the main objec-tives of the Bauhaus was to unify art, craft, and technology. The machine was considered a positive element, and therefore industrial and product design were important components.

The Bauhaus was seen as a place where design-ers ally themselves with the machine age in an attempt to define the modern. Rejecting both cal-ligraphy and ornamentation in favor of purity and elemental form, they embraced refined sans forms and delivered Geometric Modernist types. Design was now being driven by a socialist ideology, with

AND THE

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THE MACHINE AGEMODERNIST

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THE MACHINE AGEMODERNIST

the new technology providing a functional aesthetic. It was grid-based, modular, often incase alphabets. Forms were tested to their limits and obliged to convey meaning along with content even more so than Postmodernism would demand in the future.

One of the most visible changes of this pe-riod was the adoption of new technologies into daily life of ordinary people. Electricity, the telephone, the radio, the automobile—and the need to work with them, repair them and live with them—created social change.

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succeeded in demonstrating the transmission of moving silhouette images in London in 1925, and of moving, monochromatic images in 1926. This demonstration by Baird is generally agreed to be the world’s first true demonstration of television

JOHN LOGIE BAIRD

1925

printing technologies have continued to advance. The printing process has also evolved but some maintain the basic concepts developed in nine-teenth century and even before. The application of typefaces have been affected by industrial manufacturing processes. Today the personal computer has dramatically changed the dynamic between designers and typefaces. The computer became a platform where software that exploits the graphic potential was growing strong. And had as a effect foundries created by individuals. Today designers can take a change of designing their fonts or accessing hundreds of typefaces through internet.

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Early in the relation ship between men and computer, in 1987 Emigre fonts were designed with Apple Macintosh and in 1987. This moment was important in the because it was one of the earliest typographical exploration with the com-puter but today in the Twenty first century the computer and software like the adobe creative suite has change so much and has become a power full tool in the invention and manipulation of typography.

Nineteenth century and twenty centuries typografic technology

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Nineteenth century and twenty centuries typografic technology

Colophon

DESIGNER: Jairo Rodriguez

TYPEFACES:New AlphabetFoundryGridnik RegularFoundryGridnik BoldFutura Light

COURSE: Typography

FACULTY: Francheska Guerrero

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1 th

Century9TYPE DESIGNERS