Key facts:
-Herman Zapf led the humanist movement and helped the progression of lines in sans and sans serif lines from structural to an organic base
Palatino 1950; open counters and weighted forms
Melior 1952; short ascenders and descenders specifically for letterpress
Optima 1958; sans serif with Roman and Calligraphic styles combined, golden ratio
-The Golden Ratio; forms the basis of paper sizes and is a means of achieving balance pg 68
-Helvetica created by Max Miedinger in 1957; clean no nonsense
- Adrian Frutiger created Univers in 1957; geometric and elegant, no frills
-Roger Excoffon created Mistral in 1953 and is based on his own handwriting
-International Style-Grids, mathmaical principles, minimal decor
-Jan Tschichold wrote The New Typography in 1928 wanted simplicity, like doing away with capitol letter so to be more efficient.
The 1950's was right after the second world war, a time of renewal and celebration in the world and in typography. In 1950 Herman Zapf a leader of the humanist movement and a genius in the field of calligraphy it is legible with open counters and weights strokes based on the Italian Renaissance. He also created Melior which is a newspaper face with short ascenders and descenders. In 1958 he created Optima influenced by the graves at the Santa Croce church and was originally sketched on two 1,000 lire bank notes, it is very general purpose becuase of it mix of Roman and calligraphic forms this was his most successful font. In 1953 Roger Excoffon created Mistral a loose script based on his own handwriting. 1957 was a very busy year for typographer's including Max Miedinger the creator of Helvetica on of the most popular typefaces in the world, based on Akzidenz-Grotesk and is a strict no-nonsense font. The other person important to 1957 is Adrian Frutiger the creator of Univers although this font is much like Helvetica it is much more geometric with even less frills. The Internationl style otherwise known as the swiss style is based on the 1920's of De Stijl Bauhaus and Jan Tschichold's The New Typography became a way to represent universal things not personal expression and was mainly based on mathematical principles. Jan Tschichold book The New Typography published in 1928 explored simplicity, clarity, and functionality, sans serif fonts as well as the new concept of asymmetry. He based this on his ideal of efficient materials to create a fairer world, an example is he didn't want to use uppercase letters.
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