Looking Closer 2, Critical Writings on Graphic Design

An extract from Jeffery Keedy's Essay from this book:

The first thing one learns about typography and type design is that there are many rules and maxims. The second is that these rules are made to be broken. And the third is that “breaking the rules” has always been just another one of the rules. Although rules are meant to be broken, scrupulously followed, misunderstood, reassessed, retrofitted and subverted, the best rule of thumb is that rules should never be ignored. The typefaces discussed in this article are recent examples of rule-breaking/making in progress. I have taken some old rules to task and added some new ones of my own that I hope will be considered critically.

Imagine that you have before you a flagon of wine. You may choose your own favourite 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... Now the man who first chose glass instead of clay or metal to hold his wine was a “modernist” in the sense in which I am going to use the term. That is, the first thing he asked of this particular object was not “How should it look?” but “What must it do?” and to that extent all good typography is modernist.

Beatrice Warde, from an address to the British
Typographers’ Guild at the St. Bride Institute,
London, 1932. Published in Monotype Recorder,
Vol. 44, No. 1 (Autumn 1970).

Beatrice Warde’s address is favoured by members of a vanishing tribe – typography connoisseurs who “reveal” beautiful things to the rest of us (modernists). Such connoisseurs are opposed to typographic sensationalists who have no feelings about the material they contain with their extravagance (postmodernist hacks). In short, the typographers with “taste” must rise above the crass fashion-mongers of the day. Connoisseurship will always have its place in a capitalist, class-conscious society and there is nothing like modernism for the creation of high and low consumer markets. The modernist typophile-connoisseur should rejoice in the typefaces shown here because they reaffirm his or her status as being above fleeting concerns. After all, if there was no innovation to evolve through refinement to tradition, then where would the connoisseur be?

Beatrice Warde did not imagine her crystal goblet would contain Pepsi-Cola, but some vessel has to do it. Of course, she was talking in terms of ideals, but what is the ideal typeface to say: “Uh-Huh, Uh-Huh, You got the right one baby”? There is no reason why all typefaces should be designed to last forever, and in any case, how would we know if they did?

The art of lettering has all but disappeared today, surviving at best through sign painters and logotype specialists. Lettering is being incorporated into type design and the distinction between the two is no longer clear. Today, special or custom letterforms designed in earlier times by a letterer are developed into whole typefaces. Calligraphy will also be added to the mix as more calligraphic tools are incorporated into typedesign software. Marshall McLuhan said that all new technologies incorporate the previous ones, and this certainly seems to be the case with type. The technological integration of calligraphy, lettering, and type has expanded the conceptual and aesthetic possibilities of letterforms. The rigid categories applied to type design in the past do not make much sense in the digital era. Previous distinctions such as serif and sans serif are challenged by the new “semi serif” and “pseudo serif. “The designation of type as text or display is also too simplistic. Whereas type used to exist only in books (text faces) or occasionally on a building or sign (display), today’s typographer is most frequently working with in-between amounts of type – more than a word or two but much less than one hundred pages. The categories of text and display should not be taken too literally in a multimedia and interactive environment where type is also read on television, computers, clothing, even tattoos.