Le Corbusier: Towards a new architecture (1923)

16/09/09 – Excerpts from Le Corbusier’s Vers Une Architecture (1923), first English translation (Towards a New Architecture) 1927. (more…)

Air made visible: a visual reader on Bruno Munari (2000)

20/08/09 – Far vedere l’aria / Air Made Visible: A Visual Reader on Bruno Munari (2000) edited by Claude Lichtenstein and Alfredo W. Haberli. A catalogue for the exhibition at the Museum fur Gestaltung Zurich. Printed in Switzerland by Lars Muller Publishers//.

Ladislav Sutnar: Design and paper, number 13 (1943)

17/07/09 – Selections from Design and paper number 13: controlled visual flow by Ladislav Sutnar, Marquardt and Co., New York (1943). (more…)

Ladislav Sutnar: Design and paper, number 19 (1945)

16/07/09 – Selections from Design and paper number 19: shape, line and colour by Ladislav Sutnar, Marquardt and Co., New York (1945).

Design and paper was a series of softcover booklets produced by New York paper wholesaler Marquardt and Co. between 1937 and 1952(?). Its production ran quarterly for 39 issues and was printed at a very high standard. The series showcased the finest papers for printers, art directors and others in the printing trade. After number 7, issues were primarily devoted to individual artists and designers. Ladislav Sutnar featured in numbers 13 and 19.

In issue 19, Sutnar gives a brief and illustrative lesson in the use of shape, line and colour for organizing and presenting information. Sutnar’s characteristic style is evident in the bold use of colour, dynamic spreads and organizational signposts.

Issue 19 colophon:
Cover: Crysteel Bristol – High Plate – 22.5 x 28.5 – 200M
Text: Dullbrite White – Substance 25 × 38–70
Plates by Royal-Jones Photo Engraving Corp.

Numbers 13 and 19 were accurately reproduced in 2003 from the collections of the Museum of Decorative Arts in Prague// by Fraktály Publishers. (more…)

Karel Teige a typografie: asymetricka harmonie (2009)

28/06/09 – Monograph for Czech artist and designer, Karel Teige (1900-1951): Karel Teige a typografie: Asymetricka harmonie (2009) by Karel Srp, Polana Bregantova and Lenka Bydzovska. Text in Czech. (more…)

J. Hochuli: Detail in Typography

18/05/09 – Excerpts from Jost Hochuli’s Detail in Typography: Letters, letterspacing, words, wordspacing, lines, linespacing, columns (2008): (more…)

Tenugui: Designs & Patterns Japan

26/04/09 – Excerpts from Tenugui, Pie Books (2007), Japan. Tenugui are traditional Japanese cotton hand-towels featuring a wide range of designs and motifs. (more…)

Bruno Munari’s Design as art (1966)

01/04/09 – Excerpts from Bruno Munari’s Design as art first published in 1966. Images on flickr//

Preface to the English Edition

They [artists] have realized that at the present time subjective values are losing their importance in favour of objective values that can be understood by a great number of people.And if the aim is to mass-produce objects for sale to a wide public at low price, then it becomes a problem of method and design. The artist has to regain the modesty he had when art was just a trade, and instead of despising the very public he is trying to interest he must discover its needs and make contact with it again. This is the reason why the traditional artist is being transformed into the designer, and as I myself have undergone this transformation in the course of my working career I can say that this book of mine is also a kind of diary in which I try to see the why and wherefore of this metamorphosis. (13)
(more…)

Excerpts from The Vignelli Canon

24/03/09 – Excerpts from Massimo Vignelli’s The Vignelli Canon (2008):

This little book reveals our guidelines – those set by ourselves for ourselves. (6)

Creativity needs the support of knowledge to be able to perform at its best. (ibid.)

It is not the formula that prevents good design from happening but lack of knowledge of the complexity of the Design profession. (ibid.) (more…)

Armin Hoffmann: Graphic design manual (1965)

18/02/09 – Excerpts from Armin Hofmann’s Graphic Design Manual: Principles and Practice published in 1965.

Introduction

“What is lacking is a creative focus which would be the source of every new insight into the nature of art and would foster every kind of talent.” (37)

“It is only in in drawing, which occupies an isolated and underprivileged position in the curriculum, that thinking, inventing, representing, transposing and abstracting can be correlated.” (ibid.)

“It is a fairly general assumption that art training is autonomous and subject only to its own laws. It is precisely this error which has induced me to preface my consideration of the problems of art education with some thoughts on education in general with a view to showing the close interdependence of the various aims of education.” (ibid.) (more…)

Czech and Japanese matchbox labels

29/01/09 – PIE books, Japan: Cesky Filumenisticky Design (2005) and Japanese Matchbox Label Collection 1920s-40s (2004). Text in Japanese. Maraid’s matchbox labels on flickr//

Ubu’s almanac: Alfred Jarry and the graphic arts

22/12/08 – Ubu’s Almanac: Alfred Jarry and the Graphic Arts exhibition catalog and essays from the Spencer Museum of Art, University of Kansas. Select bibliography of works in English//

Letter by Letter: An Alphabetical Miscellany

24/06/08 – Select excerpts and notes from Laurent Pflughaupt’s Letter by Letter:

Introduction

“Tracing back through the history of these abstract signs, which we manipulate and decipher unconsciously on a daily basis, is often like discovering their hidden or forgotten meanings. We find that today we still use capital letters whose structures are identical to the engraved capitals that date from the beginning of this era. We also discover that the design of our printed letters is based on Carolingian lowercase letters, which were rehabilitated and perfected seven centuries later by Florentine humanists.” (9) (more…)

The Elements of Typographic Style – Part 1

18/05/08 – A selection of excerpts and principles from Robert Bringhurst’s The Elements of Typographic Style [Part 1 of 2]:

Foreword

“But when I set myself to compile a simple list of working principles, one of the benchmarks I first thought of was William Strunk and E.B. White’s small masterpiece, The Elements of Style.” (9)

“But the underlying principles of typography are, at any rate, stable enough to weather any number of human fashions and fads.” (10)

“The essential elements of style have more to do with the goals typographers set for themselves than with the mutable eccentricities of their tools.” (ibid.)

I THE GRAND DESIGN

1.1 First Principles

1.1.1 Typography exists to honor content.

“Typography with anything to say therefore aspires to a kind of statuesque transparency. Its other traditional goal is durability: not immunity to change, but a clear superiority to fashion.” (17) (more…)

John Maeda’s The Laws of Simplicity

28/04/08 – Excerpts from, and notes on, John Maeda’s The Laws of Simplicity: Design, Technology, Business, Life (2006). For more information visit the website.

Simplicity = Sanity

Technology has made our lives more full, yet at the same time we’ve become uncomfortably “full.”

“[...] to understand the meaning of life as a humanist technologist.” (iii)

-simplicity is a growth industry (pp. iv, 11, and 45)

“I originally conceived of this book as a sort of simplicity 101, to give readers an understanding of the foundation of simplicity as it relates to design, technology, business, and life. But now I see that a foundation can wait [...], and [...] a framework will suffice [...].” (v)

“There are three flavors of simplicity discussed here, where the successive set of three Laws (1 to 3, 4 to 6, 7 to 9) correspond to increasingly complicated conditions of simplicity: basic, intermediate, and deep.” (vi) (more…)

Futurist typography and the liberated text

13/04/08 – Excerpts from Alan Bartram’s Futurist Typography and the Liberated Text published 2005 by Yale University Press:

Introduction

“The Italian Futurist poet-typographers were literary people, as were the very different Russian artists; and, just as for the 1960s protest designers, content came first and created form. Aesthetics merely refined the design.” (7)

“An ability to use a computer makes no one a typographer, and provides no substitute for the fiery imagination adn visual sensibility possessed by Marinetti. His ‘new array of type’ transformed the very grammar and syntax of the sentence, created a unique poetry, a new mode of communication.” (8)

“[...]at least one noteable precendent, the original 1897 version of Stephane Mallarme’s Un Coup de des. And, about the same time Marinetti’s work was published, Apollinaire was experimenting with his calligrammes.” (ibid.) (more…)

Grid systems in graphic design (1981)

Excerpts from Josef Muller-Brockmann’s Grid Systems in Graphic Design: A Visual Communication Manual for Graphic Designers, Typographers and Three Dimensional Designers first published in 1981:

Foreword

Modern typography is based primarily on the theories and principles of design evolved in the 20′s and 30′s of our century. It was Mallarmé and Rimbaud in the 19th century and Apollinaire in the early 20th century who paved the way to a new understanding of the possibilities inherent in typography and who, released from conventional prejudices and fetters, created through their experiments the basis for the pioneer achievements of the theoreticians and practitioners that followed. (7)

The principle of the grid system presented in this book was developed and used in Switzerland after World War II. (ibid.)

But there was no publication that showed how the grid was constructed and applied, let alone how the design of the grid system was to be learned. This book is an attempt to close the gap. (8) (more…)

Emil Ruder’s Typographie

14/03/08 – Excerpts from Emil Ruder’s Typographie first published 1967:

Introduction

There are two essential aspects to the work of the typographer: he must take into account knowledge already acquired and keep his mind receptive to novelty. (5)

There must be no letting up in the determination to produce vital work reflecting the spirit of the times; doubt and perturbation are good antidotes against the tendency to follow the line of least resistance. (ibid.)

It is the intention of this book to bring home to the typographer that perhaps it is precisely the restrictions of the means at his disposal and the practical aims he has to fulfill that make the charm of his craft. (ibid.)

Typography has one plain duty before it and that is to convey information in writing. No argument or consideration can absolve typography from this duty. A printed work which cannot be read becomes a product without purpose. (6)

He [i.e., the typographer] is not free to make his own independent decisions; he must depend on what went beforehand and take into account what is to come. (8)

But the typographer does possess this ability to stand back from the work, and it is very useful to him in his craft since critical distance is a virtue in a typographer. The typographer must be able to take the impersonal view; wilful individuality and emotion have little place in this work. (ibid.)

The many active contacts between people from every country today leave no scope for type faces with a pronounced national character. (10)

The craft of the typographer, like any other, necessarily reflects the times. The age gives him the means with which to satisfy the needs the age creates. (12)

The creative worker, on the other hand, spares little thought for contemporary style, for he realizes that style is not somethign that can be deliberately created; it comes all unawares! (ibid.)

More than graphic design, typography is an expression of technology, precision and good order. (14) (more…)

Jan Tschichold’s The New Typography

Excerpts from Jan Tschichold’s Die neue Typographie (1928):

Introduction

“The ‘form’ of the New Typography is also a spiritual expression of our world-view. It is necessary therefore first of all to learn how to understand its principles, if one wishes to judge them correctly or oneself design within their spirit.” (7)

“The illustrations in this book, with few exceptions examples of practical work, prove that the concepts of the New Typography, in use, allow us for the first time to meet the demands of our age for purity, clarity, fitness for purpose, and totality.” (ibid.)

“Modern man, whose vision of the world is collective-total, no longer individual-specialist, needs no special reminder of the rightness of being closely aware of such related activities as modern painting and photography. I therefore thought it desirable to say something more about this new way of viewing our world, in which our spiritual conception of the new forms are linked with the whole range of human activity.” (8)

Growth and Nature of the New Typography
a) The new world view:

“Construction is the basis of all organic and organized form: the structure and form of a rose are no less logical than the construction of a racing car –both appeal to us for the ultimate economy and precision. Thus the striving for purity of form is the common denominator of all endeavour that has set itself the aim of rebuilding our life and forms of expression. In every individual activity we recognize the single way, the goal: Unity of Life!” (13)

“Typography too must now make itself part of all the other fields of creativity. The purpose of this book is to show these connections and explain their consequences, to state clearly the principles of typography, and to demand the creation of a contemporary style.” (ibid.) (more…)

Calendar illustrations by Czech artist Josef Lada

08/02/08 – Josef Lada’s calendar illustrations from the 1940s featuring traditional Czech occupations, pastimes and holiday scenes. (Unfortunately, February is missing.) (more…)