The philosophy of modernism in Typography

By Douglas C. McMurtrie

From the book: Texts on Type

By Heller and Meggs

Key points

- - the underlying principle of the new design is the dictum “Form follows function”

- -clarity is the essential feature of modern typography. Any form which does not first express the function of legibility is not in the true spirit of modern typography, no matter how “modernistic” it looks.

- -“pretty” layouts and exceedingly bizarre arrangements are frowned upon as diverting attention from the message itself to the physical form of it’s typography, which is always to be considered not as an end in itself, but only as a means to the end that the message be read.

- - In modern typography we are to depend on ourselves alone for the working out of any typographic problem, and not depend on the solutions or practices of another age. We are to do our creative work in the spirit of the present and to let it be truly expressive of our own interpretation of the message we are transmitting to readers through the medium of type.

Why Designers can’t think

From the book: seventy-nine short essays on design

Key points

-the men and women who invented graphic design in America were largely self-taught; they didn’t have the opportunity to go to fully developed specialized design schools, because none existed.

-American programs seem to fall into two broad categories: process(swiss) schools and portfolio (slick) schools.

-process schools favor a form-driven problem-solving approach. Such as drawing letterforms, “translating” three-dimensional objects into idealized high-contrast images, and basic still-life photography. One way or another, the process schools trace their lineage back to the advanced program of the Kunstgewerbeschule in Basel, Switzerland.

-the portfolio school has a completely different, admittedly more mercenary, aim: to provide students with polished “books” that will get them good jobs upon graduation.

-Unlike the full-time teachers of process school, the portfolio schools are staffed largely by working professionals who teach part time, who are impatient with idle exercises that don’t relate to the “real world”

-both schools hate each other. To he portfolio schools, the swiss method is hermetic, arcane, and meaningless to the general public. The the process schools, the “slick” method is distastefully commercial, shallow, and derivative.

-however, the best-trained graduates of either school are equally sought after by employers. East Coast corporate identity firms love the process school grads; anyone who’s spent six months combining letterform and ballet shoe won’t mind being mired in a fat standards manual for three years.

-On the other hand, package design firms are happy to get the portfolio school grads: not only do they have a real passion for tighter-than-tight comps, but they generate hundreds of stylistically diverse alternatives to show indecisive clients.

-nowadays the passion of design educators seems to be technology; they fear that computer illiteracy will handicap their graduates. But it’s the broader kind of illiteracy that’s more profoundly troubling. Until educators find a way to expose their students to a meaningful range of culture, grads will continue to speak in languages that only their classmates understand. And designers, more and more, will end up talking to themselves.