The History of Linear, Sans Serif Typefaces
To better understand the transformation of typeface forms, let’s cast a look back at the 1920s. Paul Renner was making his first attempts to create an alphabet exclusively with circles and lines. But his experiments failed due to the unusual characters which his rigid concept of form produced (see Fig. 10). Later, when he developed Futura® (1927), the stroke thickness was no longer consistent but a slight expansion and narrowing was allowed which helped the characters appear less peculiar. Only the letters a, g and t marked a clear departure from the classic forms. With regards to capital letters, the old style of applying different widths was reintroduced. It should be noted that the sans serif type designed by J. Erbar in 1922 already implemented a lowercase style (only in normal weights) from which Futura clearly drew inspiration. At about the same time as Futura, Rudolf Koch introduced Kabel™ (1927) which in its mode of expression for normal text passages could be considered the prototype of all sans serif types. The strokes are uncompromising in their consistent thickness and the curves are almost entirely purely circular in form. The stroke endings are strangely cropped, sometimes perpendicularly sometimes diagonally; a certain woodcutting style can be observed here which was quite typical of Koch.
The gray line
Before considering the further development of sans serif types, it is important to remember that with the outbreak of World War II all stylistic progression in this field was essentially brought to a halt in Germany. In Switzerland, however, which was spared many of the horrors of the war, a creative fire continued to glimmer. During this period, there was a gradual departure from constructed typefaces like Futura and Erbar and a rediscovery of the old sans serif types from the end of the 19th century.
Among other typefaces, typesetters dug up Standard Series (1898) and gave it a thorough facelift. And in 1943, the Haas foundry took the Moderne Grotesk, originally designed by Ludwig Wagner in 1912, reintroducing the type as Normal Grotesk. These old fonts were then subject to an innovative phase of experimentation at the design schools in Basel and Zurich, marked by a clear tendency towards asymmetry. Lines of type were treated like building elements which were used to harmoniously structure a page, thereby also defining the surrounding blank spaces (see Fig. 11). The letters of a typeface, when placed in a row, were supposed to be able form a harmonious gray line which could be used as a typographical building element – something which was not possible with the irregularities of more constructed fonts.
At the beginning of the 1950s, when type foundries began to operate again, the actual work of creating new fonts in this style began. Folio® was designed by K. F. Bauer and W. Baum. They could draw on the experience of almost 100 years of developments. One of their models, Breite Grotesk, was from the year 1867, while for the model of his Helvetica™ type family, Max Miedinger used the so-called Schelter Grotesk from the year 1880, whose matrices were sold at this time by Schelter & Giesecke to many foundries. Univers™, by Adrian Frutiger, with its strongly emphasized thick-thin contrasts and somewhat angular ovals, had no typical models. The first designs of this kind of sans serif font family were created in 1950 at the Zurich School of Applied Arts (see Fig. 13).
What certainly helped these 3 fonts become the international successes which they are today, is the fact that they were all made available to the three most important leadsetting systems of the time and were therefore all widely used in the mass production of texts.
The grid
The discovery of the grid had a considerable impact on the development of this new form of typography – not only in the breakdown of the page into graphic units but also in the analysis of the individual characters of the alphabet. Such a system had already been used for centuries in Japanese architecture, where the unit of planning is the size of the tatami, a straw mat, which is used to map out the proportions of each room in a unified way. An illustration by Walter Käch shows the conception of a grid for a sans serif font (see Fig. 14), on which most lowercase letters can be designed.
The difference to the way in which characters were previously drawn can be seen in the direct comparison of a constructed and a modular typeface (see Fig. 15). In our example, the upper line (Futura) has fill areas featuring eyes and intermediate spaces which fluctuate greatly in size and form; on the lower line (Univers), the fill areas are more similar. The curves are ovals which have been slightly stretched to one corner and there is a distinct thinning in the oblique transitions and joins, as can be seen in b and n, for instance. The interior and exterior white triangles at the oblique angles are also more similar to each other.
The gray line
Before considering the further development of sans serif types, it is important to remember that with the outbreak of World War II all stylistic progression in this field was essentially brought to a halt in Germany. In Switzerland, however, which was spared many of the horrors of the war, a creative fire continued to glimmer. During this period, there was a gradual departure from constructed typefaces like Futura and Erbar and a rediscovery of the old sans serif types from the end of the 19th century.
Among other typefaces, typesetters dug up Standard Series (1898) and gave it a thorough facelift. And in 1943, the Haas foundry took the Moderne Grotesk, originally designed by Ludwig Wagner in 1912, reintroducing the type as Normal Grotesk. These old fonts were then subject to an innovative phase of experimentation at the design schools in Basel and Zurich, marked by a clear tendency towards asymmetry. Lines of type were treated like building elements which were used to harmoniously structure a page, thereby also defining the surrounding blank spaces (see Fig. 11). The letters of a typeface, when placed in a row, were supposed to be able form a harmonious gray line which could be used as a typographical building element – something which was not possible with the irregularities of more constructed fonts.
At the beginning of the 1950s, when type foundries began to operate again, the actual work of creating new fonts in this style began. Folio® was designed by K. F. Bauer and W. Baum. They could draw on the experience of almost 100 years of developments. One of their models, Breite Grotesk, was from the year 1867, while for the model of his Helvetica™ type family, Max Miedinger used the so-called Schelter Grotesk from the year 1880, whose matrices were sold at this time by Schelter & Giesecke to many foundries. Univers™, by Adrian Frutiger, with its strongly emphasized thick-thin contrasts and somewhat angular ovals, had no typical models. The first designs of this kind of sans serif font family were created in 1950 at the Zurich School of Applied Arts (see Fig. 13).
What certainly helped these 3 fonts become the international successes which they are today, is the fact that they were all made available to the three most important leadsetting systems of the time and were therefore all widely used in the mass production of texts.
The grid
The discovery of the grid had a considerable impact on the development of this new form of typography – not only in the breakdown of the page into graphic units but also in the analysis of the individual characters of the alphabet. Such a system had already been used for centuries in Japanese architecture, where the unit of planning is the size of the tatami, a straw mat, which is used to map out the proportions of each room in a unified way. An illustration by Walter Käch shows the conception of a grid for a sans serif font (see Fig. 14), on which most lowercase letters can be designed.
The difference to the way in which characters were previously drawn can be seen in the direct comparison of a constructed and a modular typeface (see Fig. 15). In our example, the upper line (Futura) has fill areas featuring eyes and intermediate spaces which fluctuate greatly in size and form; on the lower line (Univers), the fill areas are more similar. The curves are ovals which have been slightly stretched to one corner and there is a distinct thinning in the oblique transitions and joins, as can be seen in b and n, for instance. The interior and exterior white triangles at the oblique angles are also more similar to each other.
Linotype
