The Constructivists

The typographic design process displayed many formalistic influences: flush setting, text spacing, linocut words. White spaces and diagonal text blocks and lines were consciously integrated. Lines of capital letters emphasized the constructed forms. This often resulted in a self-contained text structure whose individual parts corresponded and connected with one another in orderly compositional lines. Many artists worked this typographic style into the ever-growing field of advertisement: Walter Dexel, Kurt Schwitters, Erich Buchholz, Max Burchartz and others. Their work prepared the way for the functional typography of the next decades as well as that of the present.

Herbert Bayer: basic alphabet, 1958

Jan Tschichold documented the international spread of this movement. After he had already published “Elementary Typography” and the journal “Typographic Notes” (“Typografische Mitteilungen”) in 1925, he brought out “The New Typography” in 1928, which was to become a standard work in the field. Here he made clear that the sans serif linear antiqua was the “natural” typeface of Constructivist typography. The typeface Futura® of Paul Renner advanced beyond experiment to become a popular text typeface.