New Typographic Rules

Curiosity, cross-pollination and experimentation are the three main ingredients of innovation.
These reflections do not aim to tell the full history of typography. Moving chronologically, they highlight a few examples and show how specific factors bring about change or introduce something new.

At the end of the 18th century, Firmin Didot (14 April 1764, Paris – 24 April 1836, Mesnil-sur-l'Estrée) and Giambattista Bodoni (26 February 1740, Saluzzo – 30 November 1813, Parma), the fathers of the Neoclassical style, fully embraced this formula of curiosity, cross-pollination and experimentation. They broke with a tradition that had gone unchanged for years, ever since printing and roman type took hold in Venice and then spread across Europe. Through them, the so-called Renaissance tradition was replaced by Neoclassicism. This was not a sudden break. Between the Renaissance, whose typefaces had an inclined axis, medium contrast and calligraphic traces, and Neoclassicism there was a period of transition. Its so-called transitional typefaces bridged the two styles and carried elements of both in their design.

Didot and Bodoni wanted to belong to the era they were living in. Just as architects were beginning to abandon the decorative Baroque and Rococo styles, they stripped typefaces of every trace of handwriting. The result was a new style defined by high contrast, a perfectly vertical axis and hairline serifs.

Their desire to be contemporary with the art and architecture of their time shows how essential it is to draw inspiration from, and be influenced by, what happens around us. We see this again in the early 19th century with Robert Thorne (1754, London – 1820, London). Starting from Neoclassical types and exaggerating the contrast between thin and thick strokes, he created the first Fat Face. It was a response to the rise of modern advertising and wall posters. John Orlando Parry's A London Street Scene (1835) illustrates this well: whoever uses the most striking typeface wins attention.

Around the middle of the 19th century, lead became too heavy and costly for large formats, so production moved to wood type. This shift was made easier by a mechanical process developed by Darius Wells (1800 – 1875). Wells, a printer and type manufacturer, invented a tool made of a router guided along the full outline of a letter pattern. In 1834 William Leavenworth (1815 – 1893) added the pantograph to Wells's process. This made it possible to reproduce very large letters that until then could not be cast by traditional methods. Typography was no longer a tool for printed books alone. It had also become a vehicle for messages on public posters.

While Thorne was working on contrast, the Caslon foundry introduced another novelty in 1821 with the Italian typeface. By flipping the stress, it produced a reverse-contrast typeface, the very first example in the history of typography. Between the 19th and 20th centuries came an explosion of experimentation. The first Egyptian (slab serif) typefaces appeared, with serifs as thick as the stem. So did the first sans serif, available in capitals only, designed by the same Caslon foundry in 1816. The first lowercase sans serif would appear in 1834 with the Seven Lines Grotesque (the first documented use of the term "Grotesque"), produced by William Thorowgood's foundry (? – 1877). This typographic variety, which also included fancy types ranging from simple shadow effects to letters adorned with leaves, figures or floral ornaments, has continued to this day.

At the start of the 20th century, Guillaume Apollinaire presented a new approach to composition in his collection Calligrammes. By playing with layout, he broke free from the rigid grid used until then. This was a key step toward art movements such as Futurism in Italy, Constructivism in Russia and De Stijl in the Netherlands. Once detached from the book and freed from the grid, the letter stopped serving as a communication tool and became pure graphic sign, material for abstract compositions.

Between the 1930s and the 1980s came a period of profound stylistic change, from Modernism to the Swiss Style. Before moving to the contemporary, it is worth pausing on the work of Emigre. This digital type foundry was founded in Berkeley, California, in 1984 by Rudy VanderLans and Zuzana Licko, the same year the first Macintosh computer came out. From 1984 to 2005 Emigre published the magazine of the same name. Its texts were set in dynamic, experimental layouts using the foundry's own typefaces, among the first digital fonts. Emigre is a key example of innovation and research. By exploiting the limits of early digital tools, it created an entirely new typographic aesthetic with bitmap fonts that celebrated the pixel.

A few years earlier, Wim Crouwel (21 November 1928, Groningen – 19 September 2019, Amsterdam) had done the opposite with his New Alphabet, trying to solve the bitmap problem by concealing it. As moma.org describes it: "early computer screens – cathode-ray tube (CRT) monitors – rendered images with rather large pixels, making it difficult to reproduce the traditional curved forms of letters; Crouwel therefore decided to redesign the alphabet using only horizontal lines. New Alphabet is, in Crouwel's words, 'exaggerated and never meant to be actually used,' a statement about the impact of new technologies on centuries of typographic tradition."

With Emigre, then, we find parallels with the new approach to layout of the early 20th century. The constant interplay between rule-breaking and technological evolution helps us see how closely our ideas are bound to these two factors, almost inseparably.

Today, as this coexistence of ideas and technology continues, the letter has already given up its role as a tool for conveying a message. Now it is losing its legibility as well. Typographic form is no longer only a communicative sign but a visual one. This is clear in projects such as Ready, distributed by the plain-form foundry, which explores the exuberance of the typographic sign. The font combines historical forms with the unpredictability of algorithms, becoming signs that only hint at our established, codified writing system.

Plain-form is just one of many contemporary foundries that have chosen to offer no text faces at all. They focus instead on display typefaces that push letter design to its extremes. French designer Loris Pernoux's Langulaire shows that within a type family built on extreme forms, we can read the content only when less legible letters sit next to more legible ones.

The same idea was explored in the visual identity created by the Brazilian creative duo Monga Design for Brownie Points, an online shop founded by artist Ronny Perkins in Los Angeles. The main typeface is Rabbit Hole Display, designed by Tomasz Pawluk in 2021, whose letterforms are illegible. By pairing it with more classical typefaces, Monga Design built a dynamic, high-impact identity that makes the most of Pawluk's work.

Another phenomenon that has taken off in recent years is the rise of open-source foundries, which distribute typefaces that anyone can download, modify and use completely free of charge. Velvetyne clearly stands out among them. Typefaces such as Pilowlava and Flor de Ruina are now part of the contemporary visual imagination.

Other open-source approaches appear in projects such as Elias Hanzer's Phase (video). It is a generative typography concept built on modular components that form the basis for an infinite number of shapes. Thanks to variable font technology, it can be manipulated in real time or through voice commands. Beyond its use of new technology, the project carries a very strong idea. Something as deeply personal as the human voice becomes a tool for drawing and shaping type. The resulting typeface, free to download, perfectly represents the person who created it.

German studio Schultzschultz used the same idea in its identity redesign for Markgraph, a company founded in 1986 that designs analog and digital spaces for brands and culture. The logotype, based on a custom linear font, is shaped by the voices of the company's employees¹. Employees thus become an integral part of the visual identity. The same studio offers a wide range of online tools for playing with and manipulating type. Sites such as spacetypegenerator.com and schultzschultz.com/scriptscript/ show their skill in using code to transform letterforms.

This method captures how contemporary visual identities are developed. Projects such as the SF Symphony identity² by Collins in 2021, or the London Symphony Orchestra identity³ by The Partners in 2017, to name just two, show that an identity today requires a dynamic system rather than a static form. The designer is no longer the maker of the final output but the one who defines the parameters of the initial input.

What happens when written words can speak? When they can move? When they can be imbued with sound and tone and nuance, with decibel and harmony and voice? As designers probing the creative parameters of this new technology, our goal may be less to digitize than to dramatize. Indeed, there is a theatrical component that I am convinced is essential to this new thinking. Of what value are typographic choices – bold and italics, for example – when words can dance across the screen, dissolve, or disappear altogether?
— Jessica Helfand, Electronic Typography: The New Visual Language, 2001

In conclusion, progress in typography today follows the same logic it has followed throughout history. Embracing the present, understanding new technologies and being willing to question the rules we are given are what allow us to move forward, in this field and others. Topics such as artificial intelligence, creative coding and parametric systems should not be met with fear and worry. They should be embraced and studied so that we can keep evolving.

In this post-digital age, digital technology is no longer a revolutionary phenomenon but a normal part of everyday life.
— Alessandro Ludovico, Post-Digital Print: The Mutation of Publishing since 1894, Eindhoven: Onomatopee, 2012