TY - JOUR
AU1 - Farias, Priscila L
AU2 - Aynsley, Jeremy
AB - Abstract This Virtual Special Issue includes twelve articles published in the Journal of Design History between 1988 to 2020 that focus on typographic histories. The selected articles address different aspects of the subject, ranging from designing letterforms and manufacturing typefaces to putting those letterforms to use—through typesetting and letterpress printing, typewriting, collage, lithography and photocopying. To provide a context for this selection of articles this Introduction begins by characterizing the place of typographic histories within the Journal of Design History and the broader field of design history. It then considers the methods, models and approaches available that offer a framework for understanding and interpreting typographic practices and objects. Recognizing that the historiography of typography has a trajectory that predates design history by many years, reference is made to other disciplines that have contributed to this longer history. We then give a brief overview of the various kinds of archives and collections where the materials, methods and objects of typography are held and can be studied. The Introduction concludes by detailing the contribution of the selected articles, grouping them and drawing out themes that become apparent by placing them together. Finally, the article offers suggestions for future research and scholarship. Introduction To begin with definitions: in the strictest sense typography can be defined as printing with movable type—that is, with small blocks, usually made of metal or wood, containing letters, numbers or other characters on one of their faces. Those pieces are set, that is placed together to form words, columns and pages—inked and transferred to paper in a process that is known in English as letterpress printing. This process became widespread in Europe and western countries from the late fourteenth century onwards but has important antecedents in Asia where printing with movable type was recorded as early as the ninth century.1 Since the late nineteenth century, technological advances in type manufacturing, typesetting and printing have demanded that the concept of ‘typography’ should be expanded to include other mechanical means of replicating texts. Digital technologies applied to typography blurred the limits between producing, setting and printing type, demanding an even more expanded conception of the field. Today the term ‘typography’ can be used in a broad sense to encompass the whole set of practices and processes involved in the creation and use of visible signs related to orthographic (letters) and para-orthographic elements of verbal language (numbers, punctuation marks, diacritics, etc.). In a more precise sense, however, differentiations could be made between manual processes for obtaining orthographic and para-orthographic elements and defining their spacing and alignment, such as in handwriting, calligraphy and lettering, and mechanical or automatic processes where those elements and the metric relations between them are determined in advance, such as in typographic processes proper, comprising type design, typesetting and letterpress printing. The articles selected for this Virtual Special Issue (VSI) address typography in the wider sense. Typographic histories, in this case, include narratives about the conception and use of letterforms in different contexts and times. Given the centrality of letterforms to graphic design practice, some histories of graphic design (such as those by Anceschi, Meggs and Satué)2 start with the origins of writing systems. Histories of typography most often start with the mechanization of writing prompted by the letterpress printing process, but not without making reference to letters painted, drawn or carved and used as a model, and eventually including other non-typographic ways of composing and printing letters, such as typewriting, collage and lithographic printing.3 This VSI presents twelve articles selected from a range of twenty-two published in the Journal of Design History between 1988 to 2020 that focus on typography in the ways described above.4 The articles selected address different aspects of the subject, going from the micro level of designing letterforms and manufacturing typefaces to the macro level of putting those letterforms to use, either through strictly typographic means, such as typesetting and letterpress printing, or through other composing and printing techniques, such as typewriting, collage, lithography and photocopying. Typographic histories in the pages of the Journal of Design History The Journal of Design History has regularly featured authors who address the broad areas of typography, graphic design and the related fields of marketing and advertising in which graphic languages play an essential part. Within these, a central though not exclusive emphasis has been on design for publication and graphic design systems of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, largely in consumer societies. Furthermore, as this VSI reveals, the Journal has periodically featured articles covering different aspects of typography as a specialist area within the broader field of graphic design and visual communication. Indeed, immediately on its inaugural issue in 1988, the Journal signalled the aim to promote this new scholarship by the inclusion of typographer and historian Robin Kinross’ article ‘Herbert Read’s Art and Industry: A History’, also featured here.5 In this article, Kinross offers a detailed analysis of the circumstances of negotiation between designer, author and publisher of this important publication for British design, shedding new light on how controversial the choice of a typeface, the layout of the page and the arrangement of word and image can be. Its publication in the Journal established a model of approach, with methods drawn from an adjacent discipline, for the future direction of design historical research. A steady stream of articles has followed , revealing certain tendencies. Until recently, as the selection shows, the emphasis has been largely on western typography and within this, research that refers to typography, lettering and printing mostly from the anglophone and germanophone sphere. It therefore seems important to ask why there was such an emphasis in the Journal. One possible answer is that in the first years of its publication, a major question for design historians working across diverse genres of design, from typography to industrial design, fashion and textiles, ceramics, furniture, interiors and craft, was the relationship between Modernism, modernity and design. For, although by then what architectural historian Charles Jencks described as the symbolic death of Modernism had occurred, and the decade of the 1980s witnessed a burgeoning Postmodernism in design, the foundations of design history as an academic discipline were intimately bound up with negotiating Modernism’s legacies.6 From the perspective of the United Kingdom, where the editorial board and publisher of the Journal were at that point located, this therefore meant that space was available to explore and further question many of the inherent principles and assumptions of Modernism. This was in part because Nikolaus Pevsner and other writers on design of his generation attributed particular importance to Modernism in the first histories of design.7 They viewed modernist design as one element in the widespread cultural response, originating in Europe, to the character of modern life, brought about by rapid industrialization and societal change. In such histories the intention was to highlight innovation, privilege progressive and avant-garde ideas, and in many cases to see the movement driven by powerful and talented individual designers, usually men. All of these perspectives have been significantly questioned, challenged and revised in more recent scholarship. Was this the only model for design historians or were there alternative ways to forge a critical history? As the Journal of Design History demonstrates, even within the European frame suggested by the Pevsnerian model, many of the questions design historians asked of typography presented challenges and revisions by taking alternative perspectives. This could involve questioning the assumed incompatibility between tradition and modernity, as asserted by many modern designers, looking for precedents in stylistic characteristics across the centuries, or seeking to uncover anonymous designers and figures hidden from history, women in particular. Others sought to expand the geographies of typography and examine transnational dialogue through design.8 An area of enquiry that continues to be explored in the Journal is the impact of émigré designers on Britain, where a delayed and often resistant response to continental Modernism was evident. This involves considering the transfer of ideas and practices in architecture and design caused by displacement and migration of people, as a result of the rise of fascism in Europe.9 For typographic histories, one focus was on the influence of design ideas originating in central Europe, in particular Germany. There, the manufacture of machines and materials provided the basis of an infrastructure for the printing and graphic industries worldwide. This literature has also shown how individual designers contributed to the widening recognition of design education and its profession. With the call in recent years for global design histories, the Journal has contributed by publishing new research that investigates the circumstances for the transfer and reception of ideas and exchange in a wider geography beyond Europe and North America.10 Beyond the Journal, in recent years there have been increased moves to broaden critical approaches to typographic and graphic design histories, to encompass global perspectives and to question priorities within the historiography.11 The range of articles continues to expand but, as we suggest in the conclusion to this article, there is still room for more typographic histories to follow this path. Methods and approaches to typographic histories In compiling this selection of articles, one consideration was to ask whether the methods employed in typographic histories are distinctive or to what extent they share approaches with other forms of design history. While there is no space for extended commentary in this introduction, it seems important to reflect on whether there is a disciplinary specificity shared by studies of typography.12 As a ubiquitous element in design, typography contributes to all walks of life, from the élite to the popular, the sacred to the profane. The field of enquiry can appear overwhelming if we consider that any example of designed letterform, sign or symbol and their combination holds the potential to be a significant topic for study. Indeed, design historians of numerous kinds inevitably work with typographic objects, often treating them as sources of information and evidence. For example, printed matter in the form of newspapers and magazines, ephemera and packaging, posters and propaganda becomes invaluable evidence for understanding the representation and mediation of most kinds of design. As sources and documents, printed papers reveal details of consumption practices that lead to deeper understanding of readers, audiences and the public. Yet for many, they may remain a means to an end. It is at the point when typographic objects are studied in their own right and characterized for their qualities that typographic histories become distinctive as a form of microhistory, as the articles in this VSI demonstrate. Such an approach involves considering the formal properties and precise nature of the design, the individual letterforms, the setting and layout, pagination and foliation, as well as, often, the interplay of word and image. Such formal analysis prompts further considerations of the underlying skills and tools involved, or of the methods of graphic reproduction and technique. Through this, the kind of design being considered reveals its own specific attributes. As the authors in this special issue show, design histories devoted to typography draw on the knowledge and extensive literature arising from centuries of scholarship that predate the advent of design history itself. Among the most important in laying foundations for the growth of the subject are histories of printing and the book, such as Lucien Febvre and Henri-Jean Martin’s L’Apparition du Livre [The Coming of the Book], Sigfrid Henry Steinberg’s Five Hundred Years of Printing, and Elizabeth Eisenstein’s The Printing Press as an Agent of Change.13 As Febvre, also a founding member of the Annales School, suggested, these made available histories of the longue durée of printing cultures.. They provided the basis for understanding the contexts in which typographic design as a distinct activity emerged in relation to major cultural and societal developments, by turning to the wide range of artefacts that resulted from inventions and their widespread application and impact. It is, however, a characteristic of design historical approaches to typography that microhistory is the dominant model. Here, the interactions of individual actors and specific instances of the production and consumption of artefacts are the focus. This is borne out in the selection of essays, where each offers in-depth analysis that contributes new understanding of the specific circumstances and historical contexts of designed objects. Mapping the path of typographic histories within design history, we might ask what are their strengths but equally, what might be their weaknesses? When compared with other forms of design history, for example, could typographic histories be accused of privileging the stages of the design process, production and mediation at the expense of consumption?14 As a related question we might ask what consumption means in the context of typography. Can it be understood in the same way as other forms of design and material culture in which, after the act of purchase, an object enters a set of practices and gathers symbolic meaning?15 A possible distinction is that in one respect most typographic objects are designed to be read, and in this most obvious way they convey meaning and mediate ideas to the reader as a user while remaining unchanged as objects. Yet, in another respect, typographic designers are hired for their specialist skills and knowledge by clients who commission them for a service that is purchased and straightforwardly consumed. In contrast to adjacent graphic design histories, in which advertising, posters and propaganda are frequently analysed for the messages they convey by employing methods informed by semiology and semiotics and the wider field of cultural studies,16 typographic histories seem to resist over-theorization in favour of detailed analysis and accurate description. But it is here that a potential problem arises. With the coming of the digital age, when many of the traditional methods and practices were replaced by computerization in major print industries, the risk grew that a specialist language of identification and description associated with earlier techniques would be superseded by the new specialist languages of digital technology. In turn, this could impact on future generations of historians for whom the technicalities of printing as a physical form of labour become increasingly distant. To address this gradual and seemingly inevitable loss of typographic and printing knowledge, museums across the world assembled collections from the history of typefounding, including thousands of metal type designs and the machinery for letterpress typesetting and printing as well as their printed artefacts. With the purpose of serving as a living and working archive, some among these run training and educational programmes to preserve the skills necessary to keep typographic knowledge alive, raising awareness among designers of possible conjunctions between old and new technologies. This is the case, for instance, at Tipoteca Italiana, a type and printing museum in Cornuda, and the Type Archive that forms the National Typefounding Collection in Stockwell, London.17 While the emphasis on biographical approaches has received criticism from within design history and many other areas of academic enquiry, the monograph approach to designers, along with making available their writings, remains a consistent and important publishing and exhibition format.18 Typographic histories still demonstrate the value of authorship and intentionality in the design process. However, the approach in critical histories of typography does not rest with arguing for individual design autonomy but instead places designers in sets of relations and structures that contextualize their lives and works. These may include uncovering details about the distribution, sales and markets drawn from business and economic histories, or considering the commission of designers by publishing houses, advertising agencies, public bodies, commercial and industrial companies.19 The wider literature on design history also addresses the education of the designer and within this throws light on the particular traditions of typography at academies and specialist schools devoted to graphic arts, as well as technical and trade schools that provided the training ground for working within the industry.20 The role of design organizations and professional societies, and the place of governments in controlling or regulating typographic practice, raises important questions about how design can be instrumental in establishing national styles and identity or, conversely, recommending international standards and systems of graphic communication, educational practice and professional development.21 Among the most important organizations for typography are ISTD (the International Society of Typographic Designers), founded by American typographer Vincent Steer in 1928, and ATypI (Association Typographique Internationale), founded by French type designer and type foundry director Charles Peignot in 1957.22 A final aspect in considering the approaches to typographic histories lies in the important question of what is available and accessible for study. Taking account of the vast array of potential material, it is clear that the location and priorities of archives and collections remains an important determining factor. An initial difference is their usual location. Collections were established for the preservation and interpretation of the processes of industrial printing, the historical presses and related machinery by museums of science and technology and specialist printing museums across the world.23 By contrast, designs for print are usually housed in dedicated library collections, frequently designated as valuable special collections, as well as in the graphic and works-on-paper holdings of museums of design and the decorative arts. Examples of collections that elide such a separation include those dedicated to notable individuals, most famously, the Museum Plantin-Moretus in Antwerp that houses the sixteenth-century printing office and home of Christophe Plantin and Jan Moretus. An alternative is for important company archives to be the origin of a museum, as was the case for the Klingspor Museum, established in 1953 in Offenbach, Germany, to house the private collection of brothers Karl and Wilhelm Klingspor, directors of the Gebr. Klingspor type foundry.24 Other kinds of archives and collections include those formed principally as teaching collections to serve design education. A significant example is the Central Lettering Record at Central Saint Martins/University of the Arts London. This was initially assembled by calligrapher and lettering scholar Nicolete Gray, typographer Nicholas Biddulph and other specialists in the early 1960s.25 In a more recent initiative, professors of typography and design at the Universitat de Barcelona took responsibility for the care of the historical archive of the leading type foundry in Spain, Bauer-Neufville, including type foundry matrices, tools, machinery and administrative documentation, in order to instruct students in the principles of type manufacture and its connection to letterpress printing, as well as to preserve the archive for future research and scholarship.26 In recent years, museums dedicated to the history and contemporary importance of language have been opened, such as the National Hangeul Museum in Seoul, South Korea in 2014, and the Museum of the Portuguese Language in São Paulo in 2014.27 While such institutions often apply broad thematic and cultural interpretations, for the typographic historian their collections of artefacts related to materializing verbal language are vital sources for the understanding of lettering, calligraphy, and typographic traditions. Other relevant museums are those that hold collections of signage, shop fascia and commercial lettering, such as the Buchstabenmuseum established in Berlin in 2005 and the M+ Museum, scheduled to open in Hong Kong in 2021.28 Not all typographic and related collections depend on institutional initiatives for their formation. A long-standing tradition has been for typographic historians to compile their own collections.29 This is often inspired by the need to preserve objects that are considered to be of little monetary value, remain overlooked, or become otherwise vulnerable and unlikely to survive. In many cases, such collections informed pioneering studies dedicated to the subgenres of lettering, printing and typography, built from years of dedicated fieldwork and documentation.30 Some of those individually compiled archives and collections do not depend on the possession of physical objects, either in their method or in their format. Influential examples includes the illustrated inventories of ornamental typefaces produced by Nicolete Gray and of French Renaissance types produced by Hendrik Vervliet.31 A more recent example is the extensive research undertaken by Marina Garone Gravier to compile an inventory of typefaces, ornaments and vignettes used by early Mexican printers.32 In a similar effort, the research team responsible for the ‘Tipografia Paulistana’ platform collects and organizes images of letterforms and typographic ornaments used by early Brazilian letterpress printers, building up a comprehensive collection of digital type specimens.33 Looking to the future, it seems most likely that digital platforms will become essential for making visual records accessible. Given their uneven geographical distribution across the world, the absence of archives and collections dedicated to this field of design remains a point of concern. Challenges and opportunities still lie ahead in enabling typographic histories to continue and thrive. From typeforms to typographic artefacts and beyond The selected articles in this VSI, listed with their full details at the end of this Introduction, are grouped thematically and chronologically in three sections: ‘Designing letterforms, producing type’, ‘Typographic artefacts’, and ‘Beyond typography’ The first section comprises four articles that focus on the processes of conceiving and manufacturing basic typographic elements. It include studies of letterform design in the context of architectural lettering, type design and digital media, and on the processes of typeface production and type founding. The second grouping of articles focuses on the use of typefaces and letterforms in printed artefacts, and contains five articles. The final section gathers articles that discuss the use of letters in non-typographic settings, such as handwriting, lithography, typewriting and collage. The four articles in the first section, ‘Designing letterforms, producing type’ are the only ones ever published by the Journal of Design History with that focus, and appeared in the pages of the Journal between 1992 and 2020. The five articles in the section dedicated to ‘Typographic artefacts’ were chosen from among fourteen that focused on this aspect. One of them was published in the very first issue of the Journal in 1988, and the others between 1994 and 2018. The three articles in the last section, ‘Beyond typography’, were published between 1992 and 2018, and chosen from among four that had a similar focus. Designing letterforms, producing type The first group of articles opens with the history of a pioneering nineteenth-century Australian type founder; it moves on to a survey of letters and typefaces designed by German architect Peter Behrens in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; continues with an investigation into the role of women in the process of type manufacture at the British company Monotype in the 1920s and 1930s, and concludes with an overview of the idea of fluidity of form in lettering and type design from seventeenth-century modular typeface design to contemporary uses of type in dynamic media. Together, the articles provide a geographically diverse and temporally comprehensive view of the history of the processes adopted for conceiving letterforms and manufacturing typefaces. Opening this first section, Dennis Bryans’ article corrects misperceptions that there were no printing houses and type foundries in Australia in the nineteenth century. In so doing, it challenges the eurocentric view that local printing was part of a wider cultural and industrial absence in the country’s colonial history. Instead, through research into the foundation and working success of the Sydney-based company of Alexander Thompson, Bryans argues that there is surprising evidence of a thriving independent type industry in the 1840s and 1850s that was subsequently challenged by the export of British type to satisfy growing demand as a result of Australia’s gold rush. With the advent of new wealth in the later decades of the century, major commissions from leading commercial and industrial enterprises tended to favour imported stocks from Britain, leading to the decline in home industries. Bryans analyses in detail a text typeface produced by the Thompson foundry during the period when it was run by Alexander Thompson’s widow, and adopted by the Sydney Morning Herald, describing it as a ‘popular’ or ‘English’ modern typeface. Comparing it with other modern serif typefaces the author shows that Thompson’s foundry type combined features found in Monotype Scotch Roman (capitals and numbers of even height, except for the descending tail of Q) and Caslon’s Minion No. 26 (large x-height, bracketed top of the t). He also speculates on how other types produced by the Thompsons and their successor, Archibald Wright, might have looked like, based on the rare evidence available. According to Bryans, Mrs Thompson, who ran her late husband’s business for six years at least, was ‘Australia’s first and very likely only woman type founder’ (77). The article following, by Christopher Burke, explores the contribution of German architect, artist and designer Peter Behrens to artistic fine printing and architectural lettering. Burke establishes Behrens among the generation who turned to modern ideas of design reform for the shaping of Germany’s increasingly outward-facing industrial culture during the first years of the twentieth century. Behrens’ typeface designs for leading type foundries, as well as his architectural lettering for inscriptions on significant industrial and official buildings in the Berlin urban landscape, have arguably received less attention than other aspects of his long and distinguished career. Burke describes how Behrens combined ideals of modernity and tradition, geometric and organic principles, ‘Fraktur’ and ‘Antiqua’ letterforms, in the development of typefaces Behrens-Schrift (1899–1901), Behrens-Kursiv (1907), Behrens-Antiqua (1907–1908) and Behrens-Mediäval (1914), manufactured by the Rudhard’sche type foundry and their successor, Klingspor, in Offenbach, Germany. He compares those developments with examples of architectural letterings designed by Behrens during the same period for his own house, commercial pavilions, the AEG Turbinenfabrik and for the Reichstag building in Berlin. As Burke reminds us, the Reichstag inscription was designed by Behrens in collaboration with Anna Simons, a German lettering artist trained in London and a pupil of Edward Johnston. It could be added that the letterforms in this inscription are much closer to Simons’ fluid forms than to Beherns’ more rational approach to letterform design, suggesting that Simons had a decisive role in the job. By way of conclusion Burke calls attention to what seems to be a contradiction in Behrens’ approach to letterform design: while his architectural letterings are rational and functional, his typeface designs are marked by artistic and nationalistic ideals. In uncovering important details about the gendered practices in the Monotype Type Drawing Office (TDO), Alice Savoie offers, in the third article of this section, an overdue but welcome contribution to typographic histories. The Monotype Corporation was one of the most prominent manufacturers of type in the world and the focus of the article is on the period of the development of Stanley Morison’s Times Roman of 1932. Women, both identified and anonymous, are seen to have held an important place in the design process and specifically in the drawing office. The article details the nature of their work, the gendering in the division of labour, the differentials in the pay for female employees and even a difference in the specialist terminology used to describe the activities they undertook. The TDO was responsible for creating enlarged versions of original drawings, adjusting typographic designs to meet production requirements, and designing or adapting the design of letters, numbers, punctuation and other signs in order to produce complete character sets in many variations of size and style. It is by describing the intricacies and details involved in the creation of a type family—that is, a set of drawings containing all the elements needed for setting text, and making sure they can be combined in any order to meet all manufacturing and distribution requirements—that the role of the female workers at TDO and their specific contribution to the design of Times New Roman, one of the most popular typefaces of the twentieth century, becomes evident. The contribution of Monotype marketing manager Beatrice Warde to the worldwide success of this typeface is also remembered and the presence of women in drawing studios or development departments in other type manufacturing companies, such as French type foundry Deberny & Peignot and Linotype UK, is mentioned. This new research contributes to a broadening understanding of type design as a material practice and is part of a wider argument for the continuing need to redress gender emphases in design history. Fluid letterforms, type forms that change over time, are most often associated with contemporary media applications that operate through animation, as evident, for example, in tv brand graphic sequences. Fluidity of form, as Barbara Brownie suggests in the last article of this section, is an underrepresented principle in the history of typography and should not be regarded as a recent typographic feature. Rather than remaining static and two-dimensional, type can become dynamic and three-dimensional. Brownie argues that the conception of letters as malleable forms, three-dimensional objects or modular constructs, and the different identities they achieve through particular behaviours such as contour deformation, rotation, and rearrangement of inner modules, are key for understanding typography in dynamic environments. She is not interested in motion per se (letters moving on a screen) but in the transformation of letterforms into other forms (and not necessarily other letters). A historical narrative is then proposed, based on multidimensional conceptions and behaviours of letterforms, connecting earlier developments and experiments in letterform design to contemporary motion-design practice. The article traces the first manifestation of the fluidity of letterforms to seventeenth-century engravings that portrayed the conception of the type family of the Romain de Roi, where letters designed according to a grid were given an illusion of depth through slanting, in an early example of contour deformation. A more extreme version of this behaviour would be the transformation of one letter into another or of a letter into a non-typographic form, as seen in contemporary motion graphics. Typefaces that suggest three-dimensionality by means of volume and shadows, such as those that became popular in the nineteenth century, and the concept of letters as modular constructs whose modules can be broken apart and rearranged, as pioneered by early twentieth-century modernist designers, are behind other principles of temporal typography and fluid letterforms discussed by Brownie. Typographic artefacts The articles included in this second section examine the use of typography and lettering in books and printed ephemera from the nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century. Two of the articles focus on guidebooks but their approach is quite different: while one concentrates on how typeface choice, typographic variations and hierarchy were applied to synthesize and organize textual information that would make a place more understandable, the other pays particular attention to how expressive lettering was adopted to convey a sense of cultural identity and authenticity. Two other articles focus on typography as an aspect of book design, centring analysis on the work of notable practitioners, North American typographer and designer Bruce Rogers and German modernist designer Herbert Bayer. The final article also features a notable practitioner, German artist and designer Kurt Schwitters, focusing on a lesser known aspect of his work, stationery design. These selected articles, in addressing the history of typographic artefacts, exemplify the diversity of issues to be examined, theoretical frameworks to embrace and methodological approaches to adopt. In the first article to examine guidebook design, Paul Dobraszczyk explores publications issued in London in the second half of the nineteenth century. He interprets such books as systems of knowledge imposed on the city. One of the author’s interests is to develop a methodology for understanding the readers’ use of guidebooks, an approach that was overlooked in earlier studies. Turning to readers’ annotations, marginalia and more extended handwritten notes in the form of diary entries, he uses this evidence to show how readers actively engaged with the guidebooks’ contents. The article also considers the changing visual form of the books’ narrative of navigation through the city, by means of the layout of texts and their relation to other graphic systems such as maps, bird’s eye views and charts. In his analysis of guidebook typography, Dobraszczyk focuses on the way in which typographic design and layout suggest a certain way of reading. He observes that the configuration of verbal language in these London guidebooks was based on earlier literary and typographic traditions, combining continuous prose with lists and tables. Some typographic features announced as a novelty, such as the alphabetical ordering of information, had in fact already been in use since the previous century. Subtle but important innovations such as the use of sturdier typefaces for emphasis, such as Clarendon, or asterisks to mark quality, are noted. Dobraszczyk refers to the handmade annotations and complements added by the guidebook user to understand the relevance of typographic cues, such as the numbering for marking content divisions in the books or the typographic variations for highlighting the importance of certain passages, to define hierarchy, as well as the limitations and drawbacks of typographic arrangements. He concludes by suggesting that the typographic choices made by London guidebook designers and publishers influenced the way the city came to be associated with the idea of a rational, encyclopaedic, hierarchical and homogeneous space. In the next article, Michael Golec offers a detailed examination of an élite edition of Geoffroy Tory’s Champ Fleury, translated into English, a book originally published in 1529 that offered a theory of Latin letterforms. This was the work of the American book designer and typographer Bruce Rogers (1870–1957) for the Grolier Club in New York, a private bibliographic society, which made the volume available in 1927. Golec explores the relation between historical time and preservation in the making of a book. He employs the concept of ‘allusive typography’, a term used by Rogers as a way to characterize his undertaking. The design of the book, according to Golec, is neither modernistic nor period-specific but instead occupies a ‘dialectical middle ground’ (330). He further suggests that Roger’s ‘allusive typography’ exemplifies the ‘imposition of a [present-day] standard of correctness resulting from an encounter with a pre-existing artefact from the past’ (332). Golec describes the many ways in which the 1927 edition of Tory’s Champ Fleury alludes to but also differs from the original. In the Grolier Club edition, text is set in a humanist serif typeface, includes reproductions of the original images and follows the one-column justified layout topped with centralized headers in uppercase, with paragraphs marked by large initials found in the original edition. The margins around the text, however, are considerably wider and the space between lines is also more generous, something that, combined with crisper letterforms (Centaur, a typeface designed by Rogers and based on fifteenth-century Roman types) carefully printed on smoother paper, resulted in much lighter pages. Golec argues that Roger’s typographic choices, along with his decisions regarding proportion and position of images that Roger himself defined as rectifications of unsatisfactory results of early printing, were, in fact, not an attempt to replicate historical styles, but rather materializations of his own beliefs as to what early modern humanist typographers would hope their work should look like. The third article of this section, by Werner Heine, demonstrates how the historical context of typography can have immediate political impact on the fortunes of design. It takes an overlooked aspect of designs created by Kurt Schwitters, an artist better known for his Dadaist and Merz publications, poetry, performances and related artworks. Schwitters established a one-man design studio Werbezentrale [Publicity Central] in his home city of Hannover. In 1929, he received commissions to redesign the municipal council’s typographic identity. Schwitters advised on the introduction of a comprehensive system to apply to all of its printed material, from stationery and official forms to posters for the city’s cultural events, generating pieces that were highly praised in modernist circles and also within German administrative bodies. This was not without controversy and criticism, with opponents from the start criticising its application of modernist uniform systems and the choice of Paul Renner’s Futura typeface. Heine examines the advertisements and posters designed by Schwitters for municipal theatres, where Futura is combined with other typefaces, including bold and square letterforms of his own design, in more experimental compositions. The fate of Hannover Town Council’s stationery, however, is the central aspect of the narrative. The author presents the choice of DIN paper sizes (the German industrial standards) and the logical structure of layouts, as part of an effort towards office rationalization, through which typewriting and carbon copying preprinted forms was becoming a norm. In this context, the use of Futura was consistent with ideals of modernity, neutrality and precision, in opposition to blackletter typefaces such as Fraktur that were still widely popular in Germany but perceived as old-fashioned and complicated. The use of Futura, however, soon proved to be a challenge for the high print runs demanded by the Hannover Town Council. As not all local printers held the typeface in their repertoire, the Department for Office Organization was forced to admit the use of other sans serif types instead. In June 1933, following the rise of National Socialist rule, the use of ‘German Script’ was enforced and Schwitters, who was then the Council’s Chief Graphic Designer, had to replace Futura with a blackletter typeface. In 1941, however, Adolf Hitler proclaimed Fraktur to be a ‘Schwabacher Jewish letter’ and prohibited its use in official documents, leading the Hannover Town Council to adopt a modern serif typeface (Bodoni) instead. The rational layout, on DIN A4 paper with text aligned left, lines carefully dividing the space for information, and a geometrical version of the Hannover clover leaf, was never abandoned and survived the typeface dispute. The fourth article of this section, like the first, explores typographic aspects of guidebooks. Here, Dori Griffin analyses books produced in Japan that were aimed at western readers and tourists, largely from the USA, during the 1920s and 1930s. These were produced as illustrated guides, designed for Japanese publishers as the country increasingly became a travel destination. Griffin interprets the guidebooks as a measure of the visual and typographic languages used to convey an attractive combination of modern and traditional identity. Various projections of Japan attuned to foreign consumption were used by the books’ graphic artists and designers. On the one hand, they could be styled to echo contemporary fashionable modes such as Art Deco; on the other, they could emphasize references to the rich Japanese print traditions using scenes from everyday life considered suitable for the ‘orientalising gaze’ of the tourists. Griffin frames her discussion in the context of transnational interwar visual commerce. Analysing typographic choices in combination with composition and color, she shows that, while some guidebook covers would employ letters with peculiar calligraphic details (angular brush lettering, kanji characters used as images) suggesting tradition, others would employ sans serif typefaces and geometric letterforms, eventually in asymmetrical compositions, suggesting modernity, internationalism and alignment with western trends. The combination of both strategies would result in the evocation of Japan as an exotic but also safe destination for anglophone tourists. In the final article of this section, Robin Kinross focuses on different editions of a single publication to show the benefits of such an in-depth inquiry. The title in question, Art and Industry (1934), was by Herbert Read, the art critic, curator and writer who was among the major figures to promote modern art and design at this time in Britain. It records the negotiations between staff at Faber & Faber, the renowned London publishing house, and the chosen designer, Herbert Bayer. A former Bauhaus student and master, by the time of this project Bayer was an established graphic designer, recognized for his work in publication and advertising design. Commissioning Bayer to design the book was coherent with the central role given by Read to Bauhaus ideas in Art and Industry. Kinross also stresses the importance of Read’s intellectual exchanges with British sculptor and typeface designer Eric Gill, whose ideas on the relationship between art and industry were quite different from those of continental modernists. According to Bayer’s design, the book was set in a modern serif typeface (Monotype Bodoni), following a modernist grid, with two columns of text, vertically centred, and images allowed to advance towards page edges. The cover, featuring horizontal text inside amoeboid forms on the cloth binding and sloped lines of text interacting with the image of an Alvar and Aino Aalto plywood study model on the dust jacket, was also set in Bodoni. In further British editions of the book the format was reduced and Bayer’s modernist grid abandoned. Text on the dust jacket would increase in size and eventually be set in Eric Gill’s Gill Sans before assuming a late-modern look with Adrian Frutiger’s Univers. The case of Art and Industry raises questions about the circumstances of how modernist design ideas could travel between different publishing contexts and shows the misunderstandings and resistance encountered. Kinross asks whether this was a reflection of the ‘literariness of British design circles’ (48) or possibly an overemphasis on form over content by the designer. Beyond typography The articles in the final section of this VSI examine the use of letters and layout in contexts that are not ‘typographic’ in the strict sense discussed in the introduction. It opens with an article on nineteenth-century lithographed books that shows how the pages of some of those publications adopted layouts comparable to those favoured by twentieth-century modernist designers. The essay following examines the contribution of typewriters, and of the typing rules and principles disseminated by typing manuals, to late-twentieth-century document design, typographic education, and graphic language. In the final article, texts made up of handmade, typed, dry-transferred and cut-and-pasted letterforms are analysed as part of the graphic language particular to British punk fanzines of late 1970s to early 1980s. The articles in this grouping show that there is a lot of cross-influence between ‘typography’ in a strict sense and other practices and processes involved in the creation and use of visible signs related to graphic verbal language. Michael Twyman’s article, the first in this section, is a further contribution to considering one of the central design characteristics attributed to modern typography: the asymmetrical layout of book design. Most famously, asymmetry within modern design was articulated in Jan Tschichold’s 1928 handbook, Die Neue Typographie. However, commenting that graphic design history at the time of writing had tended towards a concentration on the twentieth century in contrast to histories of printing, Twyman states his aim as being to provide a wider perspective on the subject. He draws on his extensive research into the history of lithographed books, for which he examined over four hundred examples, many of them technical publications from seventeenth- and eighteenth-century France. Through detailed analysis of their foliation and pagination, he came to understand design decisions about the layout of pages as a form of printed book production. Twyman discusses the possible origins of what he calls the ‘orthodox’ letterpress book page layout—one or more columns of justified text arranged following mirrored margins, smaller towards the gutter and on the top edge, larger in the outside and bottom edges—asserting that the symmetry of the book as a tri-dimensional artefact, and the relevance of the double spread view were key for the lasting success of this model of organization. Twyman identifies a different tradition in European handwritten administrative documents, where the convention of leaving a generous margin to the left, and little space on top, bottom and right would have evolved as a consequence of left-to-right writing and avoiding empty spaces for security reasons. Once bound, pages following this ‘stationery’ tradition would result in asymmetrical double spreads that in the lithographed books examined eventually include text or images in the wide left margins. The article concludes that asymmetry was used, ‘not on account of any clearly defined modernist principle of design, but rather came about largely pragmatically as a result of the convergence of technologies and domains’ (16). Taking the subject of the typewriter and typing manuals, in the second article of this section Sue Walker sheds light on the enormously widespread system of the last century that provided a way to mechanically compose text beyond movable type, hot metal and photographic typesetting. Distinctive to the use of the typewriter was the layout of type through its limited range of technical capabilities and the requirement for designing with minimal means. These were confined primarily to the use of a very restricted number of letterforms, character sets and facilities for defining the arrangement of vertical and horizontal space on the page. Rather than focus on the mechanical details and engineering complexity of the typewriter itself as previous studies had done, this investigation turns to considering how the accompanying typewriter manuals instruct users. These manuals, most famously published in Britain by Pitmans, gave instructions that coded and conventionalized formats by setting out elementary typographic principles, based on commercial handwriting practices and typesetting conventions. Those would be combined with instructions on how to make best use of the limited resources available. In the 1960s, typists trained according to those manuals would start to be employed as compositors by publishers that adopted typewriting composition, greatly influencing everyday graphic language. Walker also calls attention to the relevance of typewriters and typing conventions to graphic design practice and education. The design of documents that would be completed by typing, such as stationery and forms, had to take into account typewriter metrics. Design students needed to be aware of this and Walker describes how British design educators incorporated typewriting in their teaching for creating schematic representations of typographic arrangements. As such, Walker argues that typewriters deserve a key position in the history of graphic communication. Another overlooked area of typographic histories, covered by Teal Triggs in the final essay of the selection, is that of the fanzine, specifically in the context of Britain’s punk music scene of the late 1970s and early 1980s. As another area ‘beyond typography’, fanzines are associated with breaking the rules. This could be by challenging conventions of layout, through deliberate playing with spelling and grammar or by plagiarizing images, and would be achieved by employing methods of cut-and-paste with the accessible materials of scissors and glue. Triggs argues that punk fanzines articulate a ‘graphic language of resistance’ in which letterforms and their arrangement play an important role. The use of cut-up ransom-note lettering is associated with the use of violent and explicit language meant to shock. The visible and intentional disregard for rules and prescriptions of handwriting, typing, typesetting, editing and printing is associated with a refusal to comply. The article contributes to the wider consideration within Design History of how DIY and the handmade can provide access to a critique of the status quo through creation of a countercultural space. In the pre-digital era, fanzines operated as an alternative to the mainstream industry, where access to the means of reproduction, areas of expertise and domains of knowledge were largely confined to those associated with capital and privilege. Conclusion The articles selected for this Virtual Special Issue show that the Journal of Design History has since its very first issue made relevant contributions to typographic histories. The selection addresses a variety of contexts, from handwriting and lettering to digital three-dimensional letters, from designing, casting and printing with metal type to reproducing texts with photocopiers, from ephemera to book and motion design. They encompass aspects of the history of typography, lettering and print culture from the eighteenth to the twenty-first century, and exemplify a variety of methods and approaches. Reflecting further on the selected articles, unexpected connections and findings emerge. A first and unexpected finding is the existence of a gender dimension. While this is very explicit in Alice Savoie’s account of the role of women in the Monotype Type Drawing Office, female agency is also present in Dennis Bryans and Christopher Burke’s articles. As a result of his investigations into the Thompson type foundry, Bryan suggests a potential pioneering role for Alexander Thompson’s widow as a female type founder while Burke mentions the role of Anna Simons as a collaborator of Peter Behrens. This kind of very discreet, almost hidden contribution to a fuller understanding of women’s role in typographic histories deserves attention and expansion. A second recurring feature across several of the selected articles is the tension between geometry and fluidity of form and between rationally constructed and organic letterforms. Both are classic typographic themes. This is present in Burke’s account of Behrens’ attempts to combine the traditional and organic principles of Fraktur letterforms with ideals of modernity and geometric rationalism associated with antiqua letterforms in the design of his typefaces. The possibility of obtaining fluid letterforms from Cartesian grids and modular systems is discussed by Barbara Brownie. The different meanings attributed to calligraphic (tradition, exotism) and geometrically rendered letterform (modernity, internationalism) are evoked by Dori Griffin. While Burke and Griffin hint at the confrontations emerging from different letter structures or different writing systems associated with different typographic cultures (traditional versus modern German, eastern versus western), Werner Heine and Robin Kinross bring to light disputes over serif and sans serif Latin letterforms. Heine describes how a geometric typeface (Futura) chosen by Kurt Schwitters for its rational and logical formal aspects had to be replaced by blackletter type (for its association to German lettering traditions) and later by a serif typeface (perceived as the new German standard). Kinross also brings evidence of how typographic choices made by modernist designers could be constrained by their clients’ perceptions. It is worth noting that, in the situations described in the articles, both Kurt Schwitters and Herbert Bayer, once forced to avoid sans serif type, opted for the same typeface: Bodoni. The choice seems coherent if we consider the geometric and rational treatment given to the distribution of weight, and to the shaping of serifs and terminals in the letterforms created by the Italian type designer Gianbattista Bodoni in the late eighteenth century. Tensions between symmetrical and asymmetrical configurations in book design, page layout and in columns of text is also a classic typographic theme discussed in different articles. Unjustified, asymmetrical columns (aligned left, ragged right) are described by Michael Twyman and Sue Walker as a result of one-directional (left-to-right) reading convention and the use of handwriting or type writing to compose text. Perfectly symmetrical, centralized or justified columns are only possible by controlling the number of characters and the amount of space between them, something quite natural in typographic composition but difficult to achieve by other means. As discussed by Heine the stationery produced by Kurt Schwitters is an example of the ‘utility printing’ associated with the use of typewriters mentioned by Walker: its configuration helped in the production of standardized, more evenly organized documents. The quest for uniformity and standardization of page layout also seems to be, according to Twyman, behind early examples of asymmetrical double-spread design in lithographed books. Another recurring theme is the effects of typographic choices on possible interpretations of the visual aspects of graphic artefacts. Paul Dobraszczyk argues that the typographic configuration of a guidebook can influence the way in which the location that it refers to is perceived by its reader-visitors. A similar argument is suggested by Griffin, regarding guidebook covers. The different dust jackets for the same book, featuring different typefaces, as also presented by Kinross, suggest a wish to convey different interpretations of the book contents to potential readers. Consciously ‘wrong’ typographic choices, meant to shock and awe, are discussed by Teal Triggs. Michael Golec’s article offers a warning against snap judgements about typographic choices, demonstrating the relevance of taking into consideration the designers’ beliefs and intentions. The articles in this VSI focus largely on typography from the nineteenth century to the contemporary, that is, design in the age of industrialization and beyond. While this seems to be a tendency when considering the history of typography as part of design history, it is not, of course, the case for studies on the history of typography per se. These can stretch back in time if the history of typography is taken as part of a wider history of communicating via verbal graphic language. Histories of design that focus on mass production tend to privilege industrial societies established in various European and North American countries, leaving aside what does not fit its principles of production and development. Typographic histories in general do not fit such principles so well, and those outside fully industrialized societies even less. As a result of these emphases, histories of typography found in graphic design textbooks tend to be short, schematic and euro- or anglocentric. Industrial and economic aspects are seldom considered, providing a narrow view for students and practitioners. The bias towards industrial societies also poses difficulties for the inclusion of ‘other histories’ of typography—of typographic cultures involving writing systems other than Latin, or of the impact and development of the field in places other than Europe and the USA—in encompassing narratives.34 The thirty-three years that separate the first issue of the Journal of Design History, with the publication of the first article related to typographic histories in its pages, and this Virtual Special Issue have witnessed an increased interest in the topic. One of the possible reasons for that is the growing number of PhD programmes dedicated to design, as part of a maturing worldwide design research culture. Indicators of this growing interest are the sessions about typography in recent conferences dedicated to design history, such as ICDHS 2018,35 and DHS 2019.36 Conferences dedicated to typography and print culture have always welcomed typographic histories.37 However, only a small part of the research findings shared in PhD dissertations and in meetings or conference papers dedicated to typography, has so far reached the pages of the Journal of Design History. To conclude, looking forward to the future of typographic histories several areas suggest themselves as possible focuses. The first would be to address ways to extend our understanding of the role of typography and lettering in the configuration of visual design cultures and design heritage globally. For this, more than ever, it seems crucial to draw attention to the evolution of typography and lettering in different parts of the world and in multiple languages, writing systems and orthographies, as well as their networks of exchange. Equally important is the continuing need to recognise those who were previously overlooked in histories, with particular reference to the place of female and minority group agency. New studies of the role of design and designers in the industrial processes and commercial transactions that underpin typography and printing will continue to improve our understanding of the economies of design. Much of this work will depend on furthering research into the tools and machinery behind typography, type manufacturing, typesetting and printing in the past and in the digital future. Typography as a sensory experience for readers and makers alike, through its mediation as text and image, and how it conveys verbal, aural, visual and tactile information will contribute to the wider field of consumption studies. Approaches to typographic histories can learn from and share interests with histories of other design genres such as fashion, product, interiors and architecture and this remains a subject for further thought. Finally, the growing number of dedicated archives and collections of typography will allow reflection on the priorities in their organization and holdings and their part in the construction of these histories. Many new histories of typography should follow and hopefully the best of them will find their way into the pages of the Journal of Design History. Articles in this special issue I. Designing letterforms, producing type Dennis BRYANS, 1996 The Beginnings of Type Founding in Sydney: Alexander Thompson’s Type, His Foundry, and His Exports to Inter-Colonial Printers Journal of Design History, Volume 9, Issue 2, 1996, Pages 75–86 https://doi.org/10.1093/jdh/9.2.75 Chris BURKE, 1992 Peter Behrens and the German Letter: Type Design and Architectural Lettering Journal of Design History, Volume 5, Issue 1, 1992, Pages 19–37 https://doi.org/10.1093/jdh/5.1.19 Alice SAVOIE, 2020 The women behind Times New Roman: The contribution of type drawing offices to twentieth century type-making Journal of Design History, Volume 33, Issue 3, September 2020, Pages 209–224 https://doi.org/10.1093/jdh/epaa025 Barbara BROWNIE, 2014 A New History of Temporal Typography: Towards Fluid Letterforms Journal of Design History, Volume 27, Issue 2, May 2014, Pages 167–181 https://doi.org/10.1093/jdh/ept036 II. Typographic artefacts Paul DOBRASZCZYK, 2012 City Reading: The Design and Use of Nineteenth-Century London Guidebooks Journal of Design History, Volume 25, Issue 2, June 2012, Pages 123–144 https://doi.org/10.1093/jdh/eps015 Michael J. GOLEC, 2018 Dissatisfaction and Restorative Design: Bruce Rogers, Allusive Typography, and the Grolier Club Champ Fleury (1927) Journal of Design History, Volume 31, Issue 4, November 2018, Pages 328–345 https://doi.org/10.1093/jdh/epy015 Werner HEINE, 1994 ‘Futura’ Without a Future: Kurt Schwitters’ Typography for Hanover Town Council, 1929–1934 Journal of Design History, Volume 7, Issue 2, 1994, Pages 127–140 https://doi.org/10.1093/jdh/7.2.127 Dori GRIFFIN, 2018 How to See Japan: Japan Tourist Bureau Guidebook Images for Interwar Anglophone Tourists Journal of Design History, Volume 31, Issue 4, November 2018, Pages 346–363 https://doi.org/10.1093/jdh/epy036 Robin KINROSS, 1988 Herbert Read’s Art and Industry: A History Journal of Design History, Volume 1, Issue 1, Pages 35–50 https://doi.org/10.1093/jdh/1.1.35 III. Beyond typography Michael TWYMAN, 1992 Asymmetric Page Design in Lithographed Books of the Nineteenth Century: The Convergence of Manuscript and Printing Journal of Design History, Volume 5, Issue 1, 1992, Pages 5–17 https://doi.org/10.1093/jdh/5.1.5 Sue WALKER, 2018 Modernity, Method and Minimal Means: Typewriters, Typing Manuals and Document Design Journal of Design History, Volume 31, Issue 2, May 2018, Pages 138–153 https://doi.org/10.1093/jdh/epx018 Teal TRIGGS, 2006 Scissors and Glue: Punk Fanzines and the Creation of a DIY Aesthetic Journal of Design History, Volume 19, Issue 1, Spring 2006, Pages 69–83 https://doi.org/10.1093/jdh/epk006 Priscila Farias is Associate Professor at the University of São Paulo School of Architecture and Urbanism where she coordinates the Visual Design Research Lab (LabVisual), and a visiting scholar at universities in Colombia, Italy, and the UK. She is the Editor-in-chief of InfoDesign—Brazilian Journal of Information Design, and a member of the editorial board of other publications such as the Journal of Design History, and The Design Journal. She is the author of various articles and books on typography, graphic design, semiotics and design history, including Dez Ensaios sobre Memória Gráfica (Blucher, 2018), Design Frontiers (Designio, 2014) and Tipografia Digital (2ab, 2013). Her current research interests are public lettering, the history of letterpress printing in São Paulo, typography and lettering as design heritage, and iberoamerican visual design culture. Jeremy Aynsley is Professor of Design History at the University of Brighton where he was the founding director of the Centre for Design History. He has been a member of several editorial boards and was Chair of the Centre for Design History between 2014 and 2019. Aynsley’s research, writing and curating focus on modernism and design in the twentieth century, with a particular emphasis on graphic and interior design and their inter-relation. His publications include Graphic Design in Germany, 1890–1945 (2000) and Designing Modern Germany (2008) as well as many edited anthologies and essays. He guest curated the exhibition Julius Klinger: Posters for a Modern Age with its accompanying publication at the Wolfsonian FIU, Miami Beach in 2017. It opened at The Poster House, New York in March 2021. He is currently completing Modernism and Design in Germany with Bloomsbury Academic. Acknowledgements This work was partially funded by Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico-CNPq, research grant 304361/2019-4. Footnotes 1 Tsuen-Hsuin Tsien, ‘Paper and Printing’ in Joseph Needham, ed., Science and Civilization in China, vol. 5, part 1. Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1985. 2 Giovanni Anceschi, Monogrammi e Figure: Teorie e storie della progettazione di artefatti comunicativi. Firenze: La Casa Usher, 1981; Philip B. Meggs, A History of Graphic Design. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1983; Enric Satué, El Diseño Gráfico: Desde los orígenes hasta nuestros días. Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 1988. 3 Many standard reference works about the history of typography in the English language combine history and practice, their authors writing with the benefit of professional experience. See, for example, Harry Carter, A View of Early Typography. The Lyell Lectures 1968. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969; Stanley Morison, A Tally of Types, 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1973; and Daniel Berkeley Updike, Printing Types: their history, forms and use, 2nd edition, 2 vols. Oxford: Oxford University, 1937. 4 Other articles considered for this VSI, but not included due to space limits, are:  Dennis Bryans, ‘The Double Invention of Printing’, Journal of Design History 13 (2000): 287–300, doi.org/10.1093/jdh/13.4.287; Deirdre Pretorius, ‘Graphic Design in South Africa: A Post-Colonial Perspective’, Journal of Design History 28 (2015): 293–315, doi.org/10.1093/jdh/epv010; Ellen Mazur Thomson, ‘Early Graphic Design Periodicals in America’, Journal of Design History 7 (1994): 113–126, doi.org/10.1093/jdh/7.2.113; Jeremy Aynsley, ‘Gebrauchsgraphik as an Early Graphic Design Journal, 1924–1938’, Journal of Design History 5 (1992): 53–72, doi.org/10.1093/jdh/5.1.53; Mike Esbester, ‘Designing Time: The Design and Use of Nineteenth-Century Transport Timetables’, Journal of Design History 22 (2009): 91–113, doi.org/10.1093/jdh/epp011; Nancy Perloff, ‘Schwitters Redesigned: A Post-war Ursonate from the Getty Archives’, Journal of Design History 23 (2010): 195–203, doi.org/10.1093/jdh/epq01; Paul Cleveland, ‘Curwen Press, Early Adapters of Brand Strategy’, Journal of Design History 31 (2018): 66–82, doi.org/10.1093/jdh/epx019; Paul Dobraszczyk, ‘Useful Reading? Designing Information for London’s Victorian Cab Passengers’, Journal of Design History 21 (2008):121–141, doi.org/10.1093/jdh/epn009; Robin Kinross, ‘Conversation with Richard Hollis on Graphic Design History’, Journal of Design History 5 (1992): 73–90, doi.org/10.1093/jdh/5.1.73; Teal Triggs, ‘Designing Graphic Design History’, Journal of Design History 22 (2009): 325–340, doi.org/10.1093/jdh/epp041. 5 Robin Kinross, ‘Herbert Read’s Art and Industry: A History’, Journal of Design History 1 (1988): 35–50, doi-org.ezproxy jdh/1.1.35. 6 Charles Jencks, The Language of Postmodern Architecture.London: Academy Editions, 1977. 7 Nikolas Pevsner, Pioneers of Modern Design: from William Morris to Walter Gropius 4th ed. New Haven: Yale University, 2005. For subsequent commentary and criticism of the implications of the Pevsnerian model, see Penny Sparke, An Introduction to Design and Culture: 1900 to the Present 4th ed. London: Routledge, 2019; Jonathan M. Woodham, ‘Local, National and Global: Redrawing the Design Historical Map’, Journal of Design History 18 (2005): 257–267, doi-org/10.1093/jdh/epi044; Hazel Clark and David Brody, ‘The Current State of Design History’, Journal of Design History 22 (2009): 303–08, doi-org/jdh/epp042. 8 These are questions that the authors in this Virtual Special Issue variously address in the selected articles. 9 See for example, Henning Engelke and Tobias Hochscherf, ‘Between Avant-Garde and Commercialism: Reconsidering Émigrés and Design’, Journal of Design History 28 (2015): 1–14, doi.org/10.1093/jdh/epu042; Sue Breakell and Lesley Whitworth, ‘Émigré Designers in the University of Brighton Design Archives’, Journal of Design History 28 (2015): 83–97, doi.org/10.1093/jdh/ept006. 10 D. J. Huppatz, ‘Globalizing Design History and Global Design History’, Journal of Design History 28, no. 2 (2015): 182–202, doi-org/10.1093/jdh/epv002; Patricia Lara-Betancourt and Livia Rezende, ‘Locating Design Exchanges in Latin America and the Caribbean’, Journal of Design History 32 (2019): 1–16, doi-org/10.1093/jdh/epy048; Yuko Kikuchi and Yunah Lee, ‘Transnational Modern Design Histories in East Asia: An Introduction’, Journal of Design History 27 (2014): 323–334, doi-org/10.1093/jdh/epu035. 11 See for example, Johanna Drucker and Emily McVarish, Graphic Design History: a critical guide, 2nd ed. Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Pearson, 2013; Grace Lees-Maffei and Nicolas P. Maffei, Reading Graphic Design in Cultural Context. London: Bloomsbury, 2019; Davide Fornari and Robert Lzicar, eds., Mapping Graphic Design History.Zurich: Triest Verlag, 2016; Davide Fornari, Robert Lzicar et al, eds, Swiss Graphic Design Histories. Zurich: Scheidegger & Spiess, 2021. 12 For a detailed commentary on the literature on modern typography in the west, see ‘Sources: commentary’ in Robin Kinross, Modern Typography: an essay in critical history (London: Hyphen, 1992), 179–189. 13 Lucien Febvre and Henri-Jean Martin, The Coming of the Book. The Impact of Printing 1450–1800. London: New Left Books, 1976; Sigfrid Henry Steinberg Five Hundred Years of Printing, revised ed. London: British Library,1996; Elizath L. Eisenstein, The Printing Press as an Agent of Change. Cambridge: Cambridge University, 2013. 14 Grace Lees-Maffei, ‘The Production—Consumption—Mediation Paradigm’, Journal of Design History 22 (2009): 351–76, doi.org/10.1093/jdh/epp031. 15 Daniel Miller, ‘Consumption as the Vanguard of History. A Polemic by Way of an Introduction’, in Daniel Miller, ed., Acknowledging Consumption. A Review of New Studies. London: Routledge, 1995. 16 Roland Barthes, Mythologies, trans. Annett Lavers. London: Vintage, 2009; Roland Barthes, Image Music Text, ed. and trans. Stephen Heath. Glasgow: Fontana/Collins, 1977. 17 http://www.tipoteca.it/en/; http://www.typearchive.org (accessed August 16, 2021). 18 The debate could be seen in part to have been prompted by Roland Barthes’ essay, ‘The Death of the Author’ (1972), published in Image-Music-Text. The implications of focusing on the active reader in the case of typography and printing was considered by Robin Kinross in Fellow Readers: notes on multiplied language. London: Hyphen, 1994. 19 Among studies of individual type designers and typographers that raise important design historical questions in their approach are: Chris Burke, Paul Renner: the art of typography. London: Hyphen, 1998; Paul Stirton, Jan Tschichold and the New Typography: Graphic Design Between the World Wars. New York: Bard Graduate Center and Yale University, 2019; David Reinfurt and Robert Weisenberger, Muriel Cooper. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT, 2017. Books by type designers and typographers, explaining their methods, often including a history of lettering and of typography as a preamble, form another important source. See for example, Geoffroy Tory, Champ Fleury. Paris: G. Gourmont, 1529; Henri Fournier, Traité de la typographie. Paris: Imprimerie de H. Fournier, 1825; Aldo Novarese, Alfa-Beta. Torino: Progresso Grafico, 1964; Gerad Unger, Theory of type design. Rotterdam; nai010, 2018. 20 Nikolas Pevsner, Academies of art, past and present. New York: Da Capo, 1973. Many art academies and design schools internationally have published their own histories. Among the most renowned, see the comprehensive documentation of typography and book design teaching and practice at the Bauhaus, Ute Brüning, ed., Das A und O des Bauhauses. Bauhauswerbung: Schriftbilder, Drucksachen, Ausstellungsdesign. Leipzig: Bauhaus Archiv, Edition Leipzig, 1995. For a late-twentieth-century example of a design school publishing its teaching and practice, in which typography was a central element, see Hugh Aldersey-Williams, Cranbrook Design: The New Discourse. New York: Rizzoli, 1990. In Latin America, an important reference for typography teaching is Rubén Fontana, Pensamiento tipográfico. Buenos Aires: Edicial, 1996. 21 On the place of typography in national identity formation, see Javier Gimeno-Martinez, ‘Government Branding’, in Javier Gimeno-Martinez, Design and National Identity (London: Bloomsbury, 2016), 111–132. On networks and international design organizations, see Dora Souza Dias, ‘International Design Organizations and the Study of Transnational Interactions: the Case of Icogradalatinoamérica80’, Journal of Design History 32 (2019) 188–206, doi.org/10.1093/jdh/epy038. 22 https://www.istd.org.uk/; https://www.atypi.org/ (accessed April 16, 2021). 23 For a discussion of the foundation of printing museums and special collections in museums of Science and Technology, see Alan Marshall, In the beginning … Some thoughts on early printing museums, published by the Association of European Printing Museums, https://www.aepm.eu/publications/about-the-aepm/pionneers-and-precursors/ (accessed August 16, 2021). 24 https://www.museumplantinmoretus.be/en; https://www.klingspor-museum.de/ (accessed August 16, 2021). 25 Phil Baines and Catherine Dixon (2017). ‘Back to the classroom: the Central Saint Martins Museum & Study Collection and Central Lettering Record’, Communication Design 5 (2017): 258–264. doi.org/10.1080/20557132.2017.1398952. 26 Oriol Moret and Enric Tormo, professors at the School of Fine Arts, University of Barcelona, oversee the collection at www.ub.edu/cursusductus/. See also Oriol Moret Viñals, ‘Tres catálogos generales de Fundición Tipográfica Neufville: preliminares’, InfoDesign, 16 (2019) 248–263, doi.org/10.51358/id.v16i2.723. 27 http://www.hangeul.go.kr/lang/en/; https://www.museudalinguaportuguesa.org.br (accessed August 16, 2021). 28 https://www.buchstabenmuseum.de/en/; https://collections.mplus.org.hk/en/types/signage?sort_field=popularCount (accessed August 16, 2021). 29 For an extensive list of archives of printing, lettering, typography and graphic design, see AIGA https://www.aiga.org/resources/design-history-resources-and-archives (accessed August 16, 2021). For an example of an online archive with an international emphasis, see https://oa.letterformarchive.org/ (accessed August 16, 2021). In the UK, see the John Johnson Collection of Printed Ephemera, a special collection of the Bodleian Library, Oxford, https://www2.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/johnson (accessed August 16, 2021); the St Bride Foundation and Printing Library, https://www.sbf.org.uk/ (accessed August 16, 2021) and the University of Reading, Department of Typography and Communication Collections and Archives, https://www.reading.ac.uk/typography/collections-and-archives (accessed August 16, 2021). In the USA, a relevant example is the Rob Roy Kelly American Wood Type collection, held at the University of Texas at Austin. See https://rrk.finearts.utexas.edu (accessed August 16, 2021). 30 Examples include Heather Child and Justin Howes, eds, Lessons in Formal Writing: Edward Johnston. London: Lund Humphries, 1986; Alan Bartram, The English Lettering Tradition from the 1700 to the present day. London: Lund Humphries, 1986; Nicolete Gray, Lettering on Buildings. London: Architectural Press, 1960; Maurice Rickards, The Encyclopedia of Ephemera. A Guide to the Fragmentary Documents of Everyday Life for the Collector, Curator, and Historian, ed. Michael Twyman. New York: Routledge, 2000; Rob Roy Kelly, American Wood Type: 1828–1900. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1969. 31 Nicolete Gray, XIXth Century Ornamented Types and Title Pages. London: Faber and Faber, 1938; Hendrik D.L. Vervliet, The palaeotypography of the French Renaissance: selected papers on sixteenth-century typefaces. Amsterdam: Brill, 2008. 32 Marina Garone Gravier. Historia de la imprenta y la tipografía colonial en Puebla de los Ángeles (1642–1821). México: UNAM, 2015. 33 https://fau.usp.br/tipografiapaulistana/ (accessed August 16, 2021). 34 A recent special issue of the journal Visible Language, edited by Dori Griffin, addresses this point: ‘Histories of Visual Communication Design’, Visible Language 53 (2019), https://visiblelanguage.herokuapp.com (accessed August 16, 2021). 35 The strand entitled ‘Types and Histories: Past and Present Issues of Type and Book Design’, in the 11th Conference of the International Committee of Design History and Design Studies (ICDHS), held in Barcelona, gathered eleven papers presented by authors coming from Spain, Brazil, Turkey, Chile, Portugal, and Italy. http://www.ub.edu/icdhs/barcelona10+1/docs/Programme_ICDHS2018.pdf (accessed August 16, 2021). 36 Three papers by researchers from Brazil and India, at that time all based in the UK, were presented in a session entitled ‘Typographic Transactions’ at the 2019 annual Design History Society Conference, held in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. https://costofdesign.files.wordpress.com/2019/09/planner-insert-with-bits-added.pdf (accessed August 16, 2021). 37 Examples of such events include those promoted by the Printing Historical Society (https://printinghistoricalsociety.org.uk/past_events/index.html) (accessed August 16, 2021), the ATypI annual conferences (https://www.atypi.org/conferences) (accessed April 16, 2021), and the typography meetings promoted in Portugal (https://2019.portodesignbiennale.pt/pt/events/10-encontro-tipografia). © The Author(s) 2021. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Design History Society. All rights reserved. This article is published and distributed under the terms of the Oxford University Press, Standard Journals Publication Model (https://academic.oup.com/journals/pages/open_access/funder_policies/chorus/standard_publication_model)
TI - Typographic Histories: Three Decades of Research
JF - Journal of Design History
DO - 10.1093/jdh/epab030
DA - 2021-08-23
UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/oxford-university-press/typographic-histories-three-decades-of-research-vzpJWU0cv6
SP - 1
EP - 1
VL - Advance Article
IS - 
DP - DeepDyve
ER -