LET'S TALK TYPE. LET TYPE TALK.

Comment by the Editor-in-Chief | Johannes Frederik Christensen

The Business of Brand Management sheds light on brand management in the context of the present and history. This article is part of a series of republications of selected texts by Olaf Leu and Bodo Rieger from the years 1987 to 2018. What was thought, written and advocated back then is worth re-reading - not out of nostalgia, but because it reflects questions that have not been resolved even today.

Fictitiously the conference table. The protagonists of writing and advertising art gathered around it are fictitious. What is not fictitious is the room, the Olaf Leu archive and here the moderator, who
who creates the transitions depending on the statement. The fictional and real interlocutors: First and foremost, Jan Tschichold, Kurt Weidemann and Herb Lubalin with essential statements. Also Helmut Krone and David Ogilvy. The nucleus lies in the question and the determination of whether the abstract transformation of the spoken word into writing can be translated into emotional, transferable, original language. Or whether writing then turns into a neutral whisper, in no way creating emotional ties to the sender, i.e. the speaker, primarily to the company, the product and service, the conversation. Whispering means: Speak clearly! Can the abstract form of language, writing, do that? At least the truth should play a role. Professor Alfred Grosser sits at the fictitious conference table.

Leu: Professor Grosser: Is there any truth at all?

Grosser: There is no absolute truth, but there are things that are truer than others.
And above all, there is a big difference between those who search for truth,
and those who knowingly neglect this search because they believe themselves to be in possession of an
absolute truth - and thus become all too intolerant towards all those
who do not recognize this absolute truth.

Leu: What is not believed is the historically founded truth about the better reading of antiquarian scripts as opposed to the deliberate "disembodiment" of a style of writing, the grotesque.

Tschichold: That grotesque is the best font because it is the simplest is a fallacy. The best typeface must be legible, whether simple or not. A font with a classical character is more legible than grotesque, which may seem simple but only produces a staccato rhythm with indistinct word images.

Leu: Then the recognized typeface designer Lucian de Groot was wrong with his Grotesk - Calibri -
for the American government typeface, with the recommendation that it was easier to read for older people, was on the wrong track. He must not have been aware of Tschichold's comments. In addition, the current successor font, an almost classic Antiqua - Times New Roman - leads back to more STANDARD, according to the Secretary of State, Marco Rubio. This brings us to a deliberately "speaking" font, that of the conservative. So, in addition to better readability, the political emotions to be conveyed now also play a role.

Ogilvy: No text in capitals. Use fonts with serifs (Antiqua).
Sans serif (grotesque) only in small quantities. No fonts in negative space.

Leu: There is one exception. Namely the campaigns for the Volkswagen. Here the typeface was Futura. A grotesque.

Krone: I used the traditional layout that has always existed: 2/3 image, 1/3 text. This in three blocks with a headline. It was an editorial look, but with sans serif fonts. I wanted the text to look like Gertrude Stein. The layout actually influenced a new style of text that Bernbach (Doyle Dane Bernbach) later called subject, verb, object. At the time, everyone was doing Volkswagen layouts. The headlines were getting smaller and smaller, it was fashionable at the time to write three meaningful words that were so strong you could put them in small type. I was looking for a page style. I believe that you should be able to tell who is running the ad from a distance of six meters.

Leu: In advertising, which is no longer taught under this term today, the surprising image and the accompanying typeface played a harmonious role. The font style should speak. At Volkswagen, it was the cool statement of a small vehicle and the ingeniously constructed grotesque. Almost as an antithesis to the "cruisers" of the time with shark fins.

Lubalin: Paul Rand single-handedly brought about the revival of Futura, one of the worst-designed but most popular typefaces in the world. Through his influence, News Gothic and Alternate Gothic also became popular again.

Weidemann: If you do typography, you don't have to care whether you're on trend, up-to-date or not. Anyone who constantly serves idols or merely copies them loses their identity. Anyone who is afraid of being called old-fashioned can accuse their opponents of being clueless and ignorant of history. What is so trendy today was already done a hundred years ago, ninety years ago, eighty years ago: from Marinetti to El Lissitzky by Futurists and Bauhäusler and representatives of integral typography. Only not so quickly, so easily, so superficially.

Tschichold: The reflection of one's own time is by no means the task of typography and as an intention it is erroneous: because whatever we do is only possible today and here, and intentionally or unintentionally a mirror of ourselves.

Leu: Here is an article whose author I could not find despite research, but which I kept for over three decades - i.e. before the turn of the millennium. It is almost clairvoyant
in its content.

NN: The day is coming when chaos will descend on the world of signs. Then the words will tumble around, the letters will stretch or shrink to the point of illegibility. Photos will be torn to pieces, texts shredded and lines bent, and the reader's eyes will ache. Then magazines, posters and record sleeves will don a new, garish dress, and with a young, rebellious generation of design artists, anarchy will reign in the realm of graphics. It's not that far yet. Experts are still puzzling over when and to what extent the catastrophe will arrive, and laypeople can't interpret the first signs, which can be spotted now and again in design magazines, any more than they can read hieroglyphics.

Tschichold: A clear order is a beautiful thing and a requirement for every work of art, even for the modest work of art that is typography. But an order that looks at itself and becomes an end in itself is contrary to the task of typography. If content and form no longer coincide, but only external, a sham order is presented, then the task of typography is forgotten.

Weidemann: Apparently the centuries run out of juice towards their respective end. They become weak and sickly, but retain a hope of recovery.

Tschichold: The graphic artist's free play with letters, a frequent, hybrid degeneration, is neither typography nor an example of the correct use of letters. Paintings that use letters instead of colors are even less models of typography; they are no longer even writing.

Leu: The latter is probably a clear statement against the current tendencies to dump an endless
endless waste of writing on our paper heaps and producing it digitally on our television screens. Let's stick to the chosen theme: writing speaks!

Lubalin: Graphic expressionism is my term for the use of typography,
or type forms not only as a means of transferring words to a page, but rather as another creative way of expressing an idea, telling a story, reinforcing the meaning of a word or phrase to evoke an emotional response in the viewer. Using typography as an alternative to photos or illustrations, or using them together to enhance the impact and memorability of a graphic statement.

Leu: This amply describes the emotional statement of a font in its individual function. Scripture is not a "by-product" but a "partner", it doesn't matter which scripture you choose, but it requires a well-considered and well-developed knowledge. It's like a prospective marriage: who suits you best. Rarely does one fall from the sky unchecked.

Tschichold: The history of typography is to a large extent a history of typefaces. And it is the type itself that largely determines the structure of a typographic work. Typography has very little to do with the architecture that is so often invoked, although it is easy for lay eyes to see this in pairs of images. Typography has its own laws, it is an art in itself.

Weidemann: "Everybody is a type director", proclaimed a judge of an important typography competition. This is exactly what has brought typography to the dogs and dumped type by the thousand on huge visual landfills. The fact that something is easy to handle and comparatively cheap to buy does not make a master. At best, you can hope that audacity will eventually bring itself down through stupidity because, tired of it, you gradually begin to despise yourself. Anyone who buys a camera automatically thinks they are a movie director. With a Mac and the appropriate software, you become a type designer, an author, a publisher, a typographer anyway, because he also only arranges type from left to right and from top to bottom.

Leu: According to statistics on NEW typefaces kept at Klingspor-
museum.de, these amount to over 14 thousand (!) named typeface designers (and at the same time manufacturers, i.e. distributors) with 40 thousand (!) typefaces. Most of them are used to distinguish fashionable, contemporary titles or complete alphabets.
These are mostly plagiarisms, imitations of historically existing typefaces and are mostly intended to
undercut the license fees of serious font providers. Business compared with the forger of the alleged Hitler diaries. The font industry has been a bear raging for two decades.

Weidemann: The type studios and one-man kitchen businesses sprouting up everywhere have good and also recognizably tangible reasons for the fact that we still can't have enough fonts, and I argue that we can recycle the catalogs with the telephone directory without causing any cultural damage. However, pluralism and self-realization are currently the trend, and everyone is allowed to make their own alphabet or bend an existing one to their liking. The majority of this galloping inflation will fall victim to disuse and destruction. Value pluralism is being confused with freedom, because helplessness - the more appropriate term - doesn't sound so good. Free from what is clear. Free from what is not.

Tschichold: Don't forget that typography is the most unfree of all the arts. None serves as much as it does. It cannot free itself without losing its meaning. More than any other art, it is bound to meaningful conventions, and the more the typographer respects these, the better his work will be. Private styles and fashions are just arts and crafts and have no meaning. The salvation of a typography that outlasts the times lies not in complacency and inbreeding, but in its integration into the tradition of classical Antiqua and in the finite slow formation of logically justifiable traditions.

Leu: Our discussion time is coming to an end. Now that my American colleague, Herb Lubalin, has delivered the motto of our meeting, I would like to ask him for the closing words.

Lubalin: DONE! It is our responsibility as designers not only to give order to the analog or digitally generated word, but also to make it memorable and therefore easier to understand. This will make it easier for viewers to communicate. And the better people communicate, the greater the need for better, more readable graphic design.

EPILOG

Christian Jung, Senior Art Director at wirDesign:

Like the logo and color, type is also a defining part of the brand.
It gives form to identity and transforms values into attitude. If you use typography in a targeted way, you let your brand speak even before a word has been said.

About my protagonists at the fictitious conference table:

Alfred Grosser (1925-2024) was Professor of Political Science at the Institut dÈtudes Politiques in Paris. Journalist, winner of the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade, author of numerous publications.He saw himself as a "mediator between France and Germany", but also for non-believers, believers, Europeans and people from other cultures.

Helmut Krone (1925-1996) was one of the pioneers of modern advertising.As he did as art director for Doyle Dane Bernbach (DDB) in New York. The popularity of his realization in graphic overall images for Volkswagen, Avis and coffee from Colombia generated imitators of his graphic concept throughout the advertising world.

Herb Lubalin (1918-1981) was an important American graphic designer and art director. He became famous for his typographically based image and word marks. It was not until late in the 1950s that he realized that what he and his colleagues were designing was a "school". He was thus the originator of the term "The New American School" as it was visible from 1930 until the end of the seventies.

David Ogilvy (1911-1999) was an English advertising copywriter.He was responsible for a large number of text formulations, slogans and headlines that have become classics today.Probably his most famous headline is the one for Rolls Royce: "At 60 miles an hour the loudest noise in this new Rolls Royce comes from the electric clock".

Jan Tschichold (1902-1974), revolutionary and leader of the "New Typography" movement - in the politically turbulent twenties. They followed the Russian avant-garde around Kazimir Malevich and El Lissisky. They in turn were infected by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti and his Futurism proclaimed in 1909. So "grotesque" applied to everything.After all this revolutionary activity, Tschichold transformed himself after the Second World War into a universally revered and highly respected role model of sensible, relevant, conservative manners in matters of typography. Antiqua won.

Kurt Weidemann (1922-2011) was a master of the polished word and typography. His publications on the subject were both instruction and admonition. He did not forgive sloppiness in thinking and doing.Decades ago, he wanted to sink 29,900 of his 30,000 writings into the Pacific Ocean. He was first and foremost a publicist and generalist when it came to communication and clarity in this discipline.His publication "Where the letter leads the word" would be a kind of "lexica of good taste" for future generations if it were to receive sufficient attention and interest.His dealings with colleagues were characterized by listening friendliness - many colleagues have fond memories of him precisely because of his clear statements.