Design Literacy

by Steven Heller

  What you are about to read is not, as the above might imply, peppered with periodontal metaphors. Rather, the premise of this essay is that letters, when formed into certain typeface styles and families, are agents of power and tools of the powerful. Some are used to gnaw away at freedom of thought and deed, expressing authoritarian dictates. Conversely, certain faces represent those who fight power. Often, these are one and the same face.

  So chew on this: typefaces are the incisors of language. In fact, typography, asserts McLuhan, “created a medium in which it was possible to speak out loud and bold to the world itself … Boldness of type created boldness of expression.”

  In this sense all type wields power. Yet the majority of typefaces in the world are neutral; they communicate ideas from all quarters—left, right, and center—and sometimes all at once. Typography is, after all, a “crystal goblet,” void of intrinsic ideology. Nonetheless, some typefaces have become putative logos of dogma and doctrine. Germanic black letter (fraktur), celebrated during the Third Reich for its “völkisch” virtues, was the Nazi’s “ideal German typeface” and will be forever tainted as a reminder of Hitler’s crimes against humanity. Anyone who has seen the spiky black letter masthead of the viciously anti-Semitic Nazi weekly, Der Stürmer, will experience the magnitude of the typeface’s evil representation.

  But could these words have the same impact on the average psyche if they were set in Bodoni, Garamond, or Clarendon?

  Typefaces that exude power spell out commands, convey orders, and announce decrees, which ultimately govern human behavior. The choice of types to serve this purpose is not just an aesthetic decision, but a deliberate means to force people to STOP or GO, LOOK or LISTEN, LOVE or HATE, and READ. Typefaces that demand compliance succeed, in large part, because they are invested with symbolic attributes culminating in real consequences.

  Of course, words are the real messages and typefaces are only messengers (remember what “they” say about not killing the messenger). Yet the marriage of type and word (and image too) determines tone, tenor, and weight of expression. Visualize the common STOP sign. In addition to its iconic octagonal shape bathed in red, the bold, sans-serif S-T-O-P (notably set in the rigid ClearviewHwy typeface) invariably trips a cognitive switch that compels obedience to such an extent that any sign set in the same demonstrative lettering style has equivalent power. Substitute other “action” words for STOP and the initial impact is the same.

  Shepard Fairey’s famous OBEY THE GIANT logo (like a George Orwell, BIG-BROTHER-IS-WATCHING-YOU poster) is a case in point. OBEY is a kind of stop sign word, made even more imposing through bold, gothic typography. The viewer may not be entirely certain who or what to OBEY, but following orders is the act that the typeface effectively coerces. Likewise, the words CAUTION, BEWARE, FORBIDDEN, when set in black san serifs, are just as psychologically, not to mention linguistically, powerful as STOP.

  But could these words have the same impact on the average psyche if they were set in Bodoni, Garamond, or Clarendon? Can types designed for power even have serifs? Heavy slab serifs not withstanding, do fine line serifs slow down reading and provide the receiver with a millisecond of contemplation time, which could mean the difference between acquiescence and disobedience? Power, you might say, is in the lack of details.

  “The phonetic alphabet is a unique technology.” McLuhan wrote in Understanding Media. “Only alphabetic cultures have ever mastered connected lineal sequences as pervasive forms of psychic and social organization. The breaking up of every kind of experience into uniform units in order to produce faster action and change of form (applied knowledge) has been the secret of Western power over man and nature alike.” And as the phonetic alphabet developed during the typographic age, the power to control human actions increased in exponential ways. “That is the reason why our Western industrial programs have quite involuntarily been so militant,” McLuhan adds with certainty, “and our military programs have been so industrial. Both are shaped by the alphabet in their technique of transformation and control by making all situations uniform and continuous. This procedure, manifest even in the Greco-Roman phase, became more intense with the uniformity and repeatability of the Gutenberg development.”

  Only when universal literacy was embraced during the nineteenth century did typography become a tool of authority, and typeset words—multiplied through mass printing—did its bidding. This, in turn, triggered chains of events that changed the world. “Of the many unforeseen consequences of typography,” McLuhan wrote, “the emergence of nationalism is, perhaps, the most familiar. Political unification of populations by means of vernacular and language groupings was unthinkable before printing turned each vernacular into an extensive mass medium.”

  Governmental, ecclesiastic, and institutional typefaces—designed at the behest of the state, church, or industry—are not necessarily faces that exert the most overt or oppressive power. Indeed showing brute strength is not always the desired goal of these entities. Types that wield power are stolid and brutish, they scream rather than whisper their messages. Ambiguity is VERBOTTEN! It is a safe bet that most nationalist propaganda that attempts to alter minds relies on big, bold typography, which embodies the big, bold nation or state. Consider the variants of the famous World War I recruitment poster, which in the United States reads I WANT YOU! For each iteration—German, American, Russian, etc.—the poster’s voice derives from a screamer headline. “Screamer” is the term used to describe tabloid newspaper headlines (EXTRA, EXTRA!) and even carnival posters (STEP RIGHT UP!). Types of power are not solely the tools of those in power. They are perfect simply for selling things—any things. But they can also easily serve the needs of those who wish to be empowered.

  When German artist and graphic commentator Käthe Kollwitz, whose son Peter was killed in one of the first battles of World War I, created the 1924 poster NIE WIEDER KRIEG (War Never Again!) depicting a young man holding up his defiant arm over which the lettering is scrawled with litho crayon, she made the most striking of all postwar cautionary emblems. Although this was not a typeface, per se, it nonetheless possessed attributes of power. Her emotional scrawl commanded that the human race end its savagery. In the same way, the anarchist magazines Fanal (1928) and Resistance (1947) employ hand scrawled and brushed lettering as mastheads to evoke the power of the masses. In contrast with the famous Hitler election poster from 1932, where the only typography is a sans-serif HITLER (with a square dot over the I) under a stark portrait of the “big brother.” The stark, geometric typeface possesses an architectonic authority that suggests, ironically, a forceful yet modern persona.

  Numerous typefaces and hand lettering abound with the power to turn statements from rhetoric into action. During World War II, a preponderance of sans serifs were used to convey authority. The Italian fascists, for example, veered from classical Roman letterforms towards stylized “fascist modern.” On one hand there existed customized “futurist” typefaces that symbolically suggested speed and progress, on the other were the bold sans serif capitals, a new approach to ancient Italian epigraphy. Type in fascist Italy was used to approximate the voice of the dictator Benito Mussolini. Since sloganeering was a strategic principle of Il Duce’s internal state propaganda to sway Italians towards fascist thinking, the most effective lettering was an essential consideration. Mussolini spread his oratorical power through modernistic gothic types that transmitted his proclamations. Yet as emblematic as his faces of power were, they were easily co-opted by his enemies—the Communists, for instance, employed some of the same typographic tropes in their own propaganda. Silly as it may sound, when fighting power with power, stealing or co-opting an iconic typeface can undermine the opponent’s powers. When successful, proprietary typefaces are as endemic to visual identity as are trademarks and just as easy to undermine.

  Power is a construct that transcends mere typeface analysis. Type is only as powerful as the force behind the message. But power is cumulative and a critical ma
ss of many components, of which type and typography are involved. Bold visceral statements and pronouncements are among the bulwarks of power and the apparatus of dissent.

  Peignot

  A.M. CASSANDRE

  Once upon a time Paul Rand used three stylish lowercase letters on a poster promoting winter sports. This solitary word, ski, was the first time that the typeface Peignot was used in the United States. It was 1938 and it was the last time Rand would ever use it, but Peignot became one of the most popular letterforms of the 1930s and 1940s. It was an emblem of the age, a reflection of the Parisian moderne style.

  Peignot, designed by poster artist A. M. Cassandre (1901–1968), still has currency as a display letter and is sometimes used to evoke the art deco period of the late 1920s to mid-1930s. Peignot was a quirky sans-serif face notable for its thick and thin body and the use of upper-case letters in its lowercase form. The typeface is famous for both its style and versatility, and its designer is well known for his significant contributions to the history of the poster, but little is known about the man for whom the face was named, Charles Peignot, or his influential Parisian type foundry, Deberny & Peignot. This is a case where the typeface is more than a mere letterform, it is a monument.

  The history of graphic design usually focuses on the artists who produced the most visible and viable work, not the so-called vendors. While Cassandre’s designs are celebrated, the catalyst or patron who encouraged, published, and paid for the work goes largely unheralded. This is the fate of Charles Peignot, who at one time employed Cassandre and other leading European designers including Herbert Matter, Alexey Brodovitch, and Charles Loupot. Peignot was to modern graphic design what Ambroise Vollard was to modern printmaking. He was not simply the manager of a successful type business, he was the embodiment of French typography for more than five decades. An arbiter of taste, a courageous experimenter, an adventuresome publisher, Peignot brought what one of his collaborators, the type designer Maximillen Vox, calls a “Gallic-Roman” design attitude (rooted in constant change) to the Anglo-Saxon world. Hence, Peignot’s legacy is a virtual timeline of typography, technology, and modern graphic design.

  In the 1920s the future of an international typography rested in German experiments. Paul Renner had designed his seminal Futura, the geometric sans-serif that became the emblem of modernity. Understanding this, Cassandre and Peignot began investigations that led step by step to the Peignot typeface (named by Cassandre). The face was the offspring of two spiritual parents: the Bauhaus and the Renaissance. After many false births, Cassandre and Peignot concluded that it would be pretentious to think of creating a completely new face and decided to work along traditional lines, while at the same time avoiding copies of what had been done. “Copying the past does not create a tradition,” wrote Peignot. Cassandre had the idea of going back to the origins of letterforms. “Was there not something to be learnt from the semi-uncials of the Middle Ages?” queried Cassandre. “The idea of mixing the letterforms of capitals and lowercase seemed to us to contain the seed of new development within traditional lines.” The result was a mixture of letters, which Peignot knew would take the public some time to adjust to.

  While Cassandre’s designs are celebrated, the catalyst or patron who encouraged, published, and paid for the work goes largely unheralded.

  In 1937 Peignot was launched in a spectacular way as the “official” typeface of the World Exhibition in Paris. It had been chosen by Paul Valéry for inscriptions on the two towers of the Palais de Chaillot. A fabricator produced cardboard stencils for making complete alphabets, and these were used for many mural inscriptions on the exhibition stands. The response to the type was overwhelming. And like a proud father, Peignot kept tabs on its use to such an extent that weeks after Paul Rand’s Ski poster was issued, Rand received a telegram of thanks, signed Charles Peignot.

  Cooper Black

  OSWALD COOPER

  Every designer has used the typeface Cooper Black at least once in his or her professional life. It is as indelibly part of design as ritual is of religion. Once one of the world’s most ubiquitous metal typefaces—and the heaviest, owing to its great mass—Cooper Black is a truly twentieth-century type, as emblematic as Futura or Univers. While it was not the first type to have rounded serifs, it is the most authoritative of the so-called fat faces. Used for advertising and editorial display, Cooper Black is as eyecatching as a charging bull and as loud as a carnival barker. If there had never been a Cooper Black, the world might never have known Ultra Bodoni, one of the many behemoths designed to compete in the ever-widening fat face market during the mid-1920s.

  The man who designed Cooper Black is Oswald Cooper (1879–1940), Oz or Ozzie to his friends. Cooper was a native of Coffeyville, Kansas. In his teens he settled in Chicago to pursue illustration. He eventually became one of the leading practitioners of what became known as the Chicago style. In the early 1920s and 1930s American design was a mélange of regional dialects, each emanating from a big city under the influence of a single person’s mannerism or the confluence of a few. Lettering, typography, and illustration were the defining media, and advertising was the primary outlet. The Boston style was attributable to W. A. Dwiggins and the New York style to Frederic W. Goudy (both of whom spent time in Chicago), but the Chicago (sometimes called the Midwestern) style was founded by Cooper. He combined calligraphic skill with typographic expertise to create advertisements that were modern in character and classic in form. While respecting tradition, he understood the needs of an expanding mass commercial market.

  Cooper stumbled into his lifelong vocation by accident. He left the comforts of his Kansas home at eighteen, bound for Chicago to study at the Frank Holme School of Illustration. There he was inspired by his lettering teacher, Frederic W. Goudy, to pursue a broader practice. Goudy, the most prolific of all American type designers and director of Holme’s typographic department, befriended Oz and helped him earn his tuition by assigning him jobs setting type for correspondence course booklets. This was a happy career move since Cooper had realized that he wasn’t very good at drawing pictures but had a real knack for the lettering arts. Soon he was appointed as a lettering teacher.

  While teaching at Holme, Cooper met a young man, Fred Bertsch, who ran an art-service agency next door to the school. Bertsch loved Cooper’s work and in 1904 they entered into the perfect partnership; Bertsch, a consummate salesman, and Cooper, the gifted artist, formed Bertsch & Cooper with the goal of establishing a full-service typeshop, including typesetting, layout, copywriting, and design. But opening a typeshop was expensive even then; and while they had plenty of ambition, money was in short supply. As a small studio Bertsch & Cooper based its initial reputation on hand lettering for small local jobs and later large national campaigns. Eventually, their financial success allowed them to open the full-service shop they had dreamed of, which gave Cooper the opportunity to test his other talents. “Cooper, of course, had brilliant capacities as a craftsman in the field of printing and of advertising layout,” wrote typographer Paul Standard in The Book of Oz Cooper (The Society of Typographic Arts, Chicago, 1949). “But in his endowment was also a gift for language, and through its discipline a power of clear and forthright expression … his text sought to persuade, not stampede.”

  The quality of Cooper’s lettering was equal to the strength of his writing. Cooper’s letterforms were not simply novelties, but “lessons in structural form, in free and friendly balance,” wrote Standard. Cooper created as many new designs as he could, yet he had an instinctual distrust of things superficially modish and conceptually strained. “Types too dexterous, like tunes too luscious,” he once waxed, “are predestinated [sic] to short careers. If William Caslon had improved his types as much as they have since been improved by others they would not have endured, for sleek perfection palls on the imperfect persons who buy and use type.”

  Actually, Cooper stumbled into type design almost as accidentally as he did lettering. His first type
was drawn and cut, unbeknownst to Cooper and without his permission, in 1913 by one of Morris Fuller Benton’s staff artists at American Type Foundry (ATF). Cooper had routinely created customized lettering in advertisements for one of Bertsch & Cooper’s largest clients, the Packard Motor Car Company. The ads were so widely seen that the lettering caught Benton’s eye. Type pirating was a fact of life and ads were neither signed nor attributed to any artist. Benton immediately ordered the type redrawn and founded in metal, and called it Packard. But Benton was also a man of integrity; when he learned that the original was designed by Cooper he paid a fee and attributed the design to him.

  Shortly afterward, Barnhart Brothers & Spindler Type Foundry (BB&S), America’s second largest, approached Cooper to design a complete family based on his lettering. Cooper did not immediately accept the offer, reasoning that he was first a lettering artist, not a type designer, and he was very busy with his own business. Bertsch, however, was not only Cooper’s partner but his biggest promoter and worked feverishly to get Cooper into the limelight. Bertsch called Cooper the “Michelangelo of lettering,” and urged him to accept BB&S’s offer. In 1918 Cooper’s first typeface was released, named Cooper, and later renamed Cooper Old Style.

  In the early 1900s typefaces were vigorously marketed to printers and type shops, often through ambitious type specimen sheets designed with the same artistic flourish as period sheet music. BB&S was particularly aggressive and succeeded in popularizing Cooper’s first normal weight roman (Cooper). They further made it the basis for a continuing family. The second in the series was the famous Cooper Black, the most novel of early-twentieth-century super-bolds. BB&S declared that Cooper

  Black was “the selling type supreme, the multibillionaire sales type, it made big advertisements out of little ones.” Cooper responded that his invention was “for far-sighted printers with near-sighted customers.” Owing to its novelty, it caused commotion in certain conservative circles. “The slug machine makers thundered against the black ‘menace.’ But the trend was on—the advertising world accepted the black in a thoroughgoing way and the orders rolled up in a volume never before known for any type face,” wrote a type seller of the day.