Page 89 - Studio International - July August 1970

century painting, poetry and architecture, happened to Schwitters's Merzbauen in Han- more difficult and tiresome task of getting all
and it flowered quite suddenly and dramatic- over, in Lysaker, in Ambleside ? Why the details right'.
ally in the twenty years following the publica- celebrate people in books if you cannot say To discover (from Mr McLean's most
tion of Marinetti's Futurist Manifesto in what they did, and why, for what (and for affectionate account of how he first, at 21,
1909.' how much) ? I should not like to celebrate my was gone on pilgrimage to Basle with love in
It is true that Blake, Morgenstern, Carroll death, laid out on a coffee-table. 1939) that Tschichold was always far from
and Apollinaire (just like Shakespeare and In my view rightly, though against the thesis being the severe, military-minded propounder
the grammarian brothers Grimm) invented of the book, earlier Jan Tschichold occupies of the 'new' typography, much more the
their own orthography, punctuation and lay- the final pages. Such beauty. A man who ever-loving propagandist of fined decisions,
out to express their ideas and, by so doing, respects the text, the letterform, the margins, the hardest work of any designer, is to show
introduced new conventions to compositors content and the word : a master. the beauty of them hot.
and readers. What is not true, is to suggest Penrose's Pictorial Annual began in 1896, To look at the photograph of the now-
that the random placing of letter-forms, not concerned only with techniques of reproduc- benevolent Tschichold, slightly self-congrat-
arranged in lines, has anything to do with the tion (3- or 4 colour half tone, early posters) ; it ulatory in a moment of discovery (the perfect
proper business of typesetting, which is the was concerned with printing techniques. solution ?), right, long, thumb to finger while
arrangement of characters of constant body Only later did it illustrate poster designs per hand holds pencil, left hand on desk, an
(dimension from crown to sole of shoes), in se: after all, what did they communicate but expression of the cat who has found the cream,
words and sentences and phrases, divided the skill of the printing trade ? is to know, once again, the joy of discovery
according to the mode of their time—using In those days, printing was the graphic art. and invention in any human activity. q
the punctuation and syntax then accepted. During the following years, the Annual ANTHONY FROSHAUG
By changing the latter, Blake, Morgenstern, became progressively split into two parts :
Apollinaire, the Grimms in fact enlarged the articles on graphic design (the posters of
possibilities of typographic expression. Skegness Hassall, of railway Keely, of the How we look
Marinetti indeed made blasts towards the `advanced' third-hand Cubist McKnight The Intelligent Eye by R. L. Gregory. 19i pp.,
bourgeoisie, but could not give a guide-line Kauffer) ; followed by articles on technical illustrated in colour and black and white.
to writers or compositors. 'Modern' typo- developments in printing. It is only since 1963 Weidenfeld & Nicolson. 42s.
graphy is not a mode; it consists in a reasoned that the occupation of graphic design has
assessment of what is needed, and of what been transformed, by the increased technical Professor Gregory is a marvellous popularizer.
somehow then is done, under certain con- understanding of graphic designers, and by He can't hide his creative delight in his
straints. When typographic and social con- the increasing acceptance of designers by subject and in the experiment and speculation
straints change, the important thing is not to printing technicians. that goes with it. He writes with economy,
spray a random pattern on the page but to So, Penrose 1970. So many old friends: tributes flare and wonder, and his argument strikes
assess the new, with the old, requirements of a to Cassandre (from Henrion), sour looks at sparks in all directions. The present book
text. 'Modern' typography began around grids (from Alan Bartram), and a true comes out of his Royal Institute Christmas
1440. memorial to the loud-mouthed 'first lady of lectures of 1967-8.
Movements in art or in mechanics often are typography', Beatrice Warde (John Dreyfus). His starting point is that the evolution of sight
concatenised : a lot of beauties come together So many joys, so many particulated things. is linked with the evolution of the brain itself:
at a certain time, do a bit of frottage and For once, I give Herbert Spencer a pat on the `Eyes freed the nervous system from the
erasure to encourage iconoclasts. As a result back. tyranny of reflexes, leading to strategic
we get great statements of intention, major Beatrice Warde, in a transcribed interview, planned behaviour and ultimately to abstract
statements, which make you draw your breath speaks of the 'remarkable man, ... Henry thinking.' Vision is long-range. But its data
most sharply in. But typography does not Lewis Bullen, ... that great and still largely are ambiguous. Thus seeing is active and inter-
base itself on intention; it is not pliable — it unrecognized character' : Bullen, who after pretive, a continual process of testing 'object-
bases its certain correctness on straight his last stroke could still say, 'with his then hypotheses'. But these object-hypotheses,
mechanics, the caster rightly-heated, the suddenly young-looking face, "You know, drawn from an acquired store, cannot help
key-boarding correct. I always tried to tell the lads: If you're going us to locate objects in space. 'A given object
Decipherable among the illustrations are to be just a pica-thumper, you might as well may have a variety of sizes and has a very
certain theses on typography, compiled by have been a plumber, they use lead too"' large range of possible distances. So current
Kurt Schwitters. (Perhaps the better thing —as proper as an apprentice I know, who now sensory information must be used for setting size
about this volume is that it allows enquiry; has served his time, and one day told me of and distance scales.'
perhaps the worse thing is that not only are the day he was caught polishing the ingots Many factors contribute such current informa-
the original margins of the examples not (alloyed lead, antimony and tin) underneath tion—stereo vision, parallax, relative move-
indicated, but that the editor has the clear the Linotype machines; and they said to him ment, etc. But none of these apply when we
insolence to intrude his comments within the t 'trouble with you, Alan, you're too con- look at pictures, which, the author repeatedly
clear area of the white dream-space of the scientious'. reminds us, are special cases. They are in-
visuals.) Schwitters maintained: 'Innumer- Conscientious is the word : however much herently paradoxical and reading them
able laws may be written about typography. appears in Penrose on lead alloys, filmsetting, requires a special kind of attention. In one
The most important is: never make it as process cameras, the attitude remains. We use chapter he draws a useful parallel between
someone before you did.' Schwitters is, here, the letter-images, plus a bit of accurately- the way in which we determine size and
quite wrong. Make it as they did, unless the spaced furniture or reglet to regulate both distance of objects in ordinary vision and
constraints are changed. understanding and perception. the techniques used in astronomy for deter-
Those, whose work is shown, we all respect: Of course, the major contribution is Ruari mining the size and distance of stars. Here
nothing is sweeter than to see them resurrected McLean's article on Tschichold, who 'per- again, there are special cases—quasars—where
stiff between these covers. But why is there haps has shown, more clearly than anyone owing to certain paradoxical features there is
no mention of the society in which they lived ? else, that the true task of the typographer is doubt as to how measurements relating to
Why does the author not discuss how much not so much in the broad sweep and the dash- them should be scaled. They could be either
these image-breakers earned? Or, what ing effects ... as in the less obvious, infinitely very bright and far, or of average brightness
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