Designing Programmes: Programme as Typeface, Typography, Picture, Method

by Karl Gerstner, Lars Müller (Introduction)

Swiss designer and artist Karl Gerstner (1930–2017) had a significant influence on typography and the history and development of postwar graphic design. Designing Programmes is one of his most important and influential works. It was first published in 1964, and reissued in a new design by Lars Müller Publishers in 2007; both editions are now rare (the first almost completely unavailable). Now, Lars Müller reissues the book with its original design. Here, across four essays, Gerstner provides a basic introduction to his design methodology and suggests a model for design in the early days of the computer era. Gerstner's innovation was to propose a rule set or system defined by the designer that would determine all aesthetic decisions for a given product: for example, a logo might also function as a layout grid system or inspire a font. Today the book is especially topical in the context of current developments in computational design. With many examples from the worlds of graphic and product design, music, architecture and art, Designing Programmes inspires the reader to seize on the material, develop it further, and integrate it into his or her own work.

Genres: Design, Art, Nonfiction

120 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1963

Reviews

[Nick Jones · Rating 5 out of 5]

Karl died a few years ago around Christmas. It was the same week my paternal grandpa passed. They were both 86. The last conversation I had with him (my grandpa, not Karl) was about color. He had spent his entire career at a print shop where they printed color chips for paint companies. He told me about the superhuman ability some of his coworkers had developed to detect the slightest difference between the color needed and the color he printed. Karl’s later artwork was comprised of colored pieces of paper, layered and graduated between different colors. I like to think that maybe he used some of the colors my grandpa printed. I read Designing Programmes several times in PDF form before learning that a reprinted version was available and I didn’t need to spend $2000 for an original. It hit me like a bolt from the blue the first time I read it. How could somebody in 1962 have realized the potential of computers to create endless variety from a few simple parameters? More importantly, how could we have operated all these years without realizing he had shown us how? I’m thankful to have spent the last few years exploring this sort of work. Wish we had made more progress on it while Karl was alive. This book has been more influential to my design approach and philosophy than all the others combined. It has that rare quality of showing me something new each time I open it. Of parametric design Karl said “The work is not diminished, it’s merely shifted to a higher plane.” As AI becomes more than a novelty and begins to work its way up the production process chain, these words will mean more and more.

[Yoshikage Kira · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a typography design book (or, more precisely, a collection of essays) that centers on programmatic themes and variations illustrated with beautiful examples.
Aside from "Programme as typeface I/II" which focus on traditional typography, the other chapters cover broader graphics design and thus are of particular interest to digital designers/artists.

[Ruben Bustillo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Un libro bastante completo de la historia de las identidades flexibles y el diseño del futuro, escrito en el siglo XX

[Archie Everett · Rating 5 out of 5]

Must read

[Nedislav · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lars Müller Publishers did a great job bringing this book to life! Reading it you can tap into the mind of a great Swiss designer, who was humble and proficient in his craft at the same time.

Karl Gerstner's view of design systems was a breath of fresh air for me. I am really glad I found this book now and it was re-printed recently. I wasn't ready for the complex technical language, but I guess that's what you get from a 70 year old writing... Great find!

[KMT · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hard to read at time, but an interesting point of view about the logical thinking needed to develop visual programmes. Most of the content was written in the late 1950s and early 1960s, and Karl Gerstner was truly paving the way for the people who would soon generate art using computer algorithms.