Pioneers of Modern Typography

by Herbert Spencer

Since its first publication in 1969, Pioneers of Modern Typography has been the standard guide to the avant-garde origins of modern graphic design and typography. In this essential reference, Herbert Spencer shows how new concepts in graphic design in the early decades of the twentieth century had their roots in the artistic movements of the time in painting, poetry, and architecture. Spencer examines the "heroic" period of modern design and typography, the beginning of which he traces to the publication in Le Figaro of the Italian artist Manetti's Futurist manifesto. He discusses the work of such "pioneers" as El Lissitzky, Alexander Rodchenko, and Laszlo Moholy-Nagy. He examines the artistic background of the new concepts in graphic design, and traces the influences of futurism, Dadaism, de Stijl, suprematism, constructivism, and the Bauhaus. His text is profusely illustrated with examples of the new typography, shown in genres that range from posters and magazine covers to Apollinaire's "figurative poetry."This revised edition, which follows the revised and redesigned edition of 1983, includes a foreword by design critic Rick Poyner that discusses the important contributions to the history of graphic design made by Herbert Spencer.

Genres: Design, Nonfiction, History, Art

Paperback

First published March 23, 1983

Reviews

[Paul · Rating 3 out of 5]

Focuses on 10 founding fathers (all men, all European) of modern typographic style. Beautifully illustrated, it's more of a picture book than a chapter book. The narrative is good but a bit dry, and it's somewhat let down by its structure: the first half is an "introduction" that tells the story chronologically, then the back half is 1-2 page biographies of the ten artists, and it feels a bit disjointed as a result. Just one approach or the other may have been better. Also, the layout is odd; for example, early approaches to abstract photography are discussed on page 21, but the images of that work don't appear until pages 46-47 for no obvious reason. Nevertheless, the depth of history is impressive; there's Bauhaus and De Stijl stuff, but also a lot on Constructivism/Suprematism which was less familiar to me. For instance: after the Russian Revolution, Marc Chagall ran an art school in Vitebsk and hired El Lissitzky as a professor of architecture, who then fell under the influence of fellow professor Kazimir Malevich – who knew?

[Alexander Charchar · Rating 4 out of 5]

While the internet makes it easy to stumble over the newest names and work worth seeing, it's worth remembering that this wasn't always the case, and unless you happened to live in a city in which an exhibition featuring international creatives was put together by a local museum, you wouldn't see much more work than what happened to be developed in your area (of course, there would be exceptions), or show cased in what I'm sure would have been quite expensive publications.

It is in this that Pioneers of Modern Typography should be considered something special. Put together in a time when learning of this many type-wielding artists would be seemingly impossible, I can't imagine the excitement felt when it was first published in 1969. I've no doubt that for many it was their first glimpse at typographic and design modernism on this scale, so well curated.

I was familiar with most of the names, knew the work of a few quite well, but there were many new names and works to be found. If you're a student of design history, then there might not be a lot of work from the names you know that is new to you. Having spent some time studying the usual folk – Lissitzky, Schwitters, Moholy-Nagy, Bayer and Tschichold, I was, at first, disappointed to not much new. However this quickly subsided when the power of scale this book has kicked in. The artwork is reproduced at a size that lets you get in and see all the details, from slight misregistrations to the damaged edges of metal type.

I've no doubt many will find more boredom than wonder in Spencer's book, finding it too simple, too old-fashioned or too common. The obvious irony is the majority of the work, if not all of it, was produced at a time when all of these thoughts were furtherest from the minds of those witnessing the birth of modernism. It's worth understanding why this was so and how these masters broke from tradition – it offers clues as to how any of us can break new ground, having the determination to do things that many people might scold. This collection of work shows the value in experimentation, in seeing what happens when you turn the typeblocks on their sides or print with the furniture. Silly little experiments that turn into an aesthetic sensibility which we still employ today.

Most charmingly, the book uses wholely black and red ink. Especially with a revised edition, it could have been easy enough to find the full-colour originals (or scans of them) to bring them up to date. But I find charm in seeing a large black, red and white image married to the caption "original in blue and pink".

[AgnesAgnes]

The roots of typographical Modernism is tied to Dada, Futurism, Constructivism and many other major art movements, and the limit between typography and graphic arts, poetry, architecture was erased by the social and technical changes, so that typography has become more visual and less linguistic, which inspired me to think about how graphic design ties to the new attitudes of the current world. What impressed me the most of this book was how seriously those pioneers took typography and design that they believe they can change the value of society.

[Azade Sadeghi · Rating 5 out of 5]

amazing design!