Modern Typography: An Essay in Critical History

by Robin Kinross

In a survey of developments since 1700, this book proposes a new understanding of modern as something larger and more deeply rooted than a modernism of style. Rather, 'modern' is taken to imply an articulate consciousness of action. The book's treatment lays stress on debates over principle and explanations of practice. But full weight is given to the social, technical and material bases of the activity; and the argument is illustrated by freshly made photographs of items not often reproduced before. Sources of information are discussed and extensively listed. The book thus contributes on several as a brisk narrative of historical development, as a springboard for further investigation, as a delineation of modern typography.
Published first in 1992, Modern typography is now issued in a revised and updated second edition.

Genres: Design, Art Design, Art, Nonfiction

208 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 1996

About the author

Robin Kinross (born 1949) is an author and publisher on the topic of visual communication and typography. His most significant work is Modern Typography. He is a proprieter of Hyphen Press, which publishes books on design and typography.

Kinross did undergraduate and graduate studies at the Department of Typography & Graphic Communication at the University of Reading. He moved to London in 1982. In the 1980s he contributed content to publications such as Blueprint, Baseline and Eye.

Kinross started Hyphen Press in 1980. Modern Typography was published in 1992. Since the 1990s, Hyphen produces about "two to four publications a year". Important publications by Hyphen include Christopher Burke's Paul Renner and Fred Smeijers' Counterpoint.

Reviews

[Anne Callahan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the best historical account of European and American twentieth-century typography. The text is built off of thorough research, it presents a sound thesis (that the term 'modern' is most useful and meaningful as a description of the period after which the typographic trades became self-conscious), and Kinross never draws easy lines of cause and effect, but rather presents the whole rich synchronic picture of ~three centuries of people and places that play parts in the related histories of printing, graphic design, publishing and advertising. *Modern Typography* also contains one of the best accounts of the National Socialist party's complicated relationship with typography (one of only a few instances where blackletter enters the story: Kinross states at the beginning that this is a history of roman typography). It probably wouldn't have hurt for Hyphen Press to have edited this manuscript more rigorously, as sometimes the prose starts to sounds like a conversational ramble over cocktails with a leisurely Englishman, but maybe that is the unfair critique of a graduate student accustomed to brutal efficiency.

Last, *Modern Typography* is beautifully designed: typography, paper, binding are all neat, serviceable, and unpretentious. And finally, if only more scholarly books handled illustrations this way: beautifully-reproduced images of books and spreads described in the text are printed on art paper in a single signature at the back, easily referenced *and* easily browsed, and accompanied by real, thorough captions containing useful data and meaningful observations about the item represented. It is like its own miniature book of riches, as a set of illustrations should well be.

[Ryō Nagafuji · Rating 3 out of 5]

You probably won't find another review of the modernist movement in typography as comprehensive as this, and the writing is usually quite easy to understand, but there are parts that make understanding everything quite difficult. I was looking at this book with a philosophical angle in mind, since I wanted to use it for a specific dissertation, so I might have been looking for too much specificity. Regardless, I would definitely recommend this book to anyone with an interest in typographical history or want to read up on a generally objective view of modernism.

[Paul Hunt · Rating 4 out of 5]

Informationally dense, a very dry read.