Type of the 1950's

Type of the 1950’s

Image: Armin Hofmann

by Marley Howe

ContentsHelveticaArmin Hoffman {Designer Profile}PhototypesettingLinotype

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After the introduction of Neue Hass Grotesk at the “Graphic 57” trade show which happened in June 1957, it became an immediate success. Becoming executed by many graphic designers of that era and eventually becoming a trademark of contemporary Swiss

graphic design.To have the highest quality typeface, more than the other sans serifs in the global type market at the time, Hoffmann knew that it was important to make Neue Hass Grotesk available for machine configuration. In June 1959 Hoffmann made an agreement with D. Stempel AG in Germany to help assemble Neue Hass Grotesk for the popular linotype machine, making the typeface more practical to use for an even larger customer base.

The name “Neue Haas Grotesk” was for made an international Linotype market however. Heinz Eul, sales manager at Stempel, suggested a name change to “Helvetia”, which is Latin for “Switzerland”, but Hoffmann wasn’t easily persuaded, particularly when a sewing machine manufacturer and insurance company already carried the same title. He instead recommended another Latin name, the same name we all know and see today, “Helvetica” which actually means “the Swiss”.

In the later years, Linotype modernized all the different Helvetica typefaces, this included the old metal types, the short-lived phototypesetting fonts and the digital versions all into one large new family which many people see on their computers today (As well as the original Helvetica) which it called Helvetica Neue. This is primarily the type we see everywhere today, although for some people they may mistake it as not being related to the original font because of the range of weights.

Helvetica

What do the brands American Apparel, Jeep, Toyota, BMW and Target have in common? That’s right! Their logos are all designed in Helvetica. A designer and typographers most favoured typeface, it is easily one of the most popular typefaces

in the world and has been since the late 1950’s. To make this easier for the everyday person who is not a designer, I put it as simple as this,

Helvetica is used by many designers at self-governed firms, big organizations, and everything in between, throughout the whole world. Helvetica has been featured by MOMA in New York and has acknowledged a substantial amount of awards and worldwide recognition. There are even a few documentaries and books about it. By the mid-1950s, the Haas type foundry in Switzerland seen a decrease in sales of their sans serif (“grotesk”) typefaces. With the classic designs becoming less favoured than its contenders like Berthold’s Akzidenz-Grotesk, which was particularly popular in the evolving the “International Style” of graphic design. Eduard Hoffmann, president of the company, saw an opportunity to reform the company’s sales target and contracted the former Haas salesman and designer, Max Miedinger, to help design a new typeface “Haas Grotesk”.

Creation of Neue Hass Grotesk started early the in Autumn months of 1956. Over the coming months Miedinger and Hoffmann meticulously exchanged drawings, proofs, and comparisons with the old grotesk typefaces. The most unique features of the new typeface were dependable with horizontal stroke terminals, large x-height and incredibly tight spacing. All the features of the accommodated qualities of the typeface resulted in a characteristically dense and dynamic smoothness.

Helvetica. The designers choice since 1957

Armin Hofmann

Armin Hofmann is one of the most awe inspiring and influential teachers in graphic design and typography of the century. A designer of perfect execution, a founding member of the amazing cohort of Swiss design experts whose work and most importantly thinking still continues to have a

huge effect on the international understanding of graphic design.

Born in 1920 on the 29th of June in Winterthur, Switzerland and finishing his studies at the School of Arts and Crafts in Zurich, he worked as an apprentice lithographer in Basel and Bern, and he opened a studio in Basel. In 1947, he began teaching typography at the Basel School of Arts and Crafts after meeting fellow designer Emil Ruder on a train and learning that the school was looking for a teacher. Hofmann then stayed there for 40 years. In 1968, he and Ruder introduced an advanced class for graphic design, later in 1973 he became head of the graphic design department. Teaching first in the United States at Philadelphia College of Art in 1955, and a short time after he began teaching at Yale University, where he played a major part until he resigned in 1991.

In 1965, publishing his first book, Graphic Design Manual, he focused upon the essential principles which he used while teaching design. Now after many years later, the amended edition of this helpful and instructive classic is still in print. Seeing his designs generally as a way to help validate these principles. Much of the posters he created in the late 1950s and 1960s for cultural clients possess great typographic and photographic purity of form. Hofmann’s work deals with the universal language of signs and symbols, often including serendipity and always aiming for timeless beauty. “It is easy for the people of today to underestimate the impression that many of these posters made in the streets. Sparingly using black and white had an interesting yet fitting application.

During the period of the post-war consumer society, much of his work suggested a visual refinement originated on decisive and thoughtful limitations and restraint. “I have endeavored to do something to counteract the increasing trivialization of color evident since the

Second World War on billboards, in modern utensils and in the entertainment industry,” he writes. “I tried to create a kind of counter picture.” The emergence of color TV only supported his declaration; all the “musicality” of color was lost. To generate a meaningful drive in a design, he would use color only in carefully placed parts within a blank space.

To understand to the full extent what Hofmann his achieved and what he stood for we need to reminisce on all the times of his dedication to visual communication and how it signified a larger visualization of civilized society. Hofmann belongs to a generation that wanted to find a new visual language that would be suitable for a complex technological world. “His goals, though pragmatic, are never pecuniary. His influence has been as strong beyond the classroom as within it. Even those who are his critics are eager about his ideas as those who sit at his feet,” notes Paul Rand

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A designer, teacher and icon for Swiss design

“As a human being he is simple and unassuming. As a teacher, he has few equals. As a practitioner, he ranks among the best” “He is a rare bird, a daredevil driver, a mountain climber, a teacher par excellence, and a guru. Yet it is difficult, really, to pin him down.”

– Paul Rand

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Hofmann was an artist and designer, with strong wisdom of structure and space; he created wall reliefs, glass paintings, floor tiles and mosaics, acoustic walls, and other sculptural pieces. In all of these art works, as well as his student’s projects, he obtained a kind of

harmonious character, to which he gave the German word Klang. Kenneth Hiebert a former student of Hofmann labels this attribute as the “convergence of visual logic and perceptual vitality.” “Es muess klinge”—it has to be sonorous—was one of his famous sayings,” recalls Hans-Ulrich Allemann.

What comes across a lot in the stories of people who studied with Hofmann is the substantial spirit of a man who, by trying to express what he wanted to communicate as simply as possible, cut into a deep and long-lasting impression. “He shaped me as a designer and a person.” Inge Druckrey another former student remembers, “There was no lengthy commentary,” she says, “only the expression sauschoen, which meant ‘just look at it, this work is terrific.’” The same could just as readily be said of Hofmann’s designs. Only by observing hard you be able to see.

Linotype

In the same decade that peanut butter was invented a revolutionized typographic technology began to rule the world of type, eventually ruling out the old typesetting technique of the letter press which was invented by Gutenberg in the 1440s. Ottmar Mergenthaler an

inventor who emigrated from Germany in 1872 to Baltimore, Maryland. In 1884 he invented a machine used sorely for the purpose of making the process of typesetting faster while also being able to stamp the letters and then immediately cast them in metal in the same machine?. The Linotype machine was used to produce a quicker, more efficient way of setting type by using a technique called “line casting’, where it casts an entire line of type at one time (which is where the name “Line o’ Type” came from). It produced printable characters six times faster than the average person. With the invention of the Linotype, the printing of newspapers and books skyrocketed. This dramatically changed journalism and society as a whole.

The Linotype machine was long-awaited and when it came out its popularity was phenomenal and it grew even more up into the mid-. Even a group of investors that tried to control the Linotype could not stop the almost instant popularity of the machine. Sadly,

Mergenthaler never got to see the full impact of his invention as he died of tuberculosis in 1899 at the age of 45. The Linotype quickly became an essential part of the printing industry. By the early 20th century, there were tens of thousands of machines in use all over the world and used in many different languages. The massive boom that printing made during that time helped create jobs for highly-skilled workers that developed into specialists of the machine. Later on in the 1950’s another method called Photo typesetting began to overtake the Linotype. Up until the 1970s, the Linotype was no longer that hi-tech machine in which everyone knew in the early 19th century, printers started tossing out the machines because they were assumed to be outdated. Today in the 21’st century it is rare to see a machine in operation as very few machines exist anymore

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It was not long after the Second World War around the early 50’s that new photographic techniques started to replace the casting method more known as “hot press” which was invented by Gutenberg in the 1440s. It was a technique which boomed for over 400 years

leading in the typesetting industry until, developed a new machine which was based around the original Lumitype machine that the two electrical engineers from Lyon, France, Rene Higonnet and Louis Moyroud invented in 1946. This major advancement had completely taken over the old method of hot metal lead pressing by replacing it with an electronic and high-speed photographic techniques. Compared to using hollowed-out metal plates, phototypesetting machines use a cold press technique, creating characters on a fresh, film-like material. Some conventional phototypesetters could expose up to 50 characters per second, but most of the time, exposure was closer to 30 characters per second.

Phototypesetting; The preparation of manuscript for printing by the projection of images of type characters on photographic film, which is then used to make printing plates. Also called photocomposition.

Phototypesetting

The characters were made up by the passing of a beam of light through a negative copy of a character, it would then expose a photo-sensitive material, kind of like a photographic paper or film. By using this technique, it took away the heavy load of lead characters

and replaced them a disk which only weighed at an easy 2Kg! Older fonts such as Garamond needed to be redrawn for this new technique. In typesetting, only one design can be used, regardless of the size of the paper. Used widely with offset printing, it eliminated impression into the paper, most fonts became thinner, spaces between letters started to shrink because of its physical constraints and printed text became slightly wishy-washy and rigid.

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References1950s Remington Rand Vintage Manual Typewriter 2. (2016). Retrieved from http://www.londontypewriters.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/1950s-Remington-Rand-Vintage-Manual-Typewriter-2.jpg

(2016). Retrieved from http://midmod-design.com/beta/general/uploads/56ee8acdadbfb-groot2.jpeg

Armin Hofmann | Biography, Designs and Facts. (2016). Famous Graphic Designers. Retrieved 2 May 2016, from http://www.famousgraphicdesigners.org/armin-hofmann

Garamond - Photo-typesetting. (2016). Garamond.culture.fr. Retrieved 16 May 2016, from http://www.garamond.culture.fr/en/page/photo_typesetting

Kupferschmid, I. (2016). Retrieved from https://c1.staticflickr.com/9/8211/8318069428_0975344f1d_b.jpg

Neue Haas Grotesk — History. (2011). Fontbureau.com. Retrieved 12 May 2016, from http://www.fontbureau.com/nhg/history/

Poynor, R. (2011). 2011 AIGA Medal: Armin Hofmann. AIGA | the professional association for design. Retrieved 2 May 2016, from http://www.aiga.org/medalist-arminhofmann/

staff, W. (2009). 40 Excellent Logos Created with Helvetica. Webdesigner Depot. Retrieved 12 May 2016, from http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2009/03/40-excellent-logos-created-with-helvetica/

With the Second World War over, the world began to get back to it feet. Along the way many changes occurred in order to make this happen. This included the introduction of moveable type, sans-serif typeface domination in the corporate world and new design styles such as The Swiss Style (later known as the International Typographic Style) which helped develop the world into a modern more simplistic way of art and design with more use of typographic technology then ever used before!