125 YEARS OF THE ST BRIDE

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TENTS 6 - 7 INTRODUCTION 16-21 INTERVIEW WITH NEVILLE BRODY John L. Walters By Emily Gosling Welcome to the celebratory 125th anni- Neville Brody on Navigating Graphic versary, first edition of THE ST. BRIDE Design’s Shifting Identity. 8-11 A TYPEFACE IS NOT A TOOL 24-27 THE LEGACY OF FIRST THINGS FIRST By Rick Poynor By Kris Sowersby The original 1963 manifesto continues Kris Sowersby asserts that a typeface is to find new life and relevance through new not a tool,. generations of designers. 12 - 15 WIT, BAD TASTE AND LOUD TYPE 28 - 31 PSYCHEDELIC FUTURISM By Sarah Snaith By Elizabeth Goodspeed The photos of legendary graphic designer Traditional Elegance Meets Psychedelic Robert Brownjohn show an outsider’s Futurism in This Type Trend. view of 1960s London. 125 YEARS Y ST. BRIDE 5

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Welcome to the first edition of St Bride, a publication dedicated to celebrating the St Bride Foundation as an independ- ent cultural institute which cares for an internationally significant collection covering print, design and typography whilst working with the creative industries locally, nationally and internationally. This special publication aims to celebrating St Bride Library’s 125th anniversary and in doing so future-proofing its collections for another 125 years. St Bride Library has one of the world’s most remarkable and irreplaceable collections of books, archives and artefacts documenting and celebrating the history of print and design. It tells the story of print, providing creative inspi- ration for the communities of designers, print- ers, artists and the public who bring life to the building and library collections. Amongst its unique treasures, our library houses rare 15th century books printed by William Caxton, original woodblocks by Robert Gibbings, artwork for Edward Johnston’s London Underground designs and scale models for Margaret Calvert and Jock Kinneir’s UK road signage. It holds over 200 special collec- tions and many physical objects from the history of printing and type-founding. This new quarterly publication is distributed and published by Eye Magazine Ltd and this first edition is guest edited by John L. Walters. 125 YEARS Y ST. BRIDE 7

A TYPEFACE IS N THE ASSERTION “A TYPEFACE IS A TOOL” IS A TYPICAL JUSTIFICATION FOR MAKING NEW TYPEFACES. IT’S CONVENIENT, REASSURING AND SOUNDS PRACTICAL. IT’S ALSO FALSE. 1 Perhaps Vignelli was right It’s natural to make this language visible — a function all along. connection — tools are performed adequately by most linked to our develop- typefaces. This is the root of 2 Peignot advertisement ment as a species. Along the perennial question: “Why by Gee & Watson Ltd., with language and abstract do we need new typefaces?” Typography Nº 7, (1938): thought, they make us human. Applying the broad definition 54. The concept of a tool is inter- of a tool, this is another way of meshed with the craft history saying: “Why do we need new 3 In the translated version of of type foundries. To say “a tools for performing the same Adrian Frutiger Typefaces. typeface is a tool” is like saying job?” The Complete Works, he it’s engineered, hand-crafted, In theory, designers could doesn’t expand on the con- built. It implies “this font is perform all of their typeset- cept directly in the essay. well made” while evoking the ting jobs with the same onve “Tool” is only mentioned in manual, physical processes of or two typefaces.1 But they the title and the conclusion: the old days. don’t. I can almost guarantee “The best typeface is the Yet the contemporary defini- this comes down to aesthet- one that impinges least on tion of a tool is worryingly ics. They choose a typeface the reader’s consciousness, broad. Traditionally a tool for its emotive, visceral and becoming the sole tool that was understood as “device visual qualities — how it looks communicates the meaning held in the hand used to carry and feels. Designers don’t use of the writer to the under- out a particular function”. The typefaces like a builder uses a standing of the reader.” definition has loosened to “a hammer. thing used to help perform The function of a typeface 4 Furthermore, multiple a job”, which means almost is to communicate visually typeface design applications anything can be defined as a and culturally. We crave new can be used to create the tool. Language is malleable, letterforms, finding them at exact same typeface. adapting to circumstances over once fascinating, repulsive and time. Meanings change. But is intoxicating. 5 Variable fonts are extreme- it accurate to define a typeface To say “a typeface is a tool” ly plastic, only the extremes in this way? isn’t a fact or truism. It’s a of the designspace are fixed. What job is a typeface perform- signal of philosophical intent ing? A typeface makes spoken by the designer. When Le 6 It might be worth pursu- ing a line of enquiry as to whether typefaces are tools manipulating language, but it might be very hard to suc- cessfully define language as a material. 8 ST. BRIDE

NOT A TOOL Images of St. Bride Institute, Fleet Street, London. Corbusier said “a house is a machine for living in”, it was a statement of his particular philosophy of architecture. A 1938 ad for Peignot states, “A WARNING TO WANTONS / Type is a tool that will turn in the hand of inexperience”.2 This is the earliest “a typeface is a tool” reference I can find. A more recent assertion is Adrian Frutiger’s Denken und Schaffen einer Typographie from 1994.3. Perhaps type designers are overly self-con- scious of their work. We’ve been asked, many times: “Why do we need more fonts?” Do we so doubt the validity and necessity of our work that we double down on the idea we’re merely making tools — and nothing more? Conceding that a typeface is a tool sounds dangerously close to an excuse: toolmakers cannot be held responsible for things made with their tools, or the tasks leading up to those things. They are only responsi- ble for the making of the tool itself. If a person decides to use a hammer to drive home a screw, then so be it. The hammer was only designed for nails. It’s not our fault the typography doesn’t look good. The typeface is just a tool — you’re using it wrong. 125 YEARS Y ST. BRIDE 9

A tool is part of the process of making; it’s not A TYPEFACE IS NOT A TOOL visible or part of the end product. You can see WORDS BY KRIS SOWERSBY vestigial traces of its use: the sliced vegetable, the smooth wood, the hemmed skirt. This is not true of a typeface, which is always visible. It’s part of the process and part of the product. It’s visible on the website, the poster, the app. It’s in the typography. The software that enables the use of a typeface is a tool. For example: it is almost impossible to know which tool was used to make a modern lithographed poster; multiple software applica- tions could generate the exact same outcome.4 Tools can vary, but the typeface is always visible and constant. Taking refuge in metaphor doesn’t always help express what we really mean. In her review of the self-titled poetry collection Hera Lindsay Bird, Erin Cunningham notes Bird “decon- structs the poetic business of simile, ridicul- ing the idea that meaning can be accurately conveyed through far-fetched comparisons”. In “New Things”, Bird writes: So maybe I can say jazz apothecary Or ham pantyliner But it gives me no pleasure To mean so little And get so far away with it. “A typeface is a tool” is a weak metaphor Once upon a time, typefaces were made of sagging against the finite bounds of spoken and materials. Letterforms were routed in wood, written language. It’s a false promise, an empty cut in steel and cast in lead. Now digital type- reassurance, a slack tautology. A typeface is not faces are immaterial. The letterforms in digital a tool. typefaces have fixed shapes, but they are still A tool is for performing a specific job. You largely plastic.5 Their vector outlines are crys- cannot use a hammer in place of a knife, but tallised into font files, but may be decomposed materials can be substituted. A house can be (converted to outlines) and further manipulated. clad in tiles or timber, a painting can be made They can be scaled, warped, coloured, tweaked by watercolour on paper or oil on canvas. If and distorted freely. Materials are not fixed in Helvetica can’t be used, Arial can stand in its form or size, but tools are. 6 place. Typefaces are malleable, flexible and visible in Tools manipulate materials to make things. the final thing. These are all essential qualities of Materials are a visible constituent of the final materials, not tools. thing. Typefaces combine with images on leaves A typeface is a material. of paper, bound together with string and glue to make a book. Tools are used to make the book from materials, the book itself is not made of tools. 10 ST. BRIDE

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WIT, BADTASTE, ANDLOUDTYPE Robert Brownjohn had a short but glittering career in 1950s and 60s graphic design, which included some pioneering adver- tising and corporate identity work in New York City, and the famous title sequences for the Bond movies From Russia with Love and Goldfinger in London. But on a singtle day in 1960 Brownjohn also assured himself a place in the history of photography. His ‘Street Level’ photographic series – 137 black-and-white images which he claimed to have captured on one trip around London by taxi – has found a permanent home in the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) since 2012, and warrants a fresh look. Some of these pictures are familiar to graphic designers from their appear- ance, heavily cropped, in Typographica New Series no. 4 in December 1961.* The series reflects London’s vernacular letter- ing and typography as seen on shopfront signs; painted on pavements, roads and on panes of glass; imprinted on scraps of metal; inside shops and offices; and myriad locations typical of gritty, early 1960s London. These images exem- plify Brownjohn’s distinctive way of seeing and they embody his outsider-ness. Through his 1957 Pentax lens, Bj (as he preferred to be called) captured the city a few years before it became ‘Swinging London’. As Katy Homans wrote in Eye no. 4 vol. 1: ‘Brownjohn lived what he preached; his London flat was full of typo- graphic junk: broken signs, individual letters, torn paper with unusual printing.’ The ‘Street 12 ST. BRIDE

Level’ pictures show his obsessive passion for signs and letters. Bj was born in Newark, New Jersey in 1925. He attended the Pratt Institute in 1943, followed by the Chicago Institute of Design, where he studied under and assisted László Moholy-Nagy and Serge Chermayeff. He went to New York in the early 1950s and in the late 1950s worked with Ivan Chermayeff (son of Serge) and Tom 13 Geismar as Brownjohn, Chermayeff & Geismar Associates (BCG). A whirlwind trip spent photographing vernacular signs was nothing new for Bj. In New York it had been common practice for BCG’s partners, along with designer friends such as Tony Palladino, George Tscherny and Bob Gill, to go out and capture the visual language of Coney Island and other NYC locations on film as a way of inspiring their client work. The introductory text to the Typographica feature read: ‘The things they show have very little to do with Design, apart from achieving its object. They show what weather, wit, accident, lack of judgment, bad taste, bad spelling, necessity and good loud repetition can do to put a sort of music into the streets where we walk’. Bj was an avid jazz fan and friend of musicians Charlie Parker and Miles Davis; his approach to life and work often emulated this liberated yet drug-infused and self-destructive scene. But in London – on his own, and yet to start a job as creative director at J. Walter Thompson – Bj created 125 YEARS Y ST. BRIDE

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Words by Sarah Snaith something beyond a portrait of London’s typo- editorial use … What graphic environment. [they show] is that Bj’s use of happy accident, vernacular type and Brownjohn tended to letters in three-dimensional space informed his include enough of the best regarded work, including the Bond title setting to give a strong sequences, his cover for The Rolling Stones’ Let sense of the look and It Bleed (1969) and the poster for Dick Davison’s atmosphere of the New York Peace campaign. This shows an ace of place where he found spades playing card modified by handwriting to the lettering or graffiti. read ‘Peace?’. The British capital’s Since it was purchased by the V&A, the collec- dour postwar street tion of Brownjohn’s photographs has been texture was fascinat- displayed both in the V&A Museum, and as ing and meaningful part of the ‘Beneath the Surface’ exhibition at to him. Brownjohn Somerset House in 2015. shows the bricks, the A selection of the ‘Street Level’ series can also stone, the doorways be viewed by the public, by appointment only, and window frames, in the V&A’s Prints & Drawings Study Room. the railings, the adja- V&A’s curator of photographs Susanna Brown cent fixtures, the says: ‘These unique vintage prints are valuable surrounding structure.’ in terms of their potential design applications and Brownjohn, a long- their link to many key V&A collection areas in term heroin addict, architecture, typography, publishing and callig- died of a heart attack raphy. The images form part of the wonderful in 1970, at the age of history of street photography, connecting with 44. The ‘Street Level’ the work of photographers such as Benjamin series is an element Stone, Eugène Atget, Walker Evans and William of his legacy that Klein.’ demonstrates his last- In his Design Observer post ‘Robert Brownjohn: ing contribution to Photos at Street Level’, Rick Poynor wrote: the practice of street ‘It’s only now that we can take their measure photography. as photographs rather than as adroitly selected and organised typographic details pressed into 125 YEARS Y ST. BRIDE 15

NEVILLE BRO Neville Brody is a journalist’s dream. He has a well-honed knack for wryly provocative, headline-ready takes on the design indus- try that others would take hours to deline- ate. As one of the best-known graphic designer since the 1980s, he’s adept at this sort of thing. Even those who haven’t heard his name in the UK have definitely seen his work: the type- face designed for Channel Four, websites for the BBC and The Guardian, not to mention his work with institutions like the RCA, Barbican, ICA and V&A. In 2014, he designed the type- face for the England World Cup football kit. You can’t really get more visible than that. But despite all this, the majority of Brody Associates’ clients hail from overseas. Part of 16 ST. BRIDE

ODY ON NAVIGATING GRAPHIC DESIGN’S SHIFTING IDENTITY “GRAPHIC DESIGN IS ONLY REALLY SEEN ON PINTEREST AND INSTAGRAM” that about the British habit of willfully dismiss- Though Brody hasn’t always worked with ing the successful in favor of blind devotion to huge global brands, he’s certainly always been the underdog (more on that later); and part of devoted to design that’s rigorously underpinned that comes down to what Brody sees as a UK with systems, strategies, and conceptual thinking culture that views designers as simply “provid- with foundations in various art and design histo- ers of a service.” ries. That’s true of his visceral, timeless sleeve His studio, instead, doesn’t “just knock out designs for Fetish Records; his Constructivist- pretty solutions,” he says. “We grapple with learning, typographically experimental work strategy. We ask questions, and we go deep. for The Face; 1991’s Fuseproject, a disk-based English brand culture is quite different to that, magazine of new typefaces; or the Anti Design isn’t it? [A client] will often bring in brand Festival in 2010. We spoke to Brody—who’s consultants for extortionate amounts of money, currently a professor of Communication at the then commission agencies to produce the Royal College of Art, as well as heading up more visual stuff—it’s like just buying assets.” studio Brody Associates—earlier this year, and He firmly believes that those two aspects are found the designer to be optimistic and excited inseparable. about his work, while also proclaiming that 125 YEARS Y ST. BRIDE 17

NEVILLE BRODY INTERVIEWED BY EMILY GOSLING from having to replicate reality. Portraiture suddenly became purely an elite extravagance. What comes out of that [in art] is a quest for raison d’etre. There was no need for art to uphold the status quo any more. Then out of that big bang comes Impressionism, Expressionism, Dadaism. They were saying that art should always be the conscious inquisitor: it should be reflecting the underbelly of society, not the vanity of society. That was a huge shift. “The punk thing, for me, was an extension of Dadaism’s line of cultural questioning—we don’t have to accept traditional structures and traditional society.” “graphic design is dead.” Dadaism branches out in futurism—unfortu- nately, that became fascism—then you have When you look back on things like your early Constructivism coming out of that. Aligned record sleeve designs, and The Face, how has with the Bauhaus, it looked to a hopeful future that “punk” mindset carried through in the that belongs to scientists, architects, designers, way you’ve approached design throughout your artists, and visionaries. career? I’m not interested in those eras for nostalgic reasons—it’s because I still think there’s ideas in I linked [punk] to Dadaism. It was all about there that are so inspirational. The attitude is the dangerous ideas and dangerous thinking: the most important thing. So the punk thing, for me, need to constantly have a vigilant, question- was just simply another extension of that line of ing approach to everything. It’s not based on a cultural questioning—we don’t have to accept whim. traditional structures and traditional society. There’s a line of heritage that started off with a kind of “big bang”: When photography arrived Did you have a conscious plan for your career? in the mid to late 19th century, it liberated art The sort of brands you work with now are 18 ST. BRIDE

harmless. Things get neutralized very quickly. Quite ironically, going and doing Arena [he joined as designer for the magazine in 1986] was all about system building and creating fluid- ity with systems, and that’s a cycle my studio is in again. Did you envisage the path your career took when you first started out? “WE DON’T HAVE TO ACCEPT TRADITIONAL We could never have imagined the computer STRUCTURES AND TRADITIONAL SOCIETY” and what that would bring; or the periods of recession; or the near-bankruptcy in the past. obviously different to, say, designing Cabaret When I had the [retrospective] exhibition at the Voltaire sleeves. V&A [in 1988], within six months, we were nearly bankrupt because none of our British There’s a couple of dilemmas at the heart of clients would continue working with us and we a graphic designer: How do you do socially couldn’t get any new ones. On the other hand, conscious and challenging work, and eat, with- we were being contacted by organizations in out getting a job as a barista? And secondly, Japan and Germany who actually saw beyond how do you make an impact by standing on the that and started commissioning us and since fringe? The answer to the second question is you then, it’s been almost solely international work. can’t stand on the fringe and have impact. You In Britain, I think people tend to have strong either have to move society to where you are at feelings against people that have their names the center, or you have to move to the center of known. society. If you’re on the outside, you will never change anything. I always knew that somehow I It’s a very obtuse way of championing under- had to have my work seen. In a way, the record dogs, isn’t it? cover work was more challenging than the work on The Face. I think there’s something very British about hating people that raise their heads above the wall. The point of the exhibition really was to expose people to different thinking or different ideas—it wasn’t about vanity. In what way? You can’t really have a vanity project at the V&A… It was experimenting with imagery, with typog- raphy at a much earlier stage. The Face turned Exactly. And the first book [The Graphic out to be a platform that allowed me to move Language of Neville Brody, by Jon Wozencroft, to the center of what was happening and be published to coincide with the 1988 exhibition] more visible, and influence the thinking of more was all about driving people to the ideas and the people as a result. It was a conscious vehicle in text—the visuals were gateways to the thinking a way. For the first two or three years The Face behind them. When artists and designers in the work was really seen as quite challenging. After early 20th century had shows, like the Dadaists, that, it was seen as quite trendy. That was noth- they weren’t taken as vanity, they were taken as ing I’d ever wanted, which is why I stepped outreach. out. Society absorbs enough of the DNA of the The most important and fun thing that came out challenge into itself to render it impotent and of all of that was Fuse project, which was, again, 125 YEARS Y ST. BRIDE 19

NEVILLE BRODY INTERVIEWED BY EMILY GOSLING getting back to the common lineage of chal- lenging culture, finding a conscious alternative. How do we create and think about new forms of language that really challenge and reveal our thinking? I still think there’s a huge amount of untapped potential with Fuse. We did want to extend it into other areas like music, product design, architecture…but we ran out of money and energy. To do things like that, and the Anti Design Festival, take so much work. It’s in the same lineage for me as The Face, as punk, as Richard Hamilton. Now, it’s probably mani- fested more in the teaching I do at the RCA. Can you tell me a bit more about that teaching approach? We’re not aware to the extent of how much our responses are conditioned. In our design prac- tice, we tend to have go-tos built in. Life is hard, and work is often challenging, so we do tend to go to the lowest hanging fruit. We create a system where the students are being constantly shifted into unfamiliar spaces. They’re not given briefs as such, but they’re given prompts. What might a prompt be? It changes depending on who’s given the prompt, and the context of the problems. Adrian Shaughnessy did one of the sessions for us, and his prompt was singularity. The students would 20 ST. BRIDE

have to define what their intention was, what the itself more in books and publishing. It becomes brief meant to them. Then, in a short time, they an industry in itself: graphic design for graphic have to build something. designers. We leave [design] as a very fragile, ground- So it’s graphic design’s application on things less space where the things that the students that people interact with everyday that’s dead? are familiar with collapse, because they’re not really relevant anymore. They have to develop Yeah, exactly. It’s much more about building new ways of thinking and new responses. We the template for the platform, and building the call the teaching at the RCA “post-discipline.” toolbox for the visual language. It’s not about You’re simply a practitioner in communication. art directing a beautiful spread in a magazine You might make a poster, or a sound piece; you anymore, because those magazines just aren’t might design a physical space, or write a novel. there, and it’s not feasible to do that on the fly in We’re trying to teach in such a way that your a digital environment, especially a digital envi- response is appropriate to the message you’re ronment that’s scalable across platforms. trying to communicate. “Graphic design is only really seen on Pinterest When you’re teaching your students, what sort and Instagram.” of things are you preparing them to go into It goes back to that “big bang” in art you were when they graduate? talking about—not adapting the message to the way you know how to deliver it, but shift- Number one, be aware of the context in which ing yourself to align with what you’re trying to you work. Understanding a client’s perspec- communicate. tive; the social context; the political issues out I think we’re in a weird period: The headline there that you’re having to deal with—identity, would be “graphic design is dead.” But it sort of empowerment, biases—all of those necessarily is in some ways, isn’t it? Graphic design is only have to become a part of your conscious prac- really seen on Pinterest and Instagram. tice. It’s not someone going to university or art school, learning graphic design and figuring out When you say graphic design, what do you how to get a job at the end of it. It’s more about mean exactly? what skills you need to navigate this world where you need to be simply responding rather That’s exactly the right question. Companies than controlling. tend to increasingly need user experience Some of the students will end up graduating in designers, coders, programmers, and social sound design, who joined as graphic designers; media marketing experts. It’s not so much or who came in as animators and graduated as about the logo, or the brand, or a poster or leaf- type designers. Those old fashioned skill titles let—things in the physical world. People don’t aren’t identities anymore. It’s not so much that do direct mail anymore, except pizza deliv- graphic design is dead; the graphic designer ery places. You don’t get magazines, because isn’t dead. But the nature of what we do has they’re all online. And they’re not really shifted so dramatically. It’s much more about designed anymore. empowering other people with visual tools than anything. I’m hopeful. I think the first 100 years Oh, that’s provocative. of graphic design, which probably started with Dada, finished with Covid. Well, it’s true, isn’t it? I mean, you’ll set up a template and that’s it. It’s formulaic: you’re not Interviewed by Emily Gosling designing each article independently. It’s all about the backend engineering and the frontend 125 YEARS Y ST. BRIDE marketing. Graphic design then tends to find 21

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THE EVOLVING LEGACY OF KEN GARLAND’S FIRST THINGS FIRST MANIFESTO THE ORIGINAL 1963 MANIFESTO CONTINUES TO FIND NEW LIFE AND RELEVANCE THROUGH NEW GENERATIONS OF DESIGNERS The late Ken Garland’s First Things First were so limited. When Garland offered him the manifesto, written in 1963 on the spur of the chance to sign FTF, he agreed. “It was more a moment during a public meeting, has become feeling that it was just ‘the right thing to do,’” he a tradition of enduring protest that its originator says today. “In my case it was more a reaction to could never have predicted. Last year, the fourth a frustration. My political philosophy was pretty version of the text arrived and it’s the most urgent hazy then.” and powerful iteration to date. In the nearly 60 It took 35 years for the second version, First years since Garland self-published his broadside, Things First 2000, to appear, in fall 1999. Kalle the stakes for society and design have spiralled Lasn of Adbusters had seen the original in Eye skywards. Despite the British designer’s proud magazine and reprinted it. This led to a plan to self-declaration as a socialist, the politics of the create an updated version written by Adbusters original were always fuzzy. In the latest FTF, the with input from other interested parties (I was critique of the damage wrought by the excesses one of them). While the original FTF found its of capitalism—which was merely implicit in the way on to British television, where Garland read first version—is fully articulated. That makes the it live on a national news program, its dissemi- manifesto more challenging and potentially more nation outside the country was limited at the divisive than ever. It asks designers to consider time. FTF 2000 was conceived from the outset which side of the argument they are on. as an international initiative, and it was launched Garland’s FTF, co-signed by 21 colleagues, simultaneously in Adbusters, AIGA Journal and including some photographers, calls for a “rever- Emigre in North America, Eye and Blueprint sal of priorities” among graphic designers. It in Britain, and Items in the Netherlands; Form proposes that less design effort should go into magazine in Germany followed later. advertising—1960s consumer society was boom- Garland visited Adbusters in Vancouver and ing—and more should go into “worthwhile agreed to add his signature to the revised docu- purposes,” such as “signs for streets and build- ment. Other signatories—making 33 total—were ings, books and periodicals, catalogues, instruc- approached by Adbusters, Rudy VanderLans of tion manuals, industrial photography, educational Emigre magazine, and me. They included some aids, films, television features, science and indus- famous names: Milton Glaser, Ellen Lupton, trial publications.” Ian McLaren, the only surviv- Steven Heller, Erik Spiekermann, and Gert ing signatory I could find, had been an intern at Dumbar of Studio Dumbar in the Netherlands. an advertising agency as a design student and This was meant to attract attention to the message hated it because the opportunities for designers and it succeeded, but the alleged hypocrisy of a 24 ST. BRIDE

few signatories caused intense and immeasurably harmful Words by Rick Poynor annoyance with some read- ers. “Isn’t it embarrassing code of public discourse.” to see a handful of self-ap- pointed design practitioners Consumerism was “running and educators, totally vested in the security of the stock uncontested” and designers market, privilege, and the tenure system, speak as proph- should help to challenge it. ets for such a complicated and complex world?” wrote The response was unprece- Dietmar Winkler, director of the school of art and design at dented. Adbusters, Emigre and the University of Illinois, in a reply to Adbusters. other magazines published The 2000 version had a simi- lar structure to the original, dozens of letters for and while broadening its target from advertising to market- against. Pentagram partner ing and brand development. Its language and argument Michael Bierut crafted an brandish the fiery worldview Adbusters had spent a decade elaborate visual riposte for cultivating. By their actions, designers were support- I.D. Magazine, “A Manifesto ing “a mental environment so saturated with commer- with Ten Footnotes,” which cial messages that is chang- ing the way citizen-consumers channeled the irritation of speak, think, feel, respond and interact.” Graphic design had many in the industry at being helped to construct “a reductive called to account. “It pays to maintain the status quo,” VanderLans snapped back in a letter to I.D. Many other magazines reprinted and debated FTF 2000, and trans- lations—French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Polish, Croatian, Slovenian, Norwegian—reached legions of new readers. The worldwide web was in its infancy and FTF 2000 was devised as a print- based campaign. Adbusters posted it online and it attracted hundreds of extra signatures, Words by Rick Poynor 25 125 YEARS Y ST. BRIDE

including Bierut’s. Then they reprinted the mani- that time, Garland was weary of being painted festo plus the new signatures as a double-sided as the ethically-driven author of an “anti-adver- folding poster designed by Jonathan Barnbrook, tising” manifesto. “I say: ‘Read it again please!’ a signatory and fervent supporter. It’s not anti-advertising,” he told Eye, although FTF 2000 gave Garland’s original a reboot and its progeny, FTF 2000, which he had endorsed, the two documents remained visible for years— most certainly was. In an article he titled “Last see, for instance, the book Looking Closer 4— Things Last”, Garland’s overriding concern was and prompted countless student FTF projects to express his appreciation for the clients he had and redesigns. “Every year I introduce FTF and neglected to acknowledge in the manifesto 48 its versions to my design students,’ says design years earlier. educator Elizabeth Resnick, who signed FTF First Things First has escaped and outgrown its 2000, FTF 2014, and FTF 2020 online. “It bears creator, and it’s possible that it will continue to repeating with each new class and each new mutate. FTF 2000 predates full global aware- generation of students.” Garland became a hero ness of the climate crisis, and systemic racism of the design school lecture circuit. FTF 2000’s went unmentioned. Published online, FTF 2020, critics demanded to know what had changed as a the first American version, blasts the reader with result of the manifesto, but the point of both docu- these issues: “Our time and energy are increas- ments was to provoke thought and discussion. It ingly used to manufacture demand, to exploit was up to individual designers to decide what populations, to extract resources, to fill landfills, path to take and how to apply their convictions. to pollute the air, to promote colonization, and to “Both manifestos made a lasting impression on propel our planet’s sixth mass extinction.” The me, and greatly informed the direction of my manifesto responds with a checklist of urgent career in design and technology,” says Canadian design goals, covering the histories and ethics web designer Cole Peters. In 2014, FTF’s 50th of design, community-based initiatives, non-ex- anniversary, Peters decided to launch a third ploitative social relations, nature as a complex version focused on design in the digital realm. system, and reconnecting design and manufactur- “Edward Snowden’s disclosures, especially those ing to the Earth and its people. where technology companies were concerned, “Climate change and racial justice work are gave many of us pause,” he recalls. “Technology often represented as two different concerns, but companies had become a huge source of employ- in fact they are interlinked issues due to their ment for designers and creative technologists in roots in capitalism,” says Namita Dharia, one of the 2010s. How culpable were we in this machine FTF 2020’s organizers. “They are produced and that was feasting on personal data and surveil- perpetuated together, and climate change vulner- lance—a machine that was often made to feel ability falls on the backs of racially and ethnically chic and essential through design?” marginalized populations across the globe. It was In keeping with its aims, First Things First 2014 important for us to add the social justice compo- was launched online and there were no famous nent as there can be no solution to climate change names waving the flag this time around. Anyone without social justice.” in sympathy with the manifesto’s imperatives Dharia is an architect and her FTF colleagues, could sign and more than 1,600 people seized the Marc O’Brien and Ben Gaydos, were educated opportunity. As before, the text follows Garland’s as graphic designers. “We knew we needed to structure and some of his original phrasing, broaden the definition of design for FTF 2020. including his wish “not to take the fun out of We recognized that every design discipline has life.” contributed directly or indirectly to our climate Garland declared FTF 2014 “admirably concise” crisis,” says O’Brien. Why not devise an entirely when Peters asked for his thoughts before the new manifesto with no connection to FTF’s launch, but he didn’t feel that it added much to the history? “Publishing a new manifesto would previous versions. “For myself, I have no wish to have tossed our hard work into a sea of over- engage in any more manifestos,” he replied. By crowded thought-pieces and opinions,” he says. 26 ST. BRIDE

“There’s lots of noise on the Internet. Continuing Vietnamese. Designers who want a platform for the legacy of FTF meant bringing the history of the manifesto to a new audience with a new action can follow a link to climatedesigners.org, call-to-action.” To date, FTF 2020 has attracted more than 1,700 founded by O’Brien. The organizers present FTF supporters. “A designer should never feel like they are too late to add their name to something as a “living document,” and supporters have been this important,” notes signatory Rick Griffith of Matter studio in Denver. “As a Black-led, minor- adding their thoughts in a Google doc. An update ity-owned, and LGBT+ business, signing this petition felt like an extension of our values in of the manifesto will follow. statement form,” says Silas Munro of Polymode, “Our goal was to decentralize the process, to a bi-coastal studio. The organizers encourage open it up to anyone,” says Gaydos. “The three of translations, and FTF 2020 is available in 21 us wrote a manifesto, but with the help of many languages, including Arabic, Hindi, Turkish, and other sets of eyes, and in dialogue with the previ- ous iterations of First Things First. It’s a love letter to, and even a debate with Ken Garland and many others about what we need to do to change. It’s exciting that FTF 2020 is a living document. It can adapt and change just as we are forced to adapt and change if we want to survive.” 125 YEARS Y ST. BRIDE 27

TRADITIONAL ELEGANCE MEETS PSYCHEDELIC FUTURISM IN THIS TYPE TREND “JUGEND-ISH“ TYPEFACES EMBODY MODERN SELF-EXPRESSION What are you seeing? to type trends from the early 1900s, as well as The ’90s are back. The 1890s, that is. to the resurgence of these trends again in the Turn of the century inspired typefaces 1970s, but while chunky serifs prize boldness (we’re calling them “Jugend-ish”) are suddenly and legibility, Jugend-ish typefaces eschew clar- everywhere, bringing an often overlooked era ity in favor of asynchronous decoration. into a new light. The trend is named for the similarity of these contemporary typefaces to Who’s using it? the fonts that emerged from the German art magazine Jugend and the Jugendstil movement, This trend is a slow-burner, and its edge-case a close cousin to the Art Nouveau and Viennese legibility means that the vast number of current Secession movements happening in Britain and uses are in editorial design and other one-offs, Austria around the same time. rather than more complex identity systems. That Jugend-ish typefaces are characterized by deco- said, while the trend isn’t trickling down into rative ornaments, a mixture of curves and sharp branding too much just yet, type designers seem corners, and forms inspired by nature. They are to be especially keen on the style, which means inherently contradictory, combining elegant that we can probably expect it to start popping high-contrast tapers with strange psychedelic up in many more applications over the next few blobs. Put more simply, they are weird for months or years. weird’s sake, but in the way only a typeface can Some Jugend-ish display faces like Orkyd, be; breaking rules around conventions while Glyph World and the increasingly popular still adhering to long-standing historical tradi- Eckmannpsych (a design rooted in Jugenstil era tions of balance and symmetry. typeface Eckmann) are curvy and goopy, while These Jugend-ish typefaces have been creeping others, like Monarch Nova and the recently up at the fringes of the design world over the released Lovechild, are more rigid with subtle last year, and in some ways could be seen as an curves interspersed more discerningly. Kaspar evolution of rounded old-style faces like Cooper Pyndt’s forthcoming typeface Hieroglyf is that have been dominating design since circa another unique Jugend-ish entry, developed 2017 (see: Chobani’s now-ubiquitous rebrand, for use in an exhibit on the painters of Danish not to mention similar fonts in use for Great Symbolism at The National Gallery of Denmark, Jones, Poppi, Burger King, and Mailchimp). and inspired by a drawing tutorial-booklet Cooper and Jugend-ish styles are both linked owned by many of the painters included in the show which featured a distinctive Jugendstil 28 ST. BRIDE



masthead. past. As screen resolution and so.” It’s a good reminder that Outside of type design, consumer fluency with brand- while the design world can Jugend-ish typefaces seem to ing improve, it’s possible that seem insular, it’s just another be especially popular in the there’s more support for typo- reflective microcosm (at times music world, where reada- graphic approaches that push a bit ahead of the curve) of the bility is secondary to vibes, boundaries, and contrast, a bit shifts happening in society at and clearly written titles can more. large. In the case of Jugend-ish feel redundant within stream- Every reaction has an equal typefaces and the impending ing services that already list and opposite reaction, and in post-Covid renaissance, our album information in an inter- the case of design, the pendu- future seems likely to include face’s simple sans. A few lum seems to swing between both a look back to our history examples from 2021 include minimalist and maximalist, and the natural world as well Lorde’s Solar Power, Tinashe’s energetic and austere, tradition as a look forward to a bold Pasadena, and Marina’s and anarchy. Stephen Coles, and futuristic approach to self Ancient Dreams in a Modern associate curator at Letterform expression. Land. Archive, emphasizes this constant ebb and flow between Words By Elizabeth Goodspeed Why do designers love it? trends, pointing out that “Jugendstil was a reaction to To put it simply: every- industrialization, Psychedelic one is sick of #blanding. 1960s, a response to Swiss Understated grotesks defined Modernism, and the current the early direct-to-con- wave of Jugend-ish a response sumer era, and designers are to every company chang- ready to inject more person- ing their logo to a geometric ality into their work. While sans.” Said another way, just chunky serifs were the initial as Gen-Z is back to posting response by those looking to true candids on Instagram, combat 2010s Modernism, the design industry’s focus type designer Simon Walker on restraint and commercial believes that Jugend-ish faces viability is giving way to an have a “broader, more univer- infatuation with personal style sal appeal than those ’70s- and authenticity. era rounded typefaces, which Type designer Kasper Pyndt feel a bit more rooted in a theorizes that this interest in specific time and place—one typographic quirks may have that we’re maybe setting aside even more philosophical roots for now.” From a technical for contemporary designers. standpoint, Jugend-ish type- “One could speculate that faces also seem to be a perfect quirks—or ‘flaws’—func- mid-point between the dead- tion to question the traditions pan readability of simple sans and conventions that have and chubby serifs (you may shaped type design in the 19th recall that Comic Sans, not century,” he says. “This would too dissimilar from Cooper, is mirror the current reckoning adored by elementary teachers with lingual and behavioral everywhere for young read- norms in the world at large— ers) and the more digital-un- what we’ve previously seen friendly script logos of brands as ‘truth’ may not indeed be 30 ST. BRIDE

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THE ST. BRIDE Issue 1 Published in 2021 By Eye Guest edited by John L. Walters Featuring content by Kris Sowersby Sarah Snaith Emily Gosling Rick Poynor Elizabeth Goodspeed Illustrated by Lucy Lillywhite Images copywright of The St. Bride Foundation 32 ST. BRIDE



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