New Typographic Design (review)

What brings you to the Journal of Scholarly Publishing? It probably has nothing to do with typography - and yet the 'wondrous mystic art of painting speech'¹ impacts us all with every printed page. It is design that triggers that indefinable rush of excitement for a new book we just can't resist. Content and design are inextricably wedded. So here we have a book about New Typographic Design.

There is an especially strong tradition of skilful typography in scholarly publishing. The complexity of scholarly texts has always required careful design attention. Some of the best and most innovative book design is done at university presses.

The typographic conventions for text have not changed much in 500 years. The Journal of Scholarly Publishing - on paper! - would be readable and comfortable to a scholar of the fifteenth century. Here the unspoken rule is Beatrice Warde's metaphor: the best typographic container is like the plain, invisible glass that reveals the true nature of wine rather than masking it in an elaborate goblet.² Reading of this kind is a personal exchange between the writer and the reader, so the designer's work had best remain invisible. Although there are firm guidelines for what makes a typeset page functional and beautiful, an ugly page may be just as legible. Few people know what makes the difference.

And now we come to Roger Fawcett-Tang's New Typographic Design. For anyone who practises typography, this title is bound to evoke a response. It could be distrust, scepticism, or curiosity: What kind of new typography? In what context? Is it well crafted, or simply new? Will it excite my creativity? Book designers are so accustomed to being unknown and ignored that any attention given to our work, and particularly a lavish book such Fawcett-Tang's from Yale, has to pique some interest.

This new title echoes Jan Tschichold's 1928 classic, The New Typography, published in his native German. That work had an ambitious mission: to define 'modernist' in the process of rejecting 'classical' design. Tschichold renounced serif faces in favour of sans serif and proclaimed asymmetric layout more effective for text than centred. His book, reissued in 1998 by the University of California Press, shows many examples of 'good' and 'bad' typography, with in-depth discussion of the appropriate fonts, layout, margins, and page proportions that he advocated in his manifesto on the new direction for the new age.³

In 1928, this was no mere academic exercise. After Adolf Hitler's rise to power, all designers were required to register with the Ministry of Culture. Tschichold and his wife were arrested by armed Gestapo in 1933 when Soviet posters were found in their apartment; his books were destroyed, his teaching contract was cancelled, and he was imprisoned for six weeks.⁴ The couple escaped to Switzerland, where Tschichold continued to be an influential teacher and designer. His great contribution to typography is the 500 books he art-directed for Penguin after reverting to a more classical style, declaring his 1928 revelations too extreme. Tschichold's Penguin Composition Rules remain an important reference for text designers.

I find Tschichold's The New Typography fresh and instructive eighty years after its publication. Will Fawcett-Tang's New Typographic Design have something to say to designers in 2088?

Fawcett-Tang is the founding partner of Struktur Design, a firm with offices in London and Denmark. He is a prolific author, focusing on innovative work, including his 2004 New Book Design.⁵ In the book under review, the essays that introduce four categories of typography are written by David Jury, head of design at the Colchester Institute in England. Jury has also published extensively, including About Face: Reviving the Rules of Typography (unfortunately out of print) and What Is Typography?⁶ Both authors are serious about the mission of teaching and promoting typographic design.

New Typographic Design presents its message on several levels...