Thursday, April 17, 2008

Bauhaus and the New Typography

1.What did Jan Tschichold hope to accomplish with his book Die Neue Typographie (The New Typography).
Tschichold wanted to "wipe the slate clean" and find new asymmetrical typography to express the spirit, life, and visible sensibility of the day. He rejected decoration in favor of rational designs. He opposed of symmetry and favored uneven lines. He believed that sans-serifs were part of the modern type movement.

2.What was the importance of László Moholy-Nagy with photography?
He created the "typophoto" which is basically the integration of word and image to communicate a message. He believed that photography could influence poster design by using these techniques" enlargement, distortion, dropouts, double exposures,and montage. He would use his camera to take pictures from a worm's-eye, bird's-eye, extreme close-ups, and angled viewpoints instead of the normal viewpoint.

3. What were the importance of the typefaces Times New Roman, Futura and Universal Alphabet.
Futura was designed in Germany. It had 15 alphabets including 4 italics and it became the most widely used geometric sans-serif family. Times News Roman is a typeface that has short ascenders and descenders and sharp, small serifs. It appeared in one of the world's preeminent newspapers. Many readers liked the legibility and the clarity of it. It became one of the most widely used typefaces in the 20th century. For some reason ,I could not find anything in the book about Universal Alphabet. Maybe I overlooked it?

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