Can a font be German, or Jewish? (By Simon Garfield)

 

Typography which is the most important component of Graphic design. It requires a distinct ability to make readable messages while expressing, emoting and projecting concepts to audience, large and small.

 

Erik Spiekermann a German type designer who designed fonts for many institutions in Berlin, for example the font of the Berlin Transit network.

There is a book that is inclusive of 32,000 samples of fonts from 90 international type foundries to help art directors and designers to choose a font and it is edited by Erik Spiekermann.

He designed also corporate identities for Audi, Sky TV, Bosch and Nokia.

We quoted here what the author of the book (Simon Garfield) says about him: “Some men like to look at women’s bottoms, he prefers type.”

1st quote: regarding the corporate identities he designed - design is something below the surface - design is at the service of the user - it is not art.

Legibility is more important than memorability , He think that design has to be functional!

Meta is one of the most famous font he designed and it became famous at the beginning of the digital era - as the “Helvetica of the 90s.”

If you look at the data, it’s a mess. The thickness is all over the place, nothing is identical. But I’ve resisted any attempt to clean it up, because then it wouldn’t be Meta any more, it would be a mechanical clone. And that’s the challenge for all of us —  to create warmth in a digital world.”

In Germany, Erik Spiekermann has grown reading and writing two scripts: the old German Gothic script as well as regular roman type.The blackletter type were used first by Gutenberg 12th century (1946)  and in Germany the use of Fraktur continued into the twentieth century

Fraktur was used from the Nazi for their propaganda because it went well with the swastika and because it represented well the German heritage but in 1941 Gothic script was banned by a decree - the type was associated with the documents of Jewish bankers.

The reason was pragmatism: in the occupied territories you just couldn’t read it.

Should fraktur be forever banished from public life in Germany because of those nationalist connotations, or is it a cultural inheritance worth preserving?

Hanno Blohm, the head of the Association for German Script and Language (BdSS), thinks Fraktur is undeserving of its bad rap. The 100-year-old nonprofit organization, which fights what it considers attacks on the German language, blames mass media for creating a connection between fraktur and nationalism. The BdSS answers the frequently asked question “Why are you defending a Nazi typeface?” in a multi-page PDF in a traditional Fraktur font: “Typefaces can’t be blamed if they are used by disliked people, just as the rail or post cannot help it if disliked people use their services.”

Finally when you focus on each most famous Fonts, you will find out behind the each of them there is a story. I like to mention Comic Font which is one of the font everyone hate.

It was born in 1993, when Microsoft was finalizing a program called “Microsoft Bob”, that was created help new users to navigate Windows 95 operating system.

Users were guided around in the program by a cartoon dog, whose speech bubbles were written in Times New Roman.

Connare, then a member of Microsoft’s typography team, was really surprised about that. “Dogs don’t talk in Times New Roman!” he said. “Conceptually, it made no sense.”

So he decided to create a new font, based on comic book lettering.

BUT

The font was finalized too late for Microsoft Bob. Instead, Comic Sans got picked up by Microsoft administrators who used it for office birthday party invites. And when Windows 95 was released the next year, Comic Sans was one of the system fonts.

After that it became super famous, and people started to use it everywhere.

Questions:

1. Is it possible to create another memorable Font today like famous designers have done in the past?

References:

1. Garfield, Simon (2011) 'Can a Font Be German or Jewish? ', pp.181-196.
2. Heller, S. and Anderson, G. (2016) (n.d.). The typography idea book. pp.6 
3. https://www.myfonts.com/fonts/bitstream/futura/
4. https://www2.palomar.edu/users/gkelley/PaulRenner.html
5. https://99designs.co.uk/blog/creative-inspiration-en-gb/8-famous-fonts-and-designers-who-made-them/ 
6. https://global.handelsblatt.com/politics/fraktur-psychology-typography-germany-typecface-nazi-history-blackletter-gothic-964153