Redefining The Age Of Digital Type Technology Essay

        http://www.ukessays.com/essays/film-studies/redefining-the-age-of-digital-type-technology-essay.php - Stephen Heller


The introduction of digital type in the late 1980’s presented a new set of challenges as well as an exciting new medium for typographers and typeface designers. The development of modern computer systems led to the creation of typeface designing software, this software that revolutionized type as we know it today. The medium of digital type opened up many possibilities; it offered the potential for the creation of just as high quality as traditional ones, and the opportunity to create typefaces discernibly better. Many designers saw the digitalization of type as ‘the end of traditional typography’, as they watched the precipitous decline in quality and the increasing amount of cheap poorly designed amateur typefaces emerge. In contrast to the pre-digital era, when creating or adopting typefaces required skill and significant financial outlay, typefaces are being copied and redesigned and prolifically spread throughout the Internet. It seems that mainstream culture has adopted a postmodern sensibility that embraces electronic novelty.


The amount of poorly designed or copied typefaces has taken away many aspects of traditional linotype or monotype systems such as the handcrafted nature of type and the elegance of traditional typefaces. However like all revolutions in design there are always designers embracing the new age. Designers such as Jonathan Hoefler create and redefine digital type using skill and knowledge, producing typefaces that embody traditional elegance and postmodern ingenuity. Hoefler’s career was in the midst of this electronic revolution. Hoefler used his youth and experience to design more than 100 typefaces, which embody his innovative creativity as well as his passion for traditional and beautiful Typography. Hoefler’s typefaces are inspired by the traditional beauty, elegance, and form of the pre-digital era and are redefined by experimentation creating highly successful postmodern type.


At a young age Jonathan Hoefler was interested in type; he studied and admired historic faces as well as desired to create new and innovative type. By the age of 18 Hoefler was a master letterer; by 28 he became the proprietor of New York’s Hoefler Type Foundry. When Hoefler founded the type foundry in 1989, digital typography was in its infancy. Type foundries had yet to embrace electronic means of publishing, and the foundries that had began to use digital type were just remastering their popular and famous fonts. This was a major flaw in the early stages of the digitalisation of Type, as foundries manufactured their most important faces when the production process was still in its infancy. This meant that some of greatest typefaces were quickly becoming some of the worst fonts in the digital era.


Hoefler’s passion for traditional and beautiful type inspired him to create elegant typefaces that combine historicism and the contemporary. Hoefler’s extensive knowledge of historical typographic models has highly influenced his type as his typefaces recall the beauty of faces by Goudy, Updike, Roger and other veteran designers. Hoefler designed type during the beginnings of type digitalization where practically anyone with a computer could design typefaces; however unlike the type design new comers he used a solid understanding of tradition to support his digital type mastery.


Hoefler’s passion and interest in the formal aspects of type began in high school. "When the Macintosh came out in 1984, it offered me a tool to make graphic design in a way that was accessible to me as a teenager.” Being a designer during this electronic age his knowledge in both hands on and digital type, gave Hoefler a head start when Roger Black’s studio hired him as a design assistant. It is at this studio he worked on lettering for Smart magazine then quickly moved on from lettering to type design. After two years of working in Roger Blacks studio he wished to do more than just the one endeavor in type, so he created and developed a promotional pack consisting of hand letterpressed cards which featured a set of vintage typefaces and designed in period styles. These promotional vintage designs reached Gail Anderson at Rolling Stone Magazine, and she immediately commissioned lettering for feature articles. Hoefler was also hired by David Berlow to develop and design type for the Font Bureau type foundry.


One of his early exercises at Font Bureau was replicating existing fonts and reinterpreting historic faces. To complete this task in reinterpreting typefaces for the digital medium he used extensive research and editing to incorporate original qualities of the type that other revivals had missed. This is evident in one of his early typefaces a Bodoni revival. HTF BODONI GRAZIA (1990,for Grails). This font uses subtleties ignored in many contemporary Bodoni revivals, including a set of Old Style figures that appeared in Bodoni's 1818 Manuale Tipografico.


Through the exploration of classic faces and the knowledge of fine details of pre digital type Hoefler created his very own Type which instills the elegance and beauty of handmade type. Two of Hoefler’s most recognisible typefaces, Requiem and Hoefler, exemplify Hoeflers love for classic sophistication.


Hoefler Text is a comprehensive family of typefaces which embody the virtues of classical typography. Hoefler Text brought back traditions that had once been essential to fine printing including; extended ligature sets, early twentieth century engraved capitals, and arabesques. Hoefler even invented a few new traditions of its own to the digital type, case-specific punctuation and italic small caps. The family includes twenty-seven styles, with three weights (regular, bold, and black), each in roman and italic, each featuring small caps (both roman and italic), italic swash caps, and the occasional italic swash small cap. The family includes two fonts of engraved capitals, as well as the Hoefler Text Fleurons font, which contains printers’ flowers, emblems, and arabesques.



Hoefler’s classic style and creativity in Hoefler Text sparked the interest of developers at Apple Computers. Apple commissioned the expansion of the fonts, and included Hoefler Text in the Macintosh operating system. Through Hoeflers classic elegant Typeface and it’s advanced features, Hoefler Text became a new baseline for digital typography.


Hoefler’s Requiem Font is another example of traditional typography in digital form. Requiem Font was inspired by an illustration in a sixteenth-century writing manual. Requiem is an embodiment of Renaissance humanism type in contemporary times. Requiem revives Renaissance Type in the form of inscriptional lettering of the classical period, particularly the capital letters based on Roman monuments. These letters served as the basis for Requiem’s Display Roman and Small Caps. However these Roman letterforms are all caps and therefore Requiem’s lowercase is an invention, so are the figures and punctuation. This combination of classic elegance and postmodern creativity is a trademark of Hoefler, Requiem exemplifying this.
Jonathan Hoefler, successful ingenuity and experimentation.


Hoefler also experimented with modern typefaces, he developed many highly successful typefaces which embody his creative postmodern ingenuity as well as his sense of humour. Hoefler began to focus on the development of unconventional type families, such as his Fetish Font. Many describe Fetish as a parody of modern typography. The family is eccentric to say the least. "You could say it's sort of a postmodern joke on typography," he says, "but it's also kind of a commentary on some of the things that I find curious and questionable about contemporary typography." Fetish 338 exemplifies this with its baroque and rococo style and its flowery and ornamental letterforms. The Fetish faces use unusual and unnecessary attributes that appear realistic but are functionally ridiculous. Hoeflers Fetish gently mocks the sheer amount of new typefaces and the ‘helter skelter’ no more rules, digital type. The Fetish family is an extreme example of Hoeflers experimental typefaces however his most popular contemporary typefaces are less unusual.



Hoefler experiments with fantasy type and historical faces. He experiments in a much more concise and successful manner with Knockout text. Knockout is a collection 32 sans serifs. Knockout is a situational approach for type; it was created for each font to work individually, not together. The collections of fonts are unified however they are intended to be used for separate designs not together. Because none of these faces were intended to relate to one another, none of their design characteristics were constricted to any external rules as with type families. This approach to type design allowed for more varied and interesting designs. Knockout’s family offers a range of individualities that is near impossible to achieve with even the best contemporary sans serifs. Knockout is such a contemporary innovative font because Hoefler’s Clients can have specific needs met individually. Sports Illustrated requested a sans serif that could be condensed mathematically, Hoefler Created, Knockout. Knockout is a series of faces in different weights (Flyweight, Bantamweight, Featherweight, Lightweight, Welterweight, Middleweight, Cruiserweight, Heavyweight, and Sumo). This exemplifies Hoefler’s ability in meeting a challenge and creating a functional face that would be legible in small text and appealing enough for display and shows an ingenious marketing innovation.


Jonathan Hoefler brilliantly creates and redefines digital type using skill and knowledge, producing typefaces that embody traditional elegance and postmodern ingenuity. Hoefler’s typefaces are inspired by the traditional beauty, elegance, and form of the pre-digital era and are redefined by experimentation to create highly successful postmodern types.

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Bibliography

Eskilson, F. S (2007). Graphic Design A New History. London: Laurence King Publishing. p408-409.


Heller, S. (Nov/Dec 1998). Revival of the fittest. Print. 52 (1), p76.


Livingston, A. Livingston, I (2003). The Thames & Hudson Dictionary of Graphic Design and Designers. 3rd ed. London: Thames & Hudson Ltd. 112.


Hoefler & Frere-Jones. 2011. Hoefler & Frere-Jones. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.typography.com/. [Accessed 15 March 2011].


TWELVE TYPE FAMILIES BY JONATHAN HOEFLER OBELISK


HTF ACROPOLIS (1993,for Rolling Stone/Wenner Media). A variation on the Ziggurat typeface in the Grecian style, which flourished in American and English display typography after about 1830. Acropolis contains an italic of a distinctly ahistorical design: No Grecian faces were outfitted with companion italics.


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HTF BODONI GRAZIA (1990,for Grails). The font uses subtleties ignored in many contemporary Bodoni revivals, including a set of Old Style figures that appeared in Bodoni's 1818 Manuale Tipografico.


POWERHOUSES


HTF CHAMPION GOTHIC (1990,for Sports Illustrated/TimeWarner). The narrower fonts are based loosely on a style of sans serif wood type that flourished in the late 19th century, and the widest font was inspired by a design cut by American typefounders near the end of the 19th century.


L'atelier typ


HTF DIDOT (1992,for Harper's Bazaar/Hearst). An interpretation of type cut by typefounder Firmin Didot (1764-1836). Didot's types are characterized by relentlessly thin serifs and a generally narrow demeanor, especially in their display sizes, which have come to define the French Modern.


REWINDS


HTF FETISH (1993). This family parodies notions of fanciness with forms that quote freely from a disparate formal vocabulary, drawn from Gothic, Coptic, Moorish, Celtic, Victorian, and Byzantine styles. It is endemic to a vague and romantic heritage, and both celebrates and lampoons classicism.


ENGINES


HTF GESTALT (1991,1993). An experimental typeface in which every individual character in the family is ambiguous; an overhaul included the completion of the character set, the replacement of the Old Style figures with standard lining ones, and the addition of the bold and outline weights.


Furor iste tuus nos


HTF HOEFLER TEXT (1991-1993, for Apple Computer). An attempt to rationalize the more attractive aspects of Garamond No. 3 and Janson Text 55 in a single design, adding italic swashes and ornaments from 18th-century English typography and 16th-century typography of the Low Countries.


REVOLVE


HTF LEVIATHAN (1993,for Rolling Stone/Wenner Media). A variation of the Ziggurat typeface in the Gothic style, which flourished in American and English display typography after about 1830.


Venetian Books


HTF MAZARIN (1991,for GQ/Conde Nast). A revival of Nicolas Jenson's type, which had no stylistic variations, such as italics (it was cut in 1470, before italic type was developed). This design was intended to create a face to counter the roman% visual theme of inclined planes with a theme of downward thrust, producing a distinctly different texture.


Mandibles


HTF SARACEN (1993,for Rolling Stone/Wenner Media). A variation of the Ziggurat typeface in the Latin style, which flourished in American and English display typography after about 1850. This version appears in square varieties, unlike the Latins, which appeared only in condensed and wide styles. The italic also has no historical precedent; Saracen Italic is a separate face that applies the visual vocabulary of the lowercase to the skeleton of the uppercase, creating an inscriptional letter with cursive traits.


LINCOLN


HTF THEY MIGHT BE GOTHIC (1996,for They Might Be Giants/Elektra Records). Barbara Glauber, art director on the album Factory Showroom, commissioned these types, intended as an ironic take on styles generally relegated to industrial signage, resulting in deadpan, intelligent, and nonsensical qualities.


DIRECTS


HTF ZIGGURAT (1991,Rolling Stone/Wenner Media). A slab serif borrowing from the Egyptian style of the late 19th-century English idiom seen in the work of Miller & Richards, Stephenson Blake, and other designers who worked when typography, reshaped to suit the new medium of advertising, was brash and robust. Ziggurat celebrates the bombast of Victorian type and maintains the explicit qualities of Egyptian type, like overwhelmingly bold capitals, and implicit qualities, such as the ignored irrelevancies of the calligraphic roots.


1. Jonathan Hoefler. Photo: Juliet Martin. 2. Spread from Muse, The Hoefler Type Foundry's 1997 type specimen book, featuring the typeface HTF Didot, 1997. 3. HTF Didot Bold 06, 1992.


4. Spread from Every Art Director Needs Her Own Typeface, The Hoefler Type Foundry's 1991 type specimen book, featuring the typeface S. I. Gothic (now named HTF Champion Gothic) in six weights (top to bottom): Featherweight, Lightweight, Heavyweight, Middleweight, Welterweight, and Bantamweight.


S (BLACK & WHITE): 5, 6. Promotional letterpress posters designed by Jonathan Hoefler and printed by Julie Holcomb Printers, San Francisco, featuring HTF Didot (Fig. 5) and HTF Champion Gothic (Fig. 6). 7-10. Four variations of the typeface Fetish: Fetish No. 126 (Fig. 7), Fetish No. 338 (Fig. 8), Fetish No. 976 (Fig. 9), and Fetish Royale (Fig. 10).


S (COLOR): 11, 12. Pages from Every Art Director Needs His Own Typeface, 1991, featuring the typefaces Gestalt (Fig. 11), an experimental 1991 typeface, and Egiziano Filigree (Fig. 12), a 1989 typeface designed for Rolling Stone.


S (BLACK & WHITE): 13. Spread from The Hoefler Type Foundry Catalogue of Typefaces No. 2, featuring typefaces HTF Ziggurat (left) and HTF Saracen, both developed for Rolling Stone. 14, 15. Hoefler Text Engraved (Fig. 14) and Hoefler Text Engraved No. 2 (Fig. 15), from Catalogue of Typefaces No. 2.
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By Steven Heller