Beauty VS Function (Part 1 Edited) - Tongtach

Design is a social activity, if you doubt on that please look around. Look at the label on the bottle of water you are drinking, the pen you are holding, or these lines of text you are reading right now. Everything around us is communicating with us. We receive messages and participate with them no matter we do it on purpose or not. But which kind of design element can do that? Actually every element plays their part, grid system arranges information, pictures call viewer’s attention, color expresses emotion, but one of the most talkative elements that interact with people is typography. It has been doing its job in design for a very long time, keep and send information, express feeling, teach history class, and so on. Nevertheless, social’s need change continuously, so typography has to adjust itself through different period of time. How typography manages to balance its beauty and function from the past to present and what’s going to happen in the future.

In the past, typography concerned on beauty and decoration, since it was the imitation from nature. So it has more sense of emotional feeling than we see in the present day. However, the changed of typography follow the social’s need and invention of technology. For example, the richly influence from religion in medieval era shows the use of shiny gold color and decoration, the invention of Gutenberg’s printing system, and so on. Typography changed in many ways from the past especially during 19th century. To adjust itself to the coming of modern world, it changed to be more function and objective. Even though, what Marinetti did in Les mots en liberte futurists (The Futurist Words-In-Freedom)(1919) was bent and twisted typefaces to express speed and aggression according to his poetry. This shows typography still carried the idea of emotion’s expression from the past.[1] 

Different from the past, in modern era typography has to concern on legibility and readability more than beauty like the old typography. This moment of changed, it created transitional typeface that concern both decoration of old style typography and high readability of modern typography such as Baskerville. El Lissitzky believed that, the idea of art will become materialism and can be mass produce in this world of industry.[2] So it comes to consideration of how to compromise the balance between functional and printing price. By that reason, to put a large among of text in printing industry, typography has to be simpler, so the use of geometric typefaces was the answer. The foundation geometric typeface, Futura by Paul Renner created by using all geometric proportion. Inspired by the Bauhaus philosophy, it shows a strong sense of simplicity and geometry shape, which still popular in countless corporate logo, commercial products, and advertisements in the present day, such as Louis Vuitton, Red Bull, Ikea, and so on.[3]

In the present day, typography has more variety of usage. Since there is a lot of differences media invented. For example, text that appears on digital screen instead of papers, moving text in motion media or animation, and so on. Also audience for typography has more variety than the past. There is no rule or standard, design depends on what you want to communicate with your audience. Even Comic Sans could be used efficiently if you use in a proper way. In other words, beauty and function of typography in the present day depends on target audience, if it communicates to your audience, it is beautiful and functional. One example that deals with subjectivity and objectivity very well was David Carson. Carson expressed his subjectivity by breaking all typography rules. He deconstructed typefaces, broke grids, and crashed text layout. With a tiny design background, he has no limit in design. He sat the whole article in Dingbat font once, while he was working for Ray Gun magazine.[4] Of course the whole article is unreadable, but that grab people’s attention to the magazine and makes them curious and want to know about the article. As Ray Gun was a magazine for teenager, it needs a strong sense of confidence instead of formal layout. However, while post-modernism and young generation love Carson’s works, but his works against the idea of practical designer, which design should aim for perfection instead of subjective expression. It’s still a debate until this present day, that Carson is a designer who worth to study or not, but without a doubt that his name has brought up to be an example countless times in design class.[5]

If the world keeps moving this fast, in the near future, typography would be faster and easier to consume as well. As you can see in phone’s text message or informal message, that the message has shorten in an inappropriate way. Such as “how are you” write in “how r u” or use symbol and emoticon. This might be a sign that affect typography in the future. We write and read less and less, and the book may be eliminated altogether. The time may come when we have to learn to communicate by electronic or extrasensory means. Again, that typography might change according to our need.[6]

In conclusion, typography has been changing for a long time in human history. It represents our life in differences period of time. As in the past, writing, reading, and book material is for rich or noble people so the typography at that time concerned on beauty and decoration. When time change, printing and digital technology came in and reading is for everyone, typography changed to be more functional than the past. In my opinion, we are living in the world of communication. If typography can send messages and interact with people, I consider it beautiful and functional.

_________________________________________________________________

1. F.T. Marinetti, Graphic Design Theory: Manifesto of Futurism, ed. Helen Armstrong (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2009), 20-24.

2. El Lissitzky, Graphic Design Theory: Our Book, ed. Helen Armstrong (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2009), 25-30.

3. Skylar Challend, Know Your Type: Futura. http://idsgn.org/posts/know-your-type-futura/ (accessed 12 Oct. 2012).

4. Exhibitions/Events Magazine, Helvetica VS Zapf Dingbats, 2012. http://magculture.com/blog/?p=1209 (accessed 12 Oct. 2012).

5. Adam Banks, An interview with David Carson, http://www.adambanks.com/ wordpress/david- carson-riverside-quark-macuserinterview/1175/ (accessed 12 Oct. 2012).

6. Herbert Bayer, Graphic Design Theory: On Typography, ed. Helen Armstrong (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2009), 44-48.