In the summer of 1924, when Renner was commissioned to design “the typeface of our time,” those design motifs were, if not directly on his mind, certainly in the air. At the time, modernist artists, architects, and designers were busy shrugging off the weight of history with a new regard for the uniform, the rational, and the functional. That’s according to type designer Paul Renner, who in the 1920s was nonetheless beginning to rethink san serifs’ position as inferior to serifs and scripts. If that’s not history, we don’t know what is.Back story: Before they were trendy with lifestyle startups and Presidential campaigns, and even before they were popular with the avant garde, sans serifs were considered a “proletarian typeface family with no renowned predecessors,” relegated mainly to newspaper supplements and the Bible. Photo: Historical plaque on the Apollo 11 lunar module “Eagle” (via idsgn) The Apollo 11 mission - the first ever manned moon landing in 1969 - wisely chose this lettering for the plaque they left up there (below). In what is probably the typeface’s crowning achievement, Futura has walked on the moon. Volkswagen and IKEA (above) used the typeface exclusively in their ads (up until 2010, when the furniture company controversially switched to Verdana), and you might recognize the typeface in the logos for Domino’s Pizza and Absolut vodka (below).įilm directors Stanley Kubrik ( 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Shining) and Wes Anderson ( The Royal Tenenbaums, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou) also famously prefer Futura for their films’ titles and credits (below). Volkswagen Ad: jeffminarik (via Coroflot)ĭesigners and companies over the past century have taken advantage of Futura’s benefits, to iconic effect. In 1927 he created Futura (above).ĭerived entirely from geometric forms (near-perfect circles, triangles and squares), with strokes of near-even weight and contrast and distinctively tall lowercase letters that rise even above its capitals, Futura looks like efficiency itself: clean, standardized, legible, stylish without any overt “style.” Though not officially part of the Bauhaus school, another German typeface designer, Paul Renner, believed in the school’s principles and felt he could make Erbar’s typeface better. It would be utopia by design.įutura typeface in light, regular, and semibold: Paul Renner (via Wikipedia) Only in this world could social equality truly come into being, they believed. The Bauhaus designers believed in a world where form and function destroyed ornamentation, clutter and revivals of the more decorative past.
It is based on the circle - the most fundamental of all typographic components - and is supremely easy to read, which is a typeface’s basic function after all.
In accordance with the hugely influential Bauhaus school of design, the typeface aimed for a pure functionality, with no ornamentation or individual characteristics. In 1922, German professor Jakob Erbar created the first ever geometric sans-serif typeface (above).
The makers of this font saw more than just “good design” in their creation they saw the makings of a maximally efficient society - a utopia. The appropriately named Futura, for example, is as relevant today as it was at the time of its creation almost 90 years ago.
That goes for pages (web and print), sentences, words - as a matter of fact, typeface can quite literally make or break a single letter! Just ask the comic sans haters.ĭesigners have been well aware of the importance of typeface for over a century, and the history of these deliberate and deeply thought-out forms can be downright amazing. Choice of typeface can make or break a design.
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