Would that be the contemporary Franklin Gothic that was designed in 1902?

Nick Cooke

... and is that Palatino the classic typeface designed in the 1950’s? ;-)

I think you’re mixing up most influential with most used.

Have you considered Univers?

It is rather good.

And rather important.

Wil

http://www.100besteschriften.de/

There should be an English version of the site as well but I somehow can’t find it right now.

Wouldn’t Times make the list? It is overused, but that doesn’t mean it was not influential.

This is the list from an italian point of view:

1. Minion
2. Bembo
3. Garamond Simoncini
4. Bauer Bodoni (may be also the rare OurBodoni by Vignelli)
5. Helvetica
6. Gill Sans
7. Frutiger
8. Dante
9. MrsEaves (?)
10. Gotham (?)

Would serif and sanserif be more accurate categories than classic and contemporary?

Walbaum

I think both Mrs. Eaves and Gotham are more “influenced” than “influential”. Both are new fonts derived from classic sources. If you want influential, you’d have to consider including Baskerville (which influenced Mrs. Eaves) and Futura (which has influenced a whole lot of contemporary sans including Avenir and Gotham.)

You’ve pretty much ignored the Venetian types—that’s a pretty big miss. Akzidenz belongs on that list; maybe even as #10 on the classics. Franklin probably doesn’t belong here, but if it does, it needs to be expanded to cover the entire Franklin, Trade, Lightline, etc. Gothic “family.” Univers and Frutiger are more important than any other modern font on the list. Optima, OCR-A and Bell Gothic? I don’t understand why those would make the list at all.

What is the basis for your list?

what is the need for lists such as this?

powers

oh my god, you are ridiculous, you complete amateur . I find the lack of diverse knowledge in the world of type some what sickening. I think based on that list you should find a new profession my friend.

I think that Comic Sans has been incredibly influential, particularly influencing me to vomit whenever I see it.

So student Daniel joined typophile to post his incomplete and poorly researched list and Dean joined typophile to rant about it? Not sure which is sadder. Stoke-on-Trent must be a very dull and lonely place.

Serif-serif, there’s no need to crap on this thread’s creator. It’s always fun to swap favorites. First list: delete Clarendon (of no importance whatever) and add: Sabon, Galliard, and, obviously, Times. The first two kicked off the typhoon of new typefaces in our era—more instant classics since 1970 than in the entire history of movable type until then. Sabon and Galliard are the St. Peter and St. Paul of post-metal type.

I question your distinction between classic and contemporary: a first-rate new face aims to become a timeless classic, as Sabon and Galliard certainly have.

And don’t forget to give credit to the foundry ITC, which since the late sixties revived interest in typography as a living growing creative medium open to newcomers, well before digital and Postscript. Adobe moved into a field fertilized and sown by ITC.

ITC? Letraset!

Deano, those are not contemporary typefaces, your selections are all pre-digital.
This industry went digital 20 years ago.

I can recommend “American Type Design & Designers” by David Consuegra, for its potted history of typography, which provides a good connection between technolgoy and design. You will find that influential designs are often prompted by a change in technology.

mondoB

how can you say “Clarendon (of no importance whatever)”??!

You’re teh problem with this site, you have idiocy posing as fact.

you;ll just have to ingore him deano mate, he’s cleary a bit of a hack.

———————————-
Chopper Reid says “Harden the **** up”.

Romain du Roi influenced Baskerville who influenced Bodoni and Didot.

The face for the London underground by Edward Johnston influenced Gill Sans which influenced a number of 20th century sans serif humanist typefaces.

The roman typeface by Nicholas Jenson is the model for all subsequent roman typefaces.

The typefaces by Griffo for Aldo Manuzio influenced Garamond.

Arrighi’s chancery italic has to be considered influential as well.

Plantin’s typeface influenced Times New Roman.

Janson typeface by Nicholas Kis influenced Caslon.

¿Could Bell be considered responsible for the XIX century type style?

FF Scala is a “contemporary” influential serif face.

Meta is a “contemporary” influential sans serif typeface.

Héctor

This is clearly the kind of post which will generate an endless string of rants from people who are always passionate in their strong belief of knowing the true truth. I’ve read a lot of intelligent things up there, altogether with complete crap (according to me, of course). If we are going in the direction offered by Hector, well then the only influential typeface is the first one, for all the other ones have been made after it... Well, I guess I have no choice but to give my own point of view. According to my understanding of the question, my list of typefaces which have “launched a stylistic / visual trend in typography”, to make it simple, would be:

- Jenson (basically, the first roman type, in 1465)
- Alde Manuce’s italic (by Manuce and Griffo)
- Garamond’s Romain (A significant upgrade of Jenson’s, Manuce’s and Griffo’s types)
- Grandjean’s Romain du Roi (Baskerville and Caslon, though skilled artists, were 100% influenced by this one)
- Bodoni (a true landmark which inspired many typographers)
- Slab serif (again, a significant upgrade to Bodoni, though it’s hard to give a name to a specific type, for they existed as Egyptians before Clarendon was commercialized)
- Caslon two-line egyptian (the true influence to all the grotesks of the late XIXe century)
- Akzidenz Grotesk (significant improvement to Caslon IV’s egyptian, direct influence to Franklin Gothic, Helvetica, Univers et al)
- Erbar (direct and aknowledged influence to Futura, which influenced kabel, avant garde, avenir, and the handpainted signs of chicago or new york that influenced gotham)
- DIN Mittelschrifft (though not designed in an aesthetic purpose, it influenced a great deal of typefaces)
- I have to mention Optima, though it can hardly be considered as an influence to anything: despite its huge success, it is still one of a kind, 50 years after its design.
- Syntax (a truely new style at the time, the authentic influence to most of the contemporary typefaces, including Stone’s types and FF Meta)
- Frutiger (a big improvement on humanistics sans serifs which influence you can see on many contemporary designs, including Myriad)

and, I think, that’s all. the remaining types are either truely successful and original, but didnt influence enough types to be named “influential” (Eurostile, FF Cocon, FF Dax...), or they just show their parent’s eyes or mouth too obviously.

that of course is open to discussion.

dr

EDIT: I consciously omitted the script typefaces, otherwise I would have no time to work today.

I don’t believe in the great man theory of history, or the great typeface theory.

With a little knowledge, one can detect trends, ignore what doesn’t fit in, and construct a narrative.
Whether this has anything to do with the motivations of type designers is doubtful.

Typefaces are designs which address complex issues to do with technology, page layout, and type culture—not sequels.
All types, that is, that aren’t overly plagiaristic.

Having said that, I’ve heard that Bodoni thought Baskerville was the shiz.
But what really compelled Bodoni to go mod and neoclassical, and leave behind the Fournier frills of his youth?
No doubt he was blown away by Baskerville’s hard metal, smooth paper, and black ink.
But I would imagine that most contemporary typefounders were making the same trip, caught up in the neoclassicism, romanticism and modernity of the era, inspired by revolutions and discoveries, just as we are today. For various reasons, one or two are in the history books, three or four if you’re better read.

Thanks to everyone who has helped here, this is a great help in my research and i shall consider all of your opinions.

Nick: I do not agree with you. I strongly believe that in the large scale, typographers are followers, sometimes they upgrade existing designs with genius, but most of the time, they just follow one’s path. I think it’s a huge mistake to think that 2, 3, 10 typographers in the world will create a similar kind of type because they are making “the same trip, caught up in the neoclassicism (...) of the era”. I think they are indeed mainly attracted by the commercial possibilities of having a type which looks a lot like the successful one from “this other typographer”. You give the example of Bodoni: he always aknowledged Baskerville as his main inspiration, and his early types were very close in the design, but he undoubtedly came to a design on his own some years later that was widely copied after encountering fame and recognition; he spent a lot of his life arguing with Didot for plagiarism, as you probably know. When you say that “typefaces are designs which address complex issues to do with technology, page layout, and type culture—not sequels”, you are saying a very limited truth, for this is a true definition of, say... 3, maybe 4% of the total amount of typographers out there. In my opinion, that’s very idealistic; I am certain that the motives of typographers now and then was much more mercantile, even if their names are Morris Fuller Benton, Frederic W. Goudy, Eric Gill or Adrian Frutiger - this being said with a sincere respect and admiration for their outstanding works.

dr

Sorry David, I don’t share your cynicism.
To speak of mercantilism in this way is to banalize the craft.
Sure, we address markets, but in a complex way.
Although I have said, in another thread, that this is a sleazy business with a lot of plagiarism, I don’t subscribe to the elitist idea of the few, 3%-4%, and the many, IMO there is a broad spectrum.

Dear Nick,

“Sorry David, I don’t share your cynicism”

this is your right, I am jealous actually.

“To speak of mercantilism is to banalize the craft.
Sure, we address markets, but in a complex way.
I certainly don’t subscribe to the elitist idea of the few and the many, IMO there is a broad spectrum”

You are right, my answer was a simplification of a truth that is probably more complex, but your way of explaining the fact that marketing strategy is out of the frame makes me also cringe. And by no way I intend to banalize the craft: wonderful designs came out of a strictly “mercantile” commission, such as Helvetica, Didot or Gill Sans.

dr

i consider these as very influential typefaces:

arial

bauhaus

book antiqua

cochin

comic sans

eurostile

helvetica

rockwell

enjoy....

>oh my god, you are ridiculous, you complete amateur

>very influential typefaces: ...book antiqua ...arial

Um, if you are going to sneer at folks, it is best to have enough knowledge of the field that you don’t make ridiculous blunders.

Book Antiqua is a rip-off of Palatino. It was so egregious that it led Hermann Zapf to resign from Atypi. You can read the story here.

Arial has a similar story, which you can read in Mark Simonson’s nice article about it.

serif-serif, you have got to be kidding here, i hope its just a provocation.

arial... bauhaus... book antiqua... comic sans...rockwell...

i’m gonna quote a contributor whom you know well: “I think based on that list you should find a new profession my friend.”

dr

I strongly believe that in the large scale, typographers are followers, sometimes they upgrade existing designs with genius, but most of the time, they just follow one’s path.

Typesetters are often followers, but not type designers. Type designers are constantly pumping out radical new stuff. It’s the typesetters who hold back change by treating their readers as morons who should only be expected to read the lowest common denominators and labeling anything that departs from the familiar as “display” type.

Whoa there James. The concept of “display” and “text” faces comes from an era probably before you were born, where you actually ordered them from different compositors. Display type was set in strips and intended for headlines and titles and such. Text type was set in galley form and intended for body copy. They have very different functions, at least when it comes to book design.

The same font can exist both in “text” and “display” form, such as H&FJ Requiem or Perpetua.

As one who will be needing reading glasses very soon now, I appreciate the difference between thoughtfully set text faces for reading copy, and display faces to add character. The morons are the designers who think there is no difference between display and text faces and who try to foist unreadable text on their poor suffering readers.

Amen!

And I should add that all this display and text type was VERY EXPENSIVE. Which meant that if you screwed up you often had to live with it. Also meant hours messing around with a xerox machine and an x-acto to make sure your type choices were the right ones before you ordered it. Display type was priced by the word so we used to cheat by making up words out of our initial caps to save money.

Text type involved copyfitting, character counts, etc. If you wanted to make an inset for a photograph you had to specify how many lines, and copyfit around it.

But I’m way off topic here.

On topic: I do think Clarendon is influential (in response to whoever said it isn’t). There are a lot of slabs that came out of the Clarendon mold.

Tell it! Clarendon good!

I’m loading the 4” film now so if anyone needs to que…

Right now, Fleischmann is looking very influential....

your way of explaining the fact that marketing strategy is out of the frame makes me also cringe.

Different foundries have completely different strategies for productization.
After all, there’s a world of difference between the three main sectors of font production (megacorps, asset-holders, and independents.)
On the corporate side, Linotype is very much driven by the strategy of leveraging its brand assets.
Then there’s Ale Paul, combining his penchant for scripts with Veer customers’ insatiable appetite for them.
House and Diner have been driving the script market as much as following it, synergy.

My retail sales would be stronger, no doubt, if I turnedd out a few more script fonts, but like many independent designers I compromise between doing what interests me and what I *think* will sell. But who knows what will sell until it’s been designed, produced, and put on the market? So what I do is follow my nose, developing ideas that interest me, and trying to move them into directions that I anticipate will be useful, in other words, that people will buy.

Yeah, I’ve noticed the Fleischmann thing, and it’s certainly influenced me—to do the opposite!

Patty, I’m wasn’t referring to people who might put as much thought into it as you did. I was referring to people who lump anything but the “classics” into the dustbin of display/decorative/novelty and ignore it.

[ offensive comment removed by moderator ]

Daniel, this is not acceptable.

James, I am sure there are plenty of people who get their terminology wrong, but at the same time there are lots of designers who use more traditional display fonts for text and vice versa. Not that it can’t be done (and done well) of course. David Carson famously broke all the rules and that needed to happen, but his followers often tried to emulate him without really understanding what he was doing. There is a general blurring of the two with the computer, and I am not sure a lot of the students and younger members of this forum necessarily know where the terms come from.

>When you say that “typefaces are designs which address complex issues to do with >technology, page layout, and type culture—not sequels”, you are saying a very limited >truth, for this is a true definition of, say... 3, maybe 4% of the total amount of >typographers out there.

Yes, but all the others follow those 3%

>>oh my god, you are ridiculous, you complete amateur

>>very influential typefaces: ...book antiqua ...arial

>Um, if you are going to sneer at folks, it is best to have enough knowledge of the field that you don’t make ridiculous blunders.

>Book Antiqua is a rip-off of Palatino. It was so egregious that it led Hermann Zapf to resign from Atypi. You can read the story here.

>Arial has a similar story, which you can read in Mark Simonson’s nice article about it.

While that is true, I would contest that the copies can have had a greater influence, as a multitude can be inspired by something made by a man who is the only one to take inspiration from another work.

I would say that Optima can go with Gill Sans and Johnston as one of the originators of humanist sans (and yes, I know Gill is partly based off John). They caused type designers to think outside of the geometric framework, and made people start thinking about making sans with the same thoughts as serifs. Optima might have had an even greater influence in this respect due to just how many pieces in broke the mold into (it is probably still the most obviously humanist font ever). While I am not a font historian, I can quite confidently say that typographers took one look at it and said “holy sh-t, that actually works!”

I would have to say that TNR is probably a good idea to include, as it is probably the default that stays in the minds of most designers simply due to its omnipresence.

Verdana should probably also be included, not because its form is influential, but because the way it was designed set the stage for modern designing (at least for the screen, which is why it takes precedence over Georgia).

Perhaps Hermann Zapf thought Optima was “the better Stella” in the way that Adrian Frutiger considered Avenir “the better Futura”.

Or perhaps someone at Linotype said, “Hermann, we need a sans”.

Or perhaps it’s a transcription of ancient stone-carved lettering.

Or perhaps Zapf thought “Ha—this’ll give August [Rosenberger, his punchcutter] a fit!”

Or perhaps all four and more—the theory being that designs materialize when two or more congruent ideas (memes) coincide and fall into place, illuminating one another with a touch of synergy, creating meaning.

***

And Melior is the better Optima?!

I’ve set out on several occasions to create a news text face that is “a better Utopia”, with something that looks not much like it, but with the same character count and apparent size. I suppose I could have used Charter or some other benchmark, but I had one client who commissioned me to design a face to replace Utopia, so that’s the one it’s been. An example of momentum, ubiquity breeds ubiquity.

Dean, you might be categorizing these more as “fonts that look old” and “fonts that look new.”

If you want to look at influential fonts of the contemporary period vs. influential fonts of the “classic” period, you need to look at what the creators of these fonts were trying to accomplish. Two fonts that I think were very influential on contemporary type design, for example, are PMN Caecilia and Syntax, because they brought humanist elements into the world of slab serif and sans serif type. Of course, you can trace this idea back to older typefaces like Optima, and you start to get a picture that there’s a slow process of evolution at work in the history of type, and things rarely pop out of nowhere.

In terms of “classic” fonts, you might want to come up with a different way to describe these, because “classical” typefaces often refer to a specific period in type design.

The more you study type, the more it becomes apparent that classifications are, at best, a way for us to hold a public converation about type, just like the music store has to file everything under a genre, even if it doesn’t fit. All that is to say, do you think this exercise will help you in any way?

just a little edit: Nick, it’s Stellar, not Stella... this is a typo i guess.

dr

Yes, I always get that muddled, thanks to the Dave Farey/Richard Dawson revival, which for some reason I think changed the name, but didn’t!

Thanks, FeeltheKern, for reminding us of how influential Syntax was for years—all the new sans type designs that followed that lead...certainly the best index of influence. And then Gill Sans seemed to follow Syntax as the must-emulate model for new sans designs...

I designed a humanist sans in the early 1980s, when there weren’t many around.
I certainly thought of Gill Sans as a precedent, and didn’t pay any attention to Syntax.
However, I had been studying calligraphy at that time, as a means of getting inside the cheirographic soul of the typographic tradition, and I think that influential idea may have been “in the air” at the time — no doubt reinforced by the presentation of Hermann Zapf’s calligraphy in the trade media, as being an important part of his method.

MondoB, I covered that point with my reference to Optima. If I was talking about the 90s, I wouldn’t bring up Helvetica, I’d talk about Meta.

Of course Syntax was born out of Gill Sans, but I’m talking strictly about contemporary faces. Syntax had a certain sense of modernity that you don’t see in Gill Sans, and it touched off a whole new interest in humanist sans.

A good example of this today is Galaxie Polaris http://vllg.com/Village/GalaxiePolaris/. This obviously owes a lot to Helvetica — a lot of people would not be able to tell the difference — but it has a feeling of “nowness” that has maybe evaporated a bit from Helvetica. The same could be said for Kai Bernau’s Neutral.

Thanks Nick, that’s what I’m trying to get at but didn’t say very well. These trends in design aren’t a concerted effort. They just happen as type designers see gaps in the type library and fill in the hole with similar solutions. Syntax and PMN Caecilia are just two good examples of large trends in the 80s and 90s — they were very popular, and embodied the idea of humanizing seemingly cold and stark slab serif and sans serif typefaces.

I’m sure if you went back in time and told the heads of type foundries 100 years ago what type they’d be remembered for, there’d be quite a few that were obvious to them, and quite a few that pissed them off.

Syntax had a certain sense of modernity that you don’t see in Gill Sans, and it touched off a whole new interest in humanist sans.

Like I said, I don’t buy that theory, which is a connect-the-dots, post-facto application of simplistic narrative-style history, operating from face to face. I don’t thin type design works like that, I certainly don’t.

Gill Sans was released in the 1920s, Syntax in the 60s. If they were so influential, how come there was no bandwagon or critical mass of humanistic sans faces emerging until the 1980s?

I recall Shannon (1982) as another face that I noticed when I was doing Shinn Sans, and paid more attention to it than Syntax, as it was, indeed, a contemporary face. I didn’t really think about Frutiger, it was just too sublime to get a handle on!

They just happen as type designers see gaps in the type library and fill in the hole with similar solutions.

Good point, although it begs the question of why one would notice a particular gap, or whether some effort is required to imagine gaps into existence.

[Our last posts crossed.]

Nick — I totally agree that the deeper you get into the history of anything, the more it shows no clear narrative with starting points and ending points. I hinted at that a bit with my original response, where I said “...you start to get a picture that there’s a slow process of evolution at work in the history of type, and things rarely pop out of nowhere.” Of course, we’re also talking about Top 10 lists in the original post, so I don’t think we can have that serious of a discussion :)

Maybe Syntax is debatable, in terms of being the “epitome” of a certain typographic grouping — it doesn’t neatly stand out as an achievement of anything in a historical sense. You could say the same of Helvetica, although Helvetica is clearly omnipresent while Syntax is present, but by no means deserving of omni- status.

Gill Sans was from Johnston, and may have inspired Optima. It should also be noted that many of the “influential” classical fonts are more that 100 years old, and they may have had little immediate impact.

Not to mention that 100+ years ago you didn’t exactly have people churning out new fonts on the computer. Not to diminish the effort of the typographers of the new age, I appreciate the hard work that goes into making a finely crafted font in any medium.

Scalfin: Optima was drawn almost directly from XVI. century graveyards in Italy, I’ve seen them myself, it was not inspired by Gill Sans whatsoever.

dr

Hey! How could you miss out UNIVERS....?!

“Gill Sans was released in the 1920s, Syntax in the 60s. If they were so influential, how come there was no bandwagon or critical mass of humanistic sans faces emerging until the 1980s”

This ignores the gestation of certain trends, as well as the monentum of existing trends. Can you imagine, in the context of the 1970s, a revival of the humanist sans? Absurd. From the release of Syntax to the proliferation of desktop type design tools, awareness of this class of type grew to a critical state. After that state, many designers identified the humanist sans as a distinct class, and believe me, Syntax in that context is very influential. It was at the same time that calligraphic type design started to really take off, Renaissance classics were being revived by Adobe, and the whole x-height, New York ad look was finally falling out of favor. Nick, are you saying that Gill Sans had no influence on Meier in his design? There is probably material out there illuminating exactly what that influence was. Don’t discount that.

It’s worth noting that type designers can point specifically to typefaces that influenced their work, whereas graphic designers would consider other designs influential. There’s a difference between influential and “classic”, popular or “important”. There are designs that influenced my work that aren’t important, classic, popular or otherwise prominent. Influence can come from anywhere. It doesn’t have to influence everyone. Syntax is like that; like a musician that only other musicians have heard of but who is revered inside that group.

This ignores the gestation of certain trends, as well as the monentum of existing trends.

Well actually, that’s the point I’ve been making! —that types alone don’t influence new types, a variety of other factors (“trends”) are in play.

Nick, are you saying that Gill Sans had no influence on Meier in his design?

Yes, in the sense that he didn’t discover it one day, and decide, “hey, I’m going to make a humanist sans too”.
Now doubt he was aware of Gill Sans as a precedent, but it was, I suspect, other factors that sparked Syntax.

As David notes re. Optima, it’s a little too easy to just look at the historical “narrative” of type genres and say “Gill Sans inspired Optima” when in fact Zapf was a calligrapher directly prompted by a moment of epiphany and inspiration in a graveyard.

There are several ideas here that are getting confused: inspiration, precedents and influence.
Inspiration is the catalyst of the magic moment where one thinks, “now there’s an idea for a design”.
Precedents may effect how one “works out” the big idea.
Influence is wishful thinking on the part of historians who would like a simple story, neat and tidy.

Carl, I have no idea what got you started on Beorcana. I’m sure you’ve rationalized it — but does one really know?

When you study Francisco Goya, he seems to embody so much of what we consider modern art, and yet he’s completely disconnected from the movement of Modern Art (with a capital M). To back up what Carl is saying, maybe Syntax is the George Braque of humanist sans typefaces, starting in the 60s and leading up to the present — very influential, but never getting much of the limelight. So I guess if you’re talking about what’s influential, Syntax meets the criteria. But its certainly not a Picasso. Gill Sans seems to be the Goya in this instance — looking at its various elements, it seems to live in the humanist sans family, but in the context of history, it’s not part of any kind of trend or movement. The question then is what’s the Picasso?

Gill Sans seems to be the Goya in this instance — looking at its various elements, it seems to live in the humanist sans family, but in the context of history, it’s not part of any kind of trend or movement.

(Pardon the self promotion:) As it happens, I’ll be addressing this very point in a talk on Saturday morning, if anyone near the Twin Cities is interested. Part of an art history symposium. Details here.

Whoa! Mind-meld!

>does one really know?

I haven’t studied the history of design in enough depth to answer that for any particular case. But I have studied some advances in the history of science in depth. And I found in every case that the scientist could describe very clearly the problem he was responding to, and what was new in his idea, relative to others he was aware of addressing the same problem.

I bet that Carl can do the same with Beorcana.

How we have the creativity to come up with a new solution is pretty much an unknown now, so I would agree with on that aspect.

I guess I should have said Gill set the precedent for Optima.

Nick,

There is a lot of clear documented history on Optima, on Syntax, on Gill, on lots of typefaces. I can indeed remember when certain things became important to me or to the development of Beorcana, and none of it is a fabrication, post-rationalization, or tidy, marketing-driven “story”. I’m sorry that you distrust what you call the “historical narrative”, but actually plenty of it is ordinary history, and not the gossipy conjecture you seem to be seeing.

I don’t think anyone has yet said or implied that there is a single, direct, one-to-one cause and effect relationship between one typeface and another in terms of inspiration or influence. I think this is another phantom you are swatting at. I think what is real, and what people notice, is that among all the influences, the trends, the cultural scene that surrounds a designer, sometimes a typeface has a very very strong influence or meaning for them, and sometimes they even recognize and acknowledge it consciously.

When we say we’re standing on the shoulders of giants, we are referring to specific people, because of specific work they’ve done. That doesn’t erase or negate the rest of the scene.

Carl,

Ordinary history is nothing but gossip, which is the purpose of this thread, to bicker about which celebrity typefaces begat which other celebrity typefaces.

That doesn’t erase or negate the rest of the scene.

But it does. As soon as the gossip starts, the bell curve is replaced by the Lotka curve.
An even distribution of cultural phenomena is replaced by one with a few huge winners.

This was what happened in experiments conducted by Duncan Watts (written up in the Feb. 2008 Fast Company).
In brief, people were asked to rank songs they hadn’t heard before.
A fairly equitable ranking emerged, with a few songs that did slightly better.
In another group, the “social influence” group, people could see each other’s rankings—which led to a small, elite group of songs becoming enormously popular.
In another “social influence” group, same thing, but with different songs rising to the top.

Watts’s findings are opposed to Malcolm Gladwell’s “Tipping Point” theory, and the importance it places on “influentials”.

So historians are in (or simply “are”) a “social influence” group. Are designers not?

Ordinary history is nothing but gossip

That’s pretty cynical. We do have a choice in how direct our sources are; and obviously everyone has a choice how honest they will be about the past. I don’t consider the content of an interview with, or the working drawings and notes of, the original type designer as ’gossip’.

The study you cite mixes in “popularity”, another factor working in parallel with influence, inspiration and precedent. It isn’t necessarily the same influence on a designer (producer) of type as it would be on a user (consumer). But don’t presume that everyone is equally socially influenced. Now you have switched from saying that there can be no direct influence from one typeface to another, to saying that every type design is mere residue of crowd behavior, with some achieving artificial, arbitrary prominence.

????

Are designers not?

Is that a rhetorical question Craig?!

Designers are the worst gossips of all, and their awards competitions the epitome of popularity contests.
The design-celebrity system emerges from these annual events, recorded in, er, annuals, providing historians with a neat potted resource of what is “good”. But what has this history of what designers like to do with the history of graphic design as it is broadly practised in society? Not much.

Concerning Gill Sans:

It’s ironic that there were not a plethora of humanist sans faces created during the Historicist era (1900-1930), when old-style faces dominated typography. But at the time, sans faces were infra dig, trashed by the authorities (eg Updike in the US, Morison in the UK) on down, and rarely used in publishing.

I’ve looked through magazines and papers from the teens and twenties, and been unable to find an example of humanist sans lettering. I did find this lovely example of old-style sans lettering by Oswald Cooper, from 1924, in the Cooper monograph, but note that it is self-promotion—I doubt he had any clients interested in this sort of thing.

That’s pretty cynical.

Carl, you were the one who introduced gossip and fly-swatting into this thread.
I was quite happy exploring the notion that what designers have to say about their work may be considered somewhat objective, coloured by self-interest. But thanks for the idea of design-history-as-gossip, I love it!

I don’t consider the content of an interview with, or the working drawings and notes of, the original type designer as ’gossip’.

Neither do I, but I would take them with a grain of salt. Sure, they are the raw material, the “facts” of history, but with plenty of opportunity for self-delusion and myth-making—which is a problem for any objective history of graphic design and typography. Also, practitioners tend to do self-promotion as well as a lot of our own trade coverage, and it’s a small industry, so we don’t want to throw your peers under the bus, when we’ll be rubbing shoulders with them at TypeCon. The trenchant critics are few and far between.

Many of those best informed about the industry are in the industry. Thankfully these days they don’t seem to be the over-the-top do-gooder axe-grinders like Updike and Morison (although some of our readability proponents are getting up there), but nonetheless, if you’re making a living writing for foundries and distributors, as well as magazines and books, you’re going to pull a few punches. Many years ago I wrote a journal article criticizing the design of some fonts from a well-known foundry, and have always regretted the bad feelings that ensued, so tend to be more circumspect about the work of my peers.

their awards competitions the epitome of popularity contests

Not always.

But what has this history of what designers like to do with the history of graphic design as it is broadly practised in society? Not much.

I think this is where I’m not following you. I think of there being a whole lot of overlap between “the history of what designers like to do” and the “history of graphic design as it is broadly practiced in society.”

I’ve looked through magazines and papers from the teens and twenties, and been unable to find an example of humanist sans lettering.

I just posted a 1910 ad to the type id board that might qualify (though maybe it has leetle Copperplate-like serifs - hard to tell from the pic I have).

I think of there being a whole lot of overlap between “the history of what designers like to do” and the “history of graphic design as it is broadly practiced in society.”

If you look in the design history section of bookstores that specialize in the graphic arts, you will find that the majority of the books are about modernism. This is especially so for the Historicist era, where it’s all about Constuctivism and the Bauhaus, which went completely unrepresented in popular and commercial media at the time. Don’t you think that’s a bit of a disconnect?!

As I’ve pointed out before, the “Big Idea” American ads from the 1960s that are in the history books are for VW, a small player, not GM, Ford, Chrysler and AMC. As always, design history is unrepresentative and misleading about the culture in general, while pandering to designers, who are, after all, the people who buy design books.

Most of the books in the Graphic Design History section at Typophile are about the Bauhaus, Modernism, and Avant Garde movements — including Blackwell’s remix. Of course, this is important stuff for the profession, but in toto it produces a highly skewed image of what graphic designers did for a living, which can be easily disabused by simply opening any popular magazine from the past. I haven’t looked at the George Lois book, but I do know that he is a design celebrity, a good source of anecdotes and self-promotion; of course, his work is brilliant and I LOVE it, but again, he was the rebel creatives look up to, representative of the Creative Revolution (as if that doesn’t happen all the time) not the mainstream against which it reacts, or which follows after.

Many designers don’t fall for the big deception, hence the appeal of retro kitsch, ironically repurposed, of course.

So, to return to the prior analogy, do you see the Chrysler graphic designers as akin to Watts’ second “social influence” group (whose canon didn’t wind up in our bookstore-bought histories, like their Volkswagen colleagues’ did), or was their practice (including their understanding of their relation to past design) something different?

You are right about the graphic design history books, maybe it’s because we don’t like looking at the ugly and irrelevant stuff in terms of graphic excellence.

Héctor

…maybe it’s because we don’t like looking at the ugly and irrelevant stuff in terms of graphic excellence.

So instead we end up with books full of the same images of the same modernist works followed by the the same images of the painfully boring career Paul Rand and his followers. Maybe the reason so many designers don’t know the history well is that they’re put off by the New York crowd’s myths to spend their time digging into it.

ugly and irrelevant
Is that what we want the designers 40 years from now to say about our work? Those guys, the regular “Chrysler” designers, and the design climate that they worked in, believed that they were doing good stuff.

I find that Nick’s approach, looking at what actually happened as opposed to what Meggs wants us to think happened, is as much if not more relevant to what most designers do today than the Modernists, and I include type design in that as well.

do you see the Chrysler graphic designers as akin to Watts’ second “social influence” group

I don’t think they had much influence. They were actually the art directors, creative directors, and copywriters who worked for ad agencies that handled the mainstream accounts that didn’t want edgy, cutting edge creative, so they didn’t win many awards, didn’t get profiled much in trade magazines. But they did alright for themselves.

In the 49th Art Directors Club Annual, New York, 1970, these are the number of award winning car ads: eight for VW, two for Volvo, one for Renault, one for AMC. So the names of the creatives involved is in the record. But where are the big three? Their advertising budget must have dwarfed that of the award-winners.

What about merit? Weren’t their ads “ugly and irrelevant”? Maybe, maybe not; but that’s not the point—do you want a history of brilliant doodles in the margins of society, or do you want to know what was really going down? Or do you want it all?!

I’m taken with Duncan Watt’s music experiment, but l wouldn’t discount the possibility that his selection of 50 unsigned bands to provide the songs might have been lacking in outstanding talent.

So here are some possible mechanisms at work in selecting historical markers:

Firstly, pure social influence, which has the effect of randomly creating huge favorites from pools of work where there isn’t much difference in quality.

Secondly, there are influentials, professional associations and networks, and market forces in play, which reinforce a metacultural status quo. That was certainly a dimension of the “creative revolution” of American advertising in the 1960s, that the new advertising got its edge by coming from more diverse, up and coming social groups.

Thirdly there is the quality of the work, which can occasionally rise above other considerations.

Fourthly, there is the possibility of fresh research from original new sources. I was blown away by Nicholson Baker and Margaret Brentano’s “The World on Sunday—Graphic Art in Joseph Pulitzer’s newspaper (1898-1911)”, which revealed a continent of graphic design I never knew existed. Well, perhaps it would have been better known if it had won some Art Director Club awards, but they didn’t start till 1920.

You’d think that “being everywhere”, as some typefaces always appear to be, would count for something in recorded history. But it’s no guarantee. I remember when I started work, Souvenir, Korinna and University Roman “were everywhere”, but they didn’t feature much in award-winning ads, and they’re not the groovy disco styles we now associate with the 70s.

Now you have switched from saying that there can be no direct influence from one typeface to another, to saying that every type design is mere residue of crowd behavior, with some achieving artificial, arbitrary prominence.

Let’s make a disctinction between histories of influence, which are created around historical markers determined by the four mechanisms described above (including the mere residue of crowd behavior), and the contingencies that influence and inspire type designers individually—which may include “found type” or lettering one comes across or searches out, along with well-known typefaces, as well as all kinds of oblique serendipity, music, for instance. I mean, we talk a lot about rhythm in type, and everybody has their favorite kind of music which moves them, so I imagine that we would express some of that visually.