Unit David Gothic Shields & Uniform Set Gothic, wood type as precursor
“Innovations, being prepared over a long period of time, remained dormant for the most part, undiscovered and misunderstood, only to suddenly awaken, providing a characteristic expression for an entire century.” – Fredrich Friedl1
David Shields is an Associate Professor in the Dept. of Art & Art History at The University of Texas at Austin, is the Chair of the Design Program and the caretaker of the Rob Roy Kelly American Wood Type Collection which is a comprehensive collection of wood type manufactured and used for printing in America during the nineteenth century. In this article he writes about the importance of the Unit Gothic Series which can be seen as a predecessor of Univers.
The development of the typographic sans serif follows a path of revival and renewal from a crude set of capital letters through a series of stylistic and organizing innovations leading to the formal refinement and complex family structures that we take for granted today. Two newly uncovered designs of wood type reveal the accepted progress of midcentury conceptual innovations began fifty years earlier that previously acknowledged. Sans serif faces gained broader popularity in Germany, England and America at the end of the 19th century. This growing popularity increased the demand for type families expanded beyond the single weight variations that characterized sans serif type up to that point. Berthold’s Akzidenz Grotesk was released in 1896. Cobbled together from existing and new sans serifs “… Berthold managed to make a coherent family out of all the different Grotesks it had acquired.”2 Akzidenz Grotesk’s success was followed by strong competition from Stempel Foundry’s Reform Grotesk in 1903, ATF’s Franklin Gothic in 1905 and the Bauer Foundry’s Venus in 1907. While not fully integrated, the development of more coherent families of related weights and widths pointed to the standardization and modularity that would follow mid-century. The sans serifs released at the turn of the 20th century expanded the traditional palette of typographic variation previously limited to regular, italic and bold by offering three or four weights of a standard width with a weights of condensed and extended added in short order. New designs inspired by Akzidenz Grotesk began to emerge in the 1950s, displacing the geometric sans serifs that had become popular in the 1920s and 1930s. These new designs, commonly referred to as neogrotesque, were typified by larger families of weights and widths developed to provide visual uniformity lacking in the inconsistently designed sans serifs of the early 20th century. The most important neo-grotesques released during this period included the Haas Foundry’s New Haas Grotesk and Bauer’s Folio in 1956, and Deberny & Peignot’s Univers in 1957. Of these, Univers was the most systematically conceived from the start. Designed by Adrian Frutiger, Univers, was made up of weights and widths that related modularly to create “a visually programmed family of 21 sans serif ” styles which “form[ed] a uniform whole that [could] be used together with complete harmony.”3 It’s systematic ordering along a matrix of two axes revealed a rational and visually harmonious connection between each item in the system. While the styles that made up the families developed at the turn of the century did not relate seamlessly, there were two little known faces produced during this period that would act as precursors to the more systematic type families to be released mid-century and as well as foreshadow the interpolated superfamilies of the late-20th century. The Hamilton Mfg Co’s Unit Gothic and the Tubbs Mfg Co’s Uniform Set Gothic were both released as original wood type designs in the second half of 1907. While neither attained the aesthetic refinement that would define Frutiger’s Univers fifty years later, each was developed as a visually related series driven by a pragmatic need for making composition faster and more efficient. The Hamilton Mfg Co’s Unit Gothic was first shown in the August 1907 issue of The Inland Printer in an advertisement addressed to “progressive poster-printers.” The design concept was unique for it’s time as it included a series of seven systematically interrelated and visually harmonious widths. The Unit Gothic series was numbered, No 716–No 722, rather than named. Each width was scaled mathematically to produce “an even and gradual reduction in widths.”4 No 718 was the standard unit of the series, No 716 & No 717 were extended and No 719–722 were condensed. No 717 was 25 % wider and No 716 was 50 % wider than the standard. The four narrower faces were reductions in width of 25 % (No 719), 50 % (No 720), 62 ½% (No 721) and 75 % (No 722). The ad also stated that “other variations in the width from the Standard Unit [could] be supplied as desired at regular prices.” The mathematical scaling was not primarily a function of aesthetics but rather of the pragmatic need for compositional efficiency and speed. All characters were “uniform in width and length” that allowed one letter to be “lifted and another put in its place without further justifying.” The capitals and figures of the standard, No. 718, were cut on square bodies. The scaled widths were configured to allow the condensed style to “be placed in the space occupied by one of the standard units, and with the most condensed face four letters will occupy the space of a standard unit.”5
Slanted 19 — Essays & Reports
David Shields, P 154
114