language of digital typography as something to
read. Teaching practice was falling a generation
exploit and express. there were connections.
behind what was happening around new
albeit unspoken. with the New Wave approach
technology and the style magazine typography.
of expressionist typography taught by Wolfgang
With colleges and their staff largely wedded
Weingart. Another designer involved in the influential batch of “style magazines” of the 1980s was Terry Jones. who launched i-0 magazine. Here legibility was questioned in a manner ak1n to the psychedelia of the late
“Computers had shifted the very nature of graphics...”
1960s, with text subverted by garish overprinting and crude typewriter text, copy reversed out
to older technology and teaching prograrnmes
from four color, photocopier distortions added
related, they had difficulty, both conceptually and
and many more graphic experiments thrown
economically, in embracing the latest equipment
into the pot besides. All this “noise” was part
as freely as had ambitious studios or publishing
of the message. of course. For the audience,
operations. But one school that did make its
typographic quality involved viewabilrty as much
mark was the Cranbrook Academy of Art in
as legibility in creating readability. The Face and
the US, where the postgraduate teaching and
Blitz in England, or related magazines such as
work of Katherine McCoy in graphics during the
Actuel in France or Wiener in Germany, were
1980s, supported by key terminology found In
badges of affiliation to be worn as well as to be
the writings of a Cranbrook influence, pioneering
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