Futura Spread

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FUTURA AS A TYPE How

it all started

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ollowing the Bauhaus design philosophy, German type designer Paul Renner fir st created Futura between 1924 and 1926. Although Renner was not a member of the Bauhaus, he shared many of its views, believing that a modern typeface should express modern models rather than be a rivial of a previous design.

Futura was commercially released in 1927, commissioned by the Bauer type foundr y.

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hile designing Futura, Renner avoided creating any non-essential elements, making use of basic geometric propor tions with no serif s or frills. Futura’s crisp, clean forms reflect the appearance of ef ficiency and for wardness even today.

n 1922, German professor Jakob Erbar created the fir st ever geometric sansserif typeface (above). In accordance with the hugely influential Bauhaus school of design, the typeface aimed for a pure functionality, with no ornamentation or individual characteristics. 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 af ter all. he Bauhaus designer s believed in a world where form and function destroyed ornamentation, clutter and revivals of the more decorative past. Only in this world could social equality truly come into being, they believed. It would be utopia by design.

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enner’s initial design experimented with several geometrically constructed character alternatives and old-style figures, which can be found in the typeface Architype Renner:

he success of Futura spawned a range of new geometric sans-serif typefaces, such as Kabel and Centur y Gothic, among other s. Now over 80 year s since its creation, many foundries have released variations of Futura in the digital form, Adobe being the one of the most commonly used. Several international companies also use their own customized ver sion of Futura, including Volkswagen (visible in their renowned adver tising) and IKEA .

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utura (and its variants) have become an extremely popular typeface for countless corporate logos, commercial products, films and adver tisements for year s. In fact, Futura became so popular in the 90’s that ar t director s were getting tired of it, and began boycotting it’s use with the Ar t Director s Against Futura Extra Bold Condensed movement.

“It’s time for Ar t Director s the world over to boycott the use of Futura Extra Bold Condensed – the most overused typeface in adver tising histor y.

Destroy the Great Satan of clichés and the Little Satan of convenience, and rally to the cause of a better type selection.

Please fill out the enclosed petition and mail it to our headquar ter s. It will be used to sway the opinion-maker s of our industr y toward our just and wor thy cause. Together, we can whip this mother.”

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THE MAN WHO O

n August 9, 1878, Paul Friedrich August Renner was born in Wernigerode which then was located in the Prussian state.

His father was an evangelical theologian who is reason behind his strict Protestant upbringing. He grew up to develop a German sense of leader ship, responsibility and duty. Renner received his formal education from a secondar y school, Gymnasium. Af ter nine year s of learning Greek and Latin, Renner opted to study ar ts at several dif ferent academies. In 1926, he accepted the position of the head at the Printing Trade School in Münich.

Later he established and became director of the Master School for Germany’s Printer s. While studying, he grew suspicious of abstract ar t form and developed repulsion for some forms of modern culture including dancing, cinema and jazz.

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owever, Renner was equally fascinated by the functionalist strain in modernism. Therefore, it would not seem wrong to perceive Renner’s work as a bridge between nineteenth and twentieth centur y tradition. One example can be his successful attempt at merging two fundamentally dif ferent typefaces together such as Roman typeface and Gothic. Moreover, he was a significant member of German Work Federation. He lent his exper tise in developing a new set of guidelines for good book design. He was closely associated with another noted typographer Jan Tschichold. They both became par t of the ongoing heated ideological and ar tistic debates.

Renner took a stand against Nazi movement and made his position ver y clear and public through his scandalous booklet, titled Kulturbolschewismus(Cultural Bolshevism). It was published in 1932 and over tly condemned Nazi’s cultural policy.

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STARTED IT ALL I

n 1933, when Nazi rose to power they dismissed Renner from his post at the school and labeled him an intellectual subver sive, a ‘Cultural Bolshevist’. He went into a period of internal exile af ter his arrest. Renner aspired to communicate his opinion of culture and tried to influence it through his writing, teaching and designing. He utilized his intellect and aesthetic skills to alter the fundamental landscape of material and spiritual form of life. As to communicate his view of high cultural standards, he invested his creative talent in applied ar ts designing books and typefaces. Fur thermore, being a voracious reader, Renner’s ideals were influenced by prominent scholarly figures, such as Nietzsche, Goethe, Kant and Schiller. He began writing from 1908 onwards and prolifically produced work on design and typography.

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enner’s notable works include Die Kunst der Typographie (The Ar t of Typography) and Typografie als Kunst (Typography as Ar t). In these works he set the guideline for sophisticated book designs. Additionally, he played a significant role in inventing the popular Futura. The modern typographer s even in the present time used this geometric sans-serif font frequently.

Another one of his creations, Architype Renner is evolved from his early experimental exploration of geometric letter forms. His Steile Futura typeface was later transformed into Tasse which came out posthumously. Paul Renner’s valuable contribution to graphic design and typography includes works, such as Das moderne Buch, Vom Geheimnis der Dar stellung, Ordnung und Harmonie der Farben and typefaces Renner Antiqua and Ballade.

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WHERE IT IS NOW From

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the moon to the big screen.

utura had the honor of being the first typeface on the moon, chosen for a commemorative plaque left by the astronauts of Apollo 11 i n 19 6 9 . F u t u r a h a d t h e honor of being the first typeface on the moon, chosen for a commemorative plaque left by the astronauts of

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A p o l l o 11 i n 19 6 9 . M o r e recentl y, Wes Ander son has done the same with his films (The Royal Tenenbaums, The Life Aquatic, etc), using Futura (specifically Futura Bold) almost exclusively in the artwork, credits, and even within the films.

“It

Stanley’s favourite typeface. It’s sans serif. He liked Helvetica and Univers, too. Clean and elegant...

I was always trying to was

persuade him to turn away from them.

But

he was

wedded to his sans serifs.”

- Tony Frewin, on working with Stanley Kubrick

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