Nathan, thanks for sharing such an interesting post! While I don't have any knowledge in my head on this subject, I did find a great article about the politics of typography. I will summarize one font in particular: Johnston Sans, or Underground Railway Block-Letter, created by Edward Johnston for the London Underground system during the Great War of 1914-1919.
According to the article, Britain felt a compelling need to stay ahead of German innovation for fear that rival German designers would infiltrate their industry as a cultural invasion. It is interesting to even consider this because as a designer, this need would never occur to me in the 21st Century. So Johnston created his typeface with stone cut Roman lettering on Trajan’s Column as inspiration to reassure the London citizens that the British Empire was strong and unmovable. Johnston helped establish the popularity of sans serif typefaces in modern typography with his typeface, which is an important milestone in 20th Century design. (Credit: Nathan Francis)
Check out the article for four other great examples of the politics of type, including President Obama's use of Gotham in his campaign.
2 comments:
Neat article, Stephanie! Thanks! How fascinating that Renner and Tschichold would have been persecuted for Futura before the Nazi government settled on Antiqua (the article doesn't say when this happened, or who led the charge against them). But then again, nobody ever accused the Nazis of being consistent.
I didn't see your post and wrote a long blog post about the same article... oh well, great minds think alike I guess!
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