I don't have any plans to design a type in this genre.

Type genre has nothing to do with whether something is type or lettering.

The lines between type and lettering have become blurred by OpenType alternates.
When it's possible to set a wordmark or headline with a font that has lots of alternate glyphs to chose from, including swashes, and do so either by selecting from a glyph palette, or going with the contextual substitutions built-in to the font, then the process of typographic design is more like that of lettering.

This isn't really new. The famous Photo-Lettering Inc. was a type house (mid 20th century).
They'd work from film-strip fonts, and then modify details of a setting by hand, e.g. making ligatures.
So was that type or lettering?

Duchamp would have called it an assisted readymade.

Real display lettering is distinguished by the possibility that you might get your hands dirty--but so is real typesetting.

ChrisL

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

<em>...from the Fontry </em>

Display type rarely does much for me, but what does turn me on a lot about this stuff is the fact that such type typically breaks the "painterly" trend of most type design; it allows the white to be its own thing. I'm talking about things like Klimax.

hhp

Klimax is one of the rare cases where that style can be pushed to the max, and still be great typography. It wasn't just created by modular shapes and called finished. It has nuances.

Klimax is quite good, I think.

ChrisL

Remember that this is not a new trend. Early postmodernism developed this style. Including and especially pushpin studios. It is interesting to see how it is is coming back tho!

evan

Pushpin Postmodern?
I propose an alternative historiography, based on preferred stimulants.

Wes Wilson poster, 1966.

Seymor Chwast did not strike me as a PoMo kind of guy, either.

He may mean the Constructivists for the geometric lettering. Pushpin was much later and heavy into illustration.

ChrisL

based on preferred stimulants

Including (but not limited to) Viennese posters from three generations earlier.

Alfred Roller, 1902

When you say display type Hrant, what do you mean?

Michael

Good question. There is no "pure" display (or "pure" text) type.
But in the broad sense by "display" I tend to mean a font that
cannot be used for immersive reading.

hhp

Hrant

Just suppose my view of display type is a vast palette, yet specific form of expression, each face satisfying very individual, and idiosyncratic needs whereas text faces serve the "greater good," immersive reading, and thereby in my opinion are very banal. So why do you dislike, or eschew faces that are personality driven. Not that there is anything wrong with liking text faces.

Michael

I could write a short book on this; but for now, a short paragraph:
To me display faces are too superficial, too predictable. Because display faces pander to our conscious -and transient- tastes, making a successful display face involves only moderate skill, and only one notable talent: discerning what will be fashionable in the immediate future. Success in display face design is also largely a matter of luck - which to me is a turn-off. In contrast, making a good text face requires grasping and balancing so many subtleties, and having such a command of spacing and texture, that it takes my breath away. A text face reflects the personalities of billions of people, over centuries.

hhp

Perhaps I should've been more specific. Eclectic (post) Modernism.

evan

Hm, because nobody's really directly answering my original question, I'll assume the general consensus is that temporary trends are in no danger of diluting the craft.

To address your original question, I don't think the difference between type and lettering has anything to do with legibility or decorativeness.

Ricardo Esteves

...nobody’s really directly answering my original question...

I thought I had, in the first post.
More plainly: if a setting is made from a font, it's typography.
Therefore the trend you are identifying as "display lettering" is nothing of the sort.
In fact, as the individual glyphs in this genre are emphatically discrete, with no extrusions subject to ligation, this genre is "lettering-proof", as there is no opportunity to hand-nuance joins. (Sorry Ricardo, nice s_t lig, but the face, dark though it is, doesn't belong to the genre in question.)

If other people are already as sketchy about the difference between type and lettering as you seem to be, this new trend won't make any difference to the definition of "what type is" :-)

I thought I kinda answered it too: not only is it not dangerous, there's at least one way "counter-deprived" display fonts can help text face design in the long term.

hhp

I think I know the trend you're describing, and to answer your question, my stance is that it annoys the shit out of me. When I see "boutique" studios coming up with what is essentially a Type 1 exercise (how to push legibility by minimizing letterforms to the point that they evolve from one or two shapes) I feel embarrassed for them, and irritated by the praise they get for such knee-jerk creations.

(Un)interestingly, Pentagram seems to have jumped on board with this new one:
http://ncartmuseum.org/untitled/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/logo.gif

I have always liked contrast in design. Type is no different. True sometimes it makes no sense and seems to be done just because they can. (And often without finesse.)

I like that Pentagram logo a lot, especially the way all the elements align vertically, the way the "color" of the piece is distributed in both x and y directions, and the way the "l" in Carolina drives the overall arrangement.
By making the "counter" space equal the letter space, this style achieves a kind of monowidth effect, yet with narrow "i" and "l".

ecs, you hit it right on the money. The point is, that genre of illegible letter illustration I'm referring to is being called typography/type design, and that's what bothers me. Quite the opposite of the good, heavy fonts that actually have finesse. While we're on heavy stuff, care to take a gander at what I'm working on?

My disappointment with Pentagram's North Carolina Museum logo is perhaps because I was already dismayed by their Museum of Art and Design logo. ([http://www.madmuseum.org/])

In presenting the process of the latter at a recent AIGA event, Michael Bierut flippantly and openly admitted that the creation of the letterforms by using a circle and square was less an idea and more about a formal quality that has been exhaustively "explored" for the better part of a hundred years.

These were early Bauhaus experiments; we should stop calling them fresh. The Weimar designers in the 1920s and 30s moved on, and so should we.

There's certainly a difference between a graphic
designer pretending to design type and the real thing.

hhp

Hmm Hrant - "the real thing." Not sure what this is, but I think from the drift of the conversations that "the real thing" is text type as opposed to display lettering or type, whichever you prefer. Is text type hard to design? Yes, very. Is display type hard to design? Well in my opinion, yes. Good design is just that, good design, and bad design is bad design. Display type serves a purpose and if the purpose is served by the new trend in very heavy, at times difficult to read types, so be it. If one could find a generalization about this it is that display type is very much dependent on fashion or the fashion of the moment, while text type rarely falls in line with this. Baskerville, Garamond, Caslon, Bodoni, Fairfield, and others are as much in use today as text type as they ever were. The images presented here by Nick S and Eliason are examples which make my point re display as a statement about the fashion or design trends of the times.

These Michael Bierut designs are logos rather than typefaces, and don't have to be highly legible. Looked at as logos, I think they are pretty good, though perhaps a bit stale because of the Bauhaus echoes.

I think it is really hard to bring off the super heavy style without looking awkward, but Dez Squeeze does it awesomely.

Jordon, actually by "real thing" I meant type designers.
Graphic designers tend to only see the surface of fonts.

William, my issue isn't with legibility, it's with respect.
Not towards people who make type, but type itself.

hhp

I didn't think this thread was about whole typefaces, but rather a lettering trend.