Current

Trends in Typography

Edo Smitshuijzen | 17 February 2010

Using only capital letters, preferably in combination with a calligraphic script font, seems to be the latest typographic fad. Once you noticed the new trend, you see it everywhere. Or is this trend already old hat? (I'm a spectator from the sidelines). Are we stylistically still moving back to the future?

The designer's habit to use only lower case letters coincided with the growth of web mail. So there was a slither of functionality in this trend, although it reminded me mostly of the peak period of minimalistic functionalism, where capital letters were considered redundant to create readable text. Some designers believed that good typography could do even with less typographic tools. Recently, I received an email typed totally in capital letters. Apparently, a counter wave. The text looked very majestic, as if the sender expected his prose to be cut in granite for eternal conservation. However, the first thing that came to my mind was that someone should help the poor designer with the apparent problems with his keyboard.

Developments in type design always influence design styles in graphic design. As far as technological innovations are concerned, the Adobe company effectively determines what inventions in type design will reach the market and which ones will not, since Adobe has the effective monopoly of graphic software. The OpenType font format was created to allow for globalisation of the Microsoft and Adobe softwares. In order to do this, individual font files needed enough room to house super large collections of glyphs and the option to automatically replace or reposition individual glyphs depending on their position in a word. These options were needed because certain scripts required these options to create readable text.
Using these possibilities (many more related options were created) could result in extremely large and complicated font files which had a very large scope of international use. One typeface could cover many scripts and languages.

The 'Tazil lll' with 15 weight variations by Lucas de Groot.

 

This was not the only way the new font format was used, all possibilities could also be employed to create complex fonts for the Latin script. Like fonts with endless style variations, or alternative glyphs or glyphs combinations like ligatures. Also calligraphy could now be imitated with type, creating a sort of calligraphic pianola. One of the first large calligraphic fonts was the Zapfino by Herman Zapf. The history of this typeface is a long one but it is now available as an OpenType font carrying over 1400 glyphs. Young type designers are apparently inspired by the endless options of OpenType to create digitised calligraphy.

Designing extremely large fonts is not special anymore. Automation in type design has progressed. Many tools have been developed to help the type designer to produce large collections of glyphs for one typeface. Specialised programmers make all these glyphs effective in various softwares. The weight range for a typeface for instance has become effectively endless, even starting with super thin hairline font that can only be used for display sized letters, otherwise this weight would be invisible. Type designers try to explore the absolute limits on both ends of the weight range.

'Klimax' by Typothéque.

 

Digital technology has had a tremendous effect on productivity, especially for graphic design. Making a font, or something printable (or visible in any other medium) can be done literally in a matter of seconds, so there is a tendency to produce in bulk for the sake of producing in bulk, to impress with quantity. The redundancy created in society is gigantic and has reduced effective productivity gains to only a fraction of its potential. We have started to produce like maniacs. Most stuff that surrounds people living in affluent societies is useless or even bad for them. Production has become so easy and cheap that a lot of what is produced will never be used by anyone. Groups of people have started to live on what is thrown away. The state of plenty in Latin type design – the amount of excellently designed Latin extensive fonts available in all traditional styles is now overwhelming – almost forces Western type designers to look for extremes or to serve very tiny niches.

For type designers of the non-Latin scripts professional developments are in many occasions still in their infancy. A lot of innovative work can still be done to create better representations in today's media. For type designers of the Latin scripts innovation is far less obvious, hence the tendency of current designers to look for extremes. Maybe a change of focus can alter the perspective and will bring unchartered territory in view. For instance, fonts specifically made for 3D representation or objects production facilities hardly exist.