fred design

A showcase of Wim Crouwel typefaces

Last year, I was lucky enough to attend a lecture by Wim Crouwel in which he spoke about his long and wonderful career in graphic design.
Crouwel had an amazingly structured and logical approach to design. Someone once said to me that genius was seeing something that had always been there but noticing it, and his work definitely had this feel to me. It almost seemed logical, and the only right answer. An answer, rather than a solution as though there could only be one. His ideas seemed obvious once you had seen them, though I have little doubt that they never were.

Within the lecture Crouwel spoke about some of the many fonts he had designed. Some of them were just for campaigns and others were later digitised. This post will display a small selection of the ones I found interesting and was able to find information on. Hope you enjoy and find them as inspiring as I do.

New Alphabet
This is the most famous of Crouwels fonts, so there is no better place to start. Designed in 1967, it looked to embrace the Cathode Ray Tube technology. It was made to the limitations of the new technology which struggled with digitising type and did not work over the curved edges. Because of this, New Alphabet used only vertical and horizontal lines and was designed using a monospace grid with every letter the same width and height. It followed Crouwel’s systematic gridded approach to much of his work with a page of type all aligning completely along the vertical and horizontal axis.

The majority of letters are based on 9 by 5 unit grid with 45 degree slants used on certain corners. There is no difference between the uppercase and lowercase letters. In Crouwels own words the font was ‘over-the-top and never meant to be really used. It was unreadable’. Despite this, it received massive coverage and contraversy, attracting criticism from many of his peers.

This for me is almost an alternative alphabet. Yes it is illegible but I think with practice it could be just as legible as the normal one. It kind of reminds me of ‘new speak’ in 1984. Rather than have a word like excellent, you have plus good etc. Essentially newspeak reduced the amount of words needed for communication or expression. With new alphabet, again it uses the minimal amount of information to communicate. The U V and W characters are very similar with minimal differentiation. Reducing the detail needed in order to communicate.

New Alphabet became popular again in UK pop music magazines in the 1990s. Joy Division famously used new new alphabet on the cover of their 1988 album substance.

Gridnik
Crouwell was affectionately named Mr Gridnik by his contemporaries because of his consistent use of grid systems both in his layouts and typeface design. This inspired the type foundries name for the font when it was redrawn from the original sketches.

This san serif typeface was originally designed for the new electric typewriter from olivetti, in 1974. Like some of his other faces its a monofont to suit the new technology, based in a square grid. Again its completely gemoetric with lines mostly at 90 and 45 degree angles. Much of Crouwel’s work and certainly this font was a reaction to new developing technologies. Its geometric qualities are similar to new alphabet but it has a more human feel.

Actually the typeface was not finished as the desire for electric typewriters declined and there was no longer a need with the continuing development of computers. Crouwel did use gridnik soon after on a series of postage stamps for the dutch PTT (Postal, telegraph and telephone service).

I think this is my favourite of the fonts featured on this post. It reminds me a lot of replica. It has an elegant feel and the angles, despite being uniform, give it so much character and an almost quirkiness.

Fodor

Fodor was designed for the cover of the magazine published by The Fodor Museum in Amsterdam. To be cost efficient it was designed to be used on an electric typewriter the museum already had, it was monospaced with hard lines creating both horizontal and vertical lines.These were emphasised by the background, pink dots on an orange colour which set the page grid to which the text aligned to. The cover also included dots which shone through the type, giving it a futuristic and digital look. This was thought to be influential in later digital styled type design.

Catalogue
Catalogue was originally created for a poster of Claes Oldenburg, and later the whole alphabet was drawn as a gift for the artist, a personal friend of Crouwel’s. Redone by the type foundry and entitled catalogue, it mimicks the soft feel of the Oldenburgs sculptures.

I think this is a lovely font and so original. It is geometric still but has a lovely softness about it with a rounded soft feel. Perfect as a headline or poster font.

Edgar Fernhout
This typeface was designed for a poster for the painter edgar furnhout in 1964. It is based on a grid as always, this time of 4 rows, and 1 for the ascenders or descenders. Again it is very geometric, based on rectangles and quarter circles. It also cuts off some of the quarter circles for letters such as the E and G characters, which seems to add even more personality.

Like much of Crouwel’s work, the solution was derived from the content. The font structure flows from the short rectangular brush strokes used in a ferhout painting.

It has a lovely elegance and balance to it. It is legible as a headline with the similarity in shape giving consistency throughout. The font was never digitised, but you can find a fontstruct redraw of it here. It almost looks architectural like the font is being built in front of you, the two parts fit together perfectly.

Vormgevers
Produced for the Stedelijk museum which Couwel designed most of the printed material since the early 1960’s, this font has since become a classic and probably the most reproduced Crouwel piece of print design. Again the font is very grid based, but one of the most strinking features of the poster was that the page grid was left visible, the same grid used throughout the museum catalogues themelves.

It still has an experimental feel to it, but not to the degree of new alphabet. Again it has a wonderful balance to. The black and white tones of the poster seem to place the emphasis fully on the structure of both the font and the page.

So thats it for this showcase. Hope you have enjoyed looking at these inspirational typefaces. Often when I am stuck for inspiration I go to the flickr Wim Crouwel pool. check it out. I hope you find it as inspirational as I do. Happy designing.

Good typography in InDesign – setting up a baseline grid

Good clean typography is a fundamental skill of any designer. Most designers believe they have good typography but in my experience it is something which is developed through time and experience. I think we all begin our design lives with a desire to be outrageously creative, and only as we mature, begin realise that simplicity and structure is just as, if not more important. In this article, I will go through some simple steps to acheive good clean well structured typography in Adobe Indesign.

The first step is to choose your typeface. In this case I have chosen a simple standard font of Helvetica Neue. I have set it up at 10pt size and 12pt leading. It is important to consider legibility at this point. I try not to go below 9pt for any brochure or printed material, but if the document is to be viewed digitally such as a pdf, it is worth doing it larger.

Next choose how many columns you want the page to be. Here you must consider aesthetics and legibility. Columns are important as they help give the page more structure, but also make a printed document easier to read. Studies show that 8-10 words per line is the most legible and I have tried to reflect this by choosing a 4 column layout. Also, consider border dimensions and the space between the columns. It is common for the space between columns to be half of the border length. In my example I have chosen a 10mm border and 5mm between the columns. Already we see that the page is taking shape. As I have already said, I believe structure is the key to good typography, and these four columns and borders will provide the structure for the entire document. If it is a brochure it will help bring consistency to the whole thing. Images and quotes could should all submit to this grid.

So we have set up a grid vertically, the next step will be to set up a horizontal or baseline grid, which all our text will stick to. This is a key factor to good typography and InDesign is a great bit of software as it has all the tools to makew this process simple. We have already chosen our leading (12pt) so we will set up a grid to reflect this. Go to the top bar menu InDesign>Preferences>Grid. This menu box should display.

Start the grid at 10mm in accordance with your borders. Type into the Increment Every box, 12pt in accordance with your type leading. Press OK. The grid is now set up, to make it visible, go to the top bar menu again, View>Grids and Guides>Show baseline Grid. You will now see guides running across the page horizontally at the same leading as your type. Now make your type stick to the grid. Bring up the paragraph display box, Window>Type and Tables>Paragraph. Select your type box and click on the Align to baseline grid button in the bottom right hand corner. All type lines should now stick perfectly to your grid lines. All further type we will insert from now on will also be made to align to this grid.

Now we will add a heading. The key here is to set the leading up that it will align nicely to our already set up baseline grid. I have set my title at 95pt with a leading of 72pt. Basically I have made the leading to be a multiple of the 12pt our baseline grid is already set up to. This way each line can naturally line up with a line of the body text. The title size also allows it to sit nicely and not overlap at all. If the tops of letters such as h is hitting a lower curve of a g it can reduce legibility and also make it ugly. Don’t forget to click the Align to baseline grid button on the paragraph formating box again. Also select a text wrap so the text will not overlap the heading but flow round it. It should look something like this.

I shall now add an introduction paragraph in the exact same way. This time I will select 24pt leading, again a multiple of our 12pt grid. Align it to the grid and it should look something like this…

As you can see, everything is aligning perfectly giving the page a neat structured feel. In most cases I try to keep the alignment consistent, but in this case I have been a bit creative and made the intro and title right aligned to stick to the body text paragraph and give a crisp centre line.

So thats it, I have waffled on long enough. Hope you enjoyed this tutorial.Typography is a massive subject, and this article just includes some of the things that have helped me. Please let me know if it has helped you at all. What can I do to make it better?

Note: This article was originally one of my first in 2007, but at the time I had very little visitors so wanted to publish it again as most of it is till relevant. Hope you enjoy.

The customer is not always right

Years ago, I was commissioned to produce an A5 leaflet for someone who ran a cleaning company. I remember at the briefing stage she stated exactly what she wanted and I also remember thinking: “There’s too much information for this to work. The design is going to be too crowded and will obscure the message. However despite my misgivings, which I made clear to her, I agreed to produce the leaflet exactly to her spec.

Needless to say the job didn’t turn out well and the leaflet looked terrible. It was too crowded with too many messages to have any real selling point or be memorable. My point is that the client didn’t understand what would make a successful leaflet, but it was easier to to just go along with her. This was completely wrong, and I didn’t end up getting paid for the job as she was not happy with the outcome. Yes I advised her, but as designers and experts we have to do more than just express concern.

I have often found working in the design and media industries that everyone has an opinion. Even if they don’t know much about design they “know what they like”.

And it is the same in marketing. Clients often hire experts only to dictate exactly what they want, so what is the point, why hire someone in the first place? It seems like they’re only looking to justify their own opinions.

In many cases the client’s suggestions will be incorrect. But what can you do, they are the client, right, they pay the bills so what they say goes right? Wrong. It is always worth  going the extra step and making sure your suggestions are taken into consideration or even dropping the project if you know that what is being proposed isn’t going to work but the client insists on doing it their way.

Obviously this is an extreme reaction and there is always room for compromise, but the point is there is not much point going along with something you know will turn out badly. As in my example the client may not be happy, even though you were just following their suggestions, and will probably blame you. And once the client realises it’s not working you could both end up losing money by implementing countless changes from a cllent who has little or no experience in what is feasible.

Ultimately it is better to trust your instinct and your experience. Be polite, but make your point to the client as a statement, not a question and give a clear explanation of why. Say, ‘this is the best way to do it because…’ or ‘this will not work because….’. The project is more likely to be successful if they decide to use your judgement and experience and hopefully after the final result the client will accept that all along you knew what you were doing.

I suppose it comes down to professional integrity. It is a big hassle to argue with a client and tell them they are wrong and much easier to just do exactly what they say. And in fact this may turn out OK in the sense that they may be happy with the outcome, even if you’re not. However, it will leave you with little pride in your work and no amount of money can make up for that.