View onto Germany

Rediscovering an Old Typeface

By Jason Mannix

Today’s fonts are generated by computers. Typography has little to do with inkpots, paper, quills or nibs. Graphic designer and German Chancellor Fellow, Jason Mannix, tracks down an old typeface and rediscovers a traditional craft.

The Californian fashion label Juicy Couture uses broken script to reach a young audience. Photo: Flickr / Qiao-Da-Ye

We are overwhelmed by thousands of messages every day. Each with its own meaning. Each competing for attention. Each relying on typography to help convey the timbre, emotion and intensity of the information. Good type gives weight and character to words. It directs emphasis. It distinguishes voices. It sets a pace and a tone. It creates a mood. As a graphic designer, I am fascinated by the shape of the letterforms themselves, those individual building blocks of language. So much of the act of reading depends on the interplay between light and dark on the page. Blocks of text become complex puzzles of scale, density, spacing and proportion. In every way, type is visible speech.

It is an understatement to say that Germany has a rich typographic tradition. As a German Chancellor Fellow, I will be focusing my attention specifically on the beautiful form and complex persona of German broken script, commonly called Blackletter. I am fascinated by Blackletter largely because I don’t quite know how to interpret it. I am drawn to its emotive ornament and its sensual non-geometry. Its distinct lines and dark strokes overpower the page. Its letters are mysterious, iconic and expressive.

Blackletter – more than just a question of taste

I find two areas particularly intriguing. The first is the longstanding rivalry between Blackletter and Roman type, its historic antithesis. The second is Blackletter’s relevance in contemporary culture. Most of Europe has long preferred the fluid, rational forms of Roman type and has dismissed Blackletter as a cramped, illegible type style for continuous reading. But since the fifteenth century, German-speaking cultures have lived with a dual script system. Through the years the opposition between the two has had momentous polarities: Mediaevalism versus Modernism, Protestantism versus Catholicism, German Romanticism versus French Enlightenment and ultimately, the notion of type for a people versus type for a nation.

The renaissance of broken script in modern advertising campaigns: Gangsta rapper 50 Cent on a Reebok big board. Photo: Flickr / thousandshipz

What had evolved into a choice of taste became, by the nineteenth century, an issue of prestige. Otto von Bismarck, Chancellor of the German Empire and aristocrat, would often receive books as gifts. If they were not printed in Blackletter he would return them with a note, “I don’t read German books set in Latin letters.” Blackletter survived well into the twentieth century before being politicised and exploited by the National Socialists for propaganda purposes – only to be vilified and forbidden by the same group. In 1941, Hitler instructed Martin Bormann to circulate a letter claiming (falsely) that broken scripts were in fact “Schwabacher Jewish letters”, and a ban was imposed on their use in printing. Blackletter quickly disappeared, tarnished and disgraced.

A type for beer labels and Gangsta Rap

Blackletter has come to represent two rather contradictory extremes: traditional values and rebellious individuality. Our interactions with it come in the form of beer labels, newspaper mastheads, congratulatory certificates, sports teams or anything trying to convey a sense of being rustic. But in recent years, Blackletter has re-emerged in marketing departments to bring new life to struggling, youth targeted brands. The fashion label Juicy Couture and the sportswear producer Reebok, for example, have both launched ad campaigns set in Blackletter. It has played prominently in the music industry with genre-defying success: from Heavy Metal to Gangsta Rap. It has become the default script of outsider subcultures including African-American and Latino gangs as well as neo-Nazi youth. Compared with Roman type, Blackletter has become oddly ownable as a powerful form of self-expression and as a fashionable alternative to the mainstream.

Despite these associations, the hand-influenced letters were always meant to serve language. I will be tracing their evolution from early manuscripts in the libraries in Munich and Augsburg to the sketchbooks of twentieth-century masters like Rudolf Koch. My goal is to design an original, contemporary typeface and accompanying specimen book inspired by my research.

Type design has always existed as a specialised trade. But as the proliferation of software continues, designers become farther removed from the sense of discipline and refinement that comes with apprenticing. I am looking for a different approach. For me, this year is about reconnecting with the hand and rediscovering the poetic. We are currently living in the reign of the stoic sans-serif typeface (think Helvetica). Written communication has become almost completely mechanised. The need for penmanship and handwriting is all but extinct in the digital world of text messaging and email. I am trying to find a better balance between the technology and the tradition. It is my wish to reanimate Blackletter as a creative expression of the self, to reclaim some of its intimacy and to re-establish a stronger sense of craft in my own professional development. I am truly honoured that the Humboldt Foundation has afforded me the opportunity.

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