Alex Day

Overt, not covert: How effective can type choice be in branding and in conveying the message of the words underneath?

Typography in branding is often taken for granted. Legibility, flexibility, aesthetics and context all contribute towards an effective typeface, that can convey the most subconscious but effective of messages. The sheer explosive variety of typefaces that have emerged since the development of the computer and the digital age, means that the world is filled with creative, dull, versatile, specific, perfect, imperfect, effective, unnoticeable, famous and undiscovered fonts, each that can convey the same word with a range of diverse subliminal meanings. This essay will look at examples of typographical use in branding - good and bad - to answer how important typography is.

President Gotham

The 2008 US Presidential Election campaign came down to the Democrats, ran by the fresh-faced junior senator of Illinois, Barack Obama, and the Vietnam War veteran and Republican, John McCain. A campaign that came to almost $2 billion worth of spending, not many thought that one of the most noticable differences in the branding of the two candidates would be the choice of typeface. With the growing unpopularity of Bush’s War in Iraq, the challenging campaigns focussed on change and reform, which offers an explanation as to why the winning typeface was Obama’s Gotham - a solid, durable, authorative font, but that seemed “suited to a dynamic, yet conscientious, American public servant” (Rawsthorn, 2008). McCain’s choice of Optima for his brand coincided with the typeface’s use on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, tying in the candidate’s “status as a war hero; this is his story, and Optima helps him tell it” (Heller, 2008). 

The Great Helvetica Switch

Simon Garfield’s chapter in Just My Type entitled “What is it about the Swiss?” discusses the font most frequently in the limelight since it’s creation in the late 1950’s; Helvetica. It swept across the world of commercial branding, becoming the chosen typefaces for some of the world’s most well-known companies; Bloomingdale’s, Gap, Knoll, BMW, Jeep, Toyota, Kawasaki, Panasonic, Urban Outfitters, Nestlé, Lufthansa, Saab, Oral B, The North Face, Energizer, American Apparel.,..The list became almost endless, as did Helvetica’s fame, which seemed to exude the fame of the words it was dressing. This section will look at why Helvetica was such a strong choice of type, but also why it’s original advantages has been lost as it’s recognition has exploded.

The Typeface Of That Time

Looking at typography in Presidential Campaigns has led me to think about how typography creates an impact in branding campaigns. Examples include:

Gotham for the Obama 2008 and 2012 campaign

Optima for McCain's 2008 campaign

Cooper Black for easyJet's branding as a friendly, low-budget airline vs RyanAir's Arial Extra Bold approach

IKEA's switch to Verdana from Futura

London Underground "Underground"/New York Subway "Helvetica"

The Great Helvetica Switch (e.g. AmericanAirlines, Widgco, American Apparel, Coca-Cola)

Joshua Berger argues that language 'is anything that communicates information'.

But it was Colin Anderson's next job that made Kinneir and Calvert famous. In 1957, Anderson was appointed chairman of the committee to advise on motorway road signs. The first stage of what was to become the M1, between London and Yorkshire, was under construction, and there was a lot of new information to display at speed. Anderson's committee appointed Kinneir as their design consultant.

He and Calvert were offered a little guidance: 'I am anxious you shouldn't embark upon inventing an alphabet of a character quite "new",' Anderson wrote in a letter in June 1958. 'We have as a committee got into the habit of accepting the general weight and appearance of the German alphabet as being the sort of thing we need.'

'It was a request which we chose to ignore,' Calvert remembers. The German alphabet referred to was DIN (Deutsche Industrie Norm), the plainest of faces used for autobahns and West German number plates. It was developed in the 1920s, with strokes of even thickness aiding readability. Engineers felt comfortable with it, not least because it bore no trace of artistry and got you where you needed to go. But Kinneir and Calvert believed DIN to be too crude, and thought it would not fit well within the softer English landscape.

They look at other possibilities, not least another German face called Akzidenz Grotesk, an early sans serif from the end of the nineteenth century. One contemporary designer has described Akzidenz as being 'both approachable and aggressive at the same time,' which may be just the qualities one demands of a sign: the clear type reads well from a distance but its thin, consistent and rather monotone letters don't detain the imagination long.

In Britain and America, Akzidenz Grotesk was usually called Standard, a suitable name for something with such little personality. It was to become a key inspiration for both Univers and Helvetica, but its main use in the first half of the twentieth century was for trade catalogues and price lists. It is one of the most significant faces without the name of a recognised designer attached, seemingly being designed by committee at the Berthold foundry, before being modernised and enlarged in the 1950s by Gunter Gerhard Lange.

The new alphabet developed by Kinneir and Calvert would soon have a name - Transport - and its features would guide drivers all over the world, not least the curve on the end of the l (borrowed from Johnston), and the obliquely cut curved strokes of the letters a, c, e, f, g, j, s, t and y. The letterforms were specifically designed to enable drivers to read place names as swiftly as possible, and the duo had found a simple truth: word recognition was easier and faster when upper and lower case combined. This wasn't just a question of legibility; we seldom read an entire word before comprehending it, and skimming is easier when the letters flow as they do in a book. But the letters were only half the battle; it was their exact use on signs that would be just as challenging. 

Following the Second World War and Cold War, Europe was left in fear of further destruction. There were no rules, no structure - just chaos. The Modernist design era arrived to reform the rules and providing scaffolding to the structure, controlling the chaos with universal boundaries. By breaking design down into it’s functional forms, it became about reliable pieces that could be accessed and understood by all, fitting into grids and families to retain the order that was so desperately desired. 

A combination of European designers and design houses provided the fuel for the revolution, notably Germany, Switzerland and the Netherlands. The Bauhaus, De Stijl and Constructivist movements all influenced designers such as Josef Muller-Brockmann, Jan Tschichold and Armin Hofmann, who became the icons for the Modernist graphic design era. Their work became known as the International Typographic Style, and worked under strict grid systems. Work became stripped back to it’s bones. It’s purpose was the critical decider of it’s appearance, reducing elaboration to increase capacity for function. 

Akidenz Grotesk, Helvetica and Univers arguably defined the typographic style of the period, with The success of these fonts stemmed from their neutrality, and, as Wim Crouwel says “neutralism was a word that we loved. It should be neutral. It shouldn’t have a meaning in itself. The meaning is in the content of the text and not in the typeface”. Although this may have changed over the years for Helvetica, which became the most successful commercial typeface and one that can sell based on its appearance rather than the message it portrays, the principles of the Modernist style still remain within, and define an era which has remained near permanent in modern design on all formats. 

But, as so regularly cliched, rules are made to be broken, and this invited a new reform and trend of design; Post-Modernism. If the Swiss Style represents a tall, structured, gridded building in the city of Basel, post-modernism represents the colourful graffiti covering its walls. The Swiss Punk style emerged and brought a radical freedom to design, a new aesthetic that was crude, impure, chaotic and irregular. 

Wolfgang Weingart epitomized the Swiss Punk typographic style, taking the Swiss Style as a starting point and blowing it apart. In his words, “what’s the point of being legible, if nothing inspires you to take notice of it?”. The expressive, unlocked style that emerged was attacked by the Swiss elders, not because of it’s aesthetic but because it represented the demise of the Modernist hegemony. 

Helvetica. A powerful word that represents a powerful font. Inescapable, it has become the world's most commercially successful typeface since it's release in 1957. It was loved by the Swiss Style movement because of it's neutrality. It encapsulated everything that the Modernist design movement meant - form over function. Helvetica's neutral form meant the function of the underlying context was prioritised.

But things have changed. A typeface is often described as the clothes for the language, and whereas before Helvetica represented a white t-shirt and a pair of blue 501's, it's commercial appreciation has turned it into something of a primadonna. It's now wearing flashy designer clothes, distracting from what lies underneath.

Anything looks good in Helvetica

The typeface has developed into something in the spotlight, that takes away the beauty or meaning of the language it's clothing. It has become so widely loved and respected that almost anything looks good in Helvetica. I could get my dog to sit on my keyboard and the resulting text would still look good, because it's in Helvetica. When reading it, you would still say it looks good, dismissing the mismatch of grammar and letters, because it's in Helvetica. If a safety sign said "WARNING STOP WHAT YOU'RE DOING" you'd keep on doing what you're doing until after you'd finished appreciating the smooth and strong Helvetica curves, and by then it'd be too late. The function now arrives after the form.

American Apparel; a great brand that I respect. It was one of the many multi-national corporations to adopt the Helvetica typeface that, in the words of Michael Bierut, "must have felt like you had crawled through a desert with your mouth caked with filthy dust, and then someone offers you a clear, refreshing distilled icy glass of water". It revolutionised the brand, as it did with many others. The t-shirt shown below is one released by AA in the last year or so, and represents the rant above. A t-shirt with two letters on. In Helvetica. The wearers of these t-shirts, in general, won't even know what they're portraying. They wear it because it looks good and, on the most part, the letters on the front coincide with their initials (trendy, eh?).

During the late 1970s, the International Style that had ruled much of European design began to fade. Wolfgang Weingart, who had spent his earlier years studying at the Basel School of Design under Hoffman, joined his tutor in breaking away from the Swiss Style, embracing a Post-Modern era. Experimenting with photo typesetting as opposed to metal typesetting,  Weingart was able to create intricate textures and patterns with type and image by layering film. 

"My teaching process engages a simple, direct and open attitude towards typography, having fun exploring all the possibilities of classical typography, systematic typography, ugly typography, research typography, rigid typography, computer typography, crazy typography, painting typography, do-it-yourself typography, Swiss typography, letter-spacing typography..."

  This Swiss Punk style that emerged was attacked by the Swiss Style elders, as it signalled the demise of Modernist hegemony. Weingart did not dismiss the qualities of Swiss typography completely, however, recognising that it's conservative design was too good not to influence his playful, experimental approach. 

The Post-Modernist era that was ushered in in the early 1980s "urgently questioned certainties laid down by Modernism and rebelled against grand Eurocentric narratives in favour of multiplicity." The standards set by Muller-Brockmann & co. looked to be falling apart, during an era that was experimental, chaotic, ugly, anarchic, grungy, excessive, egotistical, deconstructive, gritty, complex, unbound and over-burdened. The Apple Mackintosh released in 1984 allowed amateurs from everywhere to experiment with type design, as well as presenting a new platform for communication and interaction. 

The Post-Modern era hit as two of the centuries most iconic designers, Brody and Carson, began to form their own style. David Carson, a notable 'grunge' typographer, was a simple of the deconstructive style moving towards the mainstream, using typography as an expressive medium rather than a legible form. Carson was the art director of Ray Gun magazine, that explored experimental magazine typography. It's chaotic, abstract style was distinctive in appearance, but not always readable. It celebrated pop icons, and was iconic in the increased popularity of Carson's style. 

Josef Müller-Brockmann changed the face of the design industry and was a pioneer in the Swiss Design movement. Born in 1914, he studied design, architecture and history of art at the University of Zurich before opening his own studio in 1936. 

Influenced by the ideas of several design and art movements, such as Constructivism, De Stijl, Suprematism and the Bauhaus, JMB sought a universal graphic expression through grid-based design. He wrote the pivotal book "Grid Systems in Graphic Design", which has become the definitive word on the use of grids, even to this day. 

The style he largely created came at a time when Europe was left in fear of destruction, following the World War II and the Cold War. His work was linked to the Constructivism and Modernist period, which featured other key Western designers such as Jan Tschichold. They aimed to bring order to a chaotic world, by breaking design down into its functional forms, prioritising function over form as a result. 

"Perfection is achieved when there is nothing left to take away" Antoine de Saint-Exupery

An important component of JMB's objective philosophy was functional typographic solution. "The less elaborate the letterform, the more capacity for function" as he said himself, signified his love for the sans-serif typeface. His favourite was Berthold's Akzidenz Grotesk, and remained so even following the emergence of Helvetica and Univers in the late 1950s due to it's more universal formal foundations and increased expression. 

JMB produced a series of posters for the Zurich Town Hall's theatre productions, exemplified here through his iconic Beethoven poster. His graphical representation of music creates a mathematical harmony, releasing a musical harmony as a result. His influence can be seen on the jazz and fusion albums in America at the time, as one of the first to represent musically graphically as opposed to illustratively.

Following his death in 1996, the rules and structure of his work have still lived on. Despite leading designers such as Neville Brody discarding JMB's rules on legible and functional sans-serif type, the Swiss Style will remain one of the most influential movements in the industry. 

Sources

'The Objective Text' by Dr. P. Wilson (2012)

http://www.designishistory.com/1940/joseph-mueller-brockmann/

http://www.blanka.co.uk/design/muller-brockmann

http://ilovetypography.com/2013/01/12/a-firm-turn-toward-the-objective-josef-muller-brockmann-1948-1981/

http://wordsandeggs.wordpress.com/2010/02/02/josef-muller-brockmann-pioneer-of-swiss-graphic-design/

Steve Jobs, June 2005 during a talk at Stanford University