So, I am still reading Jan Tschichold’s The New Typography. To me, there is a lot of interesting things in the book. For example how Tschichold calls out people for making stuffs for aethetics that is counter-productive towards pragmaticsm. I think I am going to try defying all the rules the book told me not to do when making a typography layout.

The content in the posters are extract from the book that Tschichold started talkingh about what elements should the new typography contains. On the left handside first row, it is a standard layout of how Jan Tschihold would want at that time: flush left, assymetry, hierachy of weight and so on. And across the row I broke the layour; and down the line I demolished the hietachy. And then I took the last one (right handside, bottom row), and iterate further on all the rules the book hated.

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For example, ornaments that do not add anything to the content should be avoided, and the same goes to colouring. Therefore, I added those progressively. Also, he had strong affinity towards using sans serif, saying that they are “a typeface expressive of our own age, free from all personal characteristics.” So, I put Fraktur the blackletter, and Comic Sans in it. In addition to typefaces and layout, the book also had a clear guidlines of all the dimension for each printed matter, like how big should be an envelop, an invoice, a ticket should be. So, I also started to took a break from the A4 settings in my Illustrator. It almost looked unpleasant to read un that last iteration. Then I wondered what happened if I just added one element Tschichold wanted, to see how it reverse my process. And then I just put back the heitachy, keeping the funny colour, in consistent layout and typefaces.

Not surprising, but I am still amazed by how immedaitely more readable even just after putting back one rule into the layout. I think the take away with this practice was to examine how much of the rules from this modernist book were realistic in terms of achieving efficiency and clarity of potraying messages. After the tutorial, people told me to experiment physically like letterpress or somthing of the nature. The progress is yet to be determined.