I’ve been mulling over Adrian Frutiger a fair amount over the past several days; not least because Tiffany and I are to emcee a celebration of his life and work, which happens to be scheduled for Saturday night, but also because I feel as though I am just now beginning to understand his typefaces, whose subtleties and complexities have, until quite recently, simply eluded me. And so I’ve been reading; hence the books, which, since the cessation of the turbulence, have been gathered together once more, read, and subjected to a premature attempt at synthesis. I confess to an early misstep in this work, for I struggled in vein to place Frutiger and his oeuvre somewhere firmly within the nexus of twentieth-century designers and designs. I might have realized that the proper context was perhaps not typography, but rather music, or more specifically, musical composition.
The composer to whom I am able to draw the closest comparison with Frutiger is not Kreisler, as might be suggested by the cheeky title of this post, nor is it Mozart, whose music opens Saturday evening’s program; rather, it is Johann Sebastian Bach, whose consideration of notes and their nuances, coupled with his acute, highly developed numeracy, suggest an apt analogue between one artist and the other, despite the gaps of medium and time.
First, Bach emphasized the dynamic of positive-negative contrast in music, much as Frutiger did with respect to type design. Bach famously declared that while just about anyone could play the notes, it was the treatment of the spaces in-between that fleshed out the real musicians. The great Bach interpreter, Ralph Kirkpatrick, lent further shape to this idea, saying, “Great playing plays the right notes, but it also plays what connects those notes, what gives those notes meaning.” In similar fashon, Frutiger, in his introduction to Signs and Symbols, Their Design and Meaning, wrote:
The white surface of the paper is taken to be ‘empty,’ an inactive surface, despite the visible structures that are present. With the first appearance of a dot, a line, the empty surface is activated. A part, if only a small part, of the surface is thereby covered. With this procedure, the emptiness becomes white, or light, providing a contrast to the appearance of black. Light is recognizable only in comparison with shadow. The actual procedure in drawing or writing is basically not the addition of black but the removal of light.
Second, Bach clearly appreciated much more than the binary contrast of notes and the absence thereof in music; his interest in, and exploitation of, musical subtleties, was epochal. In particular, his use of tonicizations – short-lived references to other keys – served to add color to his textures. In a similar vein, Frutiger’s exquisite nuances lend a beautiful complexity to several of his typefaces, particularly to his sans serifs, which, to the untrained eye, may otherwise appear to approximate Platonic forms, if such things could be said to exist. Charles Bigelow described it like this:
Most readers understand at least a small set of graphic meanings based on variations within a typeface family or between families: Italic versus roman; bold versus normal weight; seriffed versus sans serif; but Frutiger leads us further into a realm of varied half-tones, delicate patterns, and subtle textures, all built up from simple form elements. His work is an exploration of a realm where one thinks not about forms but with forms, and his typeface designs are philosophies expressed not in a language of words but in a language of images. The look of a type in text is a complex graphic expression that is not the content of the text; rather it is an ephemeral yet necessary accompaniament, a visual sensation that is forgotten once the text has been read, as a wrapping is discarded after the gift has been opened or a glass set aside after the wine has been drunk.
Finally, it is well established that Bach was as mathematical a musician as existed at the time. He had keen interests in the golden section, in the Fibonacci sequence, and in the relationship between numbers and letters, all of which underlay a systematic and quantitative approach to composition. Likewise, Frutiger, himself a student of mathematics, pioneered in 1957 a calculated means by which his Univers (which, incidentally, Stanley Morison at the time dubbed the “least worst” of the new sans serifs, evidently missing the point) could be classed. To anyone familiar with the row × column notation employed in matrix algebra, this coding mechanism appears entirely logical and sensible.
So much for Frutiger, at least for now; I have a few days yet. Certainly time enough for an epiphany, should one be required. But while we’re on the topic of introductions, a few of you have kindly written over the past year to inquire whether I could pass on the one that Tiffany and I provided during TypeCon2005 for Matthew Carter. I’d be very glad to do so; here it is:
Good afternoon everyone. Two years ago, at TypeCon 2003 in Minneapolis, we had the very special privilege of introducing Matthew Carter at the Walker Art Center in what was for him, a sort of homecoming. For he had not returned to the city in the eight years since he completed his designs for the now legendary Walker typeface, a font that the Walker continues to use well, and in ever-innovative ways, even as the Walker has reinvented itself in the face of its 2004 expansion.
That evening, Matthew spoke to a capacity crowd of 370 people; there were 75 more outside who, unfortunately for them, could not get in. We hope that everyone who wanted to be here today has a seat in this auditorium, for this afternoon, we – on behalf of the Society of Typographic Aficionados and the Type Directors Club – hear about, and hear from, Matthew Carter in the context of what is nothing less than a celebration: A celebration of fifty years of contributions to the typographic arts in such various guises as designer, professor, mentor, corporate honcho, and always as a friend – a friend to experienced type designers, budding lettering artists, and enthusiasts alike.
When faced with the task of describing what Matthew means to the field of typography, the usual glowing adjectives and substantives naturally flow into one’s mind. One of the best of these comes, we confess, not from the two of us, but from one of those aficionados of whom we speak. You see, after the Minneapolis conference, a survey was sent to all of the attendees, to which one of whom responded in the general comments section, in large caps, MATTHEW CARTER IS THE SHIZNIT!!! Upon reading this comment, we apprehended immediately that this was an expression of considerable appreciation and awe, but we admit that we did not quite know at the time just what SHIZNIT meant.
So we did a bit of research, and we found that SHIZNIT has a dual etymological path. The first, Yiddish: provenance otherwise unknown, but meaning “the best.” This survey respondent clearly meant to tell us that Matthew Carter is the best, and we couldn’t agree more. Interestingly, the second etymological path has a markedly shorter, but much more recent, and complete, history. Date of inception: 1993. The originator? An entertainer who is likely known to many of us: One Snoop Doggy Dogg. Translation: The Shit. Truly, Matthew Carter is the shit. And we mean this, of course, with all the admiration and respect in the world. His contributions to the typographic arts are unparalleled, and his legacy will endure forever.
Thanks for reading. For now, it’s back to the praeludium; the Typophile Film Festival is tomorrow night, and the allegro is hot on its heels.