Interview

Stefan Ghenciulscu and Constantin Goagea
Architectura (Romanian)
March 2008



•For creating a new font, can there be inspiration / a departure point other than in an existing font (group of fonts)? If so, please give us some examples. A city or some architectural trend could be such inspiration sources?

My inspiration comes from many different places but never from an existing font.
I am inspired by architecture, grids on building sites, painting, vernacular and itinerant lettering. Recently I was inspired by the Court Chapel in the Residenz in Würzburg, Germany designed by architect Balthasar Neumann in Baroque style. The chapel with ceiling frescoes by Rudolph Byss are glorious. I was so awe struck, I could not help thinking could you make a typeface that reflects all this?
I took photographs of the chapel and once back in Amsterdam I started sketching on paper. I did not want to use the computer; I wanted to feel the line that I was drawing. Later I will have to scan the drawings in but in the meantime I am having a great time drawing as I used to do. Off course all the type design knowledge that I have built up guides me when making the design, the same as a painter or sculptor builds up his or her knowledge of the human body, my knowledge of weight, stress and structure guides me into making a hopefully elegant and legible font. But unlike the sculptor or painter who can take the human form and go into the realms of fantasy or abstraction, as a type designer unfortunately I cannot do that, the letters must still be read. On second thoughts a calligrapher such as Brody Neuenschwander can take letters into new areas of abstraction and emotion as with the ancient calligraphy of the Ottoman Turks.

Another font I am working on started as a challenge from a young designer/print- maker friend of mine, Kasper Andreasen. We were talking about a new idea I had for a font when he said, ‘You have already done it as I can see clearly the end result in my head, that wasn't being creative’. As a printmaker and artist himself he said he could never see how a piece was going to turn out, that was part of the creative process. He challenged me to start a new type design without envisaging what the outcome would be. We talked about what was inspiring me at the moment and said that I had been taking many photographs of vernacular and industrial lettering in and around the harbours of Amsterdam. It took a long time and a lot of sketching before something started to emerge, it was also very exciting and I ended up with so many different ideas. Working through those ideas a couple of them coalesce into very strong designs.


•Fonts obviously have to posses some general character. But do you think anything goes for anything? How autonomous can a typeface be in relation to the content?

I personally think a typeface should always relate to the content. Whatever font you choose is an emotional choice to the content, it can never be totally autonomous.

I hate seeing fonts being used out of context, for instance if you were setting the work of the English poet William Wordsworth, (1770 –1850) what typeface would you set it in: Bodoni, Garamond, or Baskerville? The answer is very simple, unless there is a set font for a whole series of books, I would choose Baskerville by John Baskerville which appeared in 1757 just before Wordsworth’s birth and remained popular during Wordsword’s lifetime. Wordsworth was the major English romantic poet of his time, Bodoni is Italian, Garamond is French and too early (1485). Monotype Baskerville is historically correct, it is also a beautiful legible typeface with the perfect weight and colour when set in metal type, Caslon would also be
a good choice, as would Foundy Wilson from Alexander Wilson the first Scottish typefounder. Then of course Foundry Wilson would fit even more perfectly with the writer, Sir Walter Scott, (1771–1832) who was a prolific Scottish historical novelist and poet popular throughout Europe during his time.

If you were designing an exhibition of work by architect Mies van der Rohe what typeface would you choose? As he was born in Germany and studied at taught at the Bauhaus perhaps Futura. He moved to America before the Second World War and became very successful there so maybe Franklin Gothic. He was associated with the International Style; therefore Futura or Franklin Gothic would position him too historically and geographically. I would personally choose Helvetica as it is neutral and universal enough, For the French architect Le Corbusier I would choose Univers from the French designer Adrian Frutiger.


•Related to this and to the Blueprint example: where do you trace the line between graphic design on the one hand and typefaces and lettering? Can one reduce the design of the magazine to a frame – fonts, headlines, sizes and places of text blocks and pictures?

Is that not what a magazine is in its basic form: grid, fonts, headlines, sizes and places for text blocks and pictures? Above that, the special use of commissioned photography, a special typeface, quality paper and printing. All these are adding another level of aesthetics and emotion. Blueprint New Era brands the magazine and holds it together. Its art director Patrick Myles has an incredible ability in using photography. He knows when to break the grid and edits and arranges the images in an exciting way. The architectural photography on the cover is always used in a very graphic way. This approach is needed with a publication that competes on the open market, making it appealing not just to architects, but also to a wider range
of potential readers from other creative disciplines.


•There’s always the inevitable question about computers and graphics. Do you think that computer graphics can bring not only total freedom, but also the contrary – a limitation by the programs and the people working with them? There’s also a lot of fuss about web-design. Do you think it alters perception and that people look now differently at a publication? Do you in any way try to take that into account?

I think the computer is a fantastic tool. You can achieve a level of technical excellence unimaginable before, but it is not and never will be a creative tool and all that high level of technical perfection can have a deadening affect. No longer is there any real textural or tactile quality, everything seems seamlessly effortless. Take Ridley Scott's cult film ‘Blade Runner’ you see instantly that a lot of the scenes are created using models but this does not detract from the film. In fact it gives it another more human dimension, something more graspable and palpable. If the film is good you forget the technical deficiencies as you soon become absorbed in the story and that is the same with graphic design, however technically the design is, if its basic concept is bad or weak no amount of technical perfection will hide that. One thing I always tell students is that you are only working within the imagination of the software designer or his programme.

There is an on going discussion as to how conventional print media and the web can effectively work together. I know Blueprint’s art director Patrick Myles is keen
to address this. Some newspapers are already having many different problems in retaining their readership, as there are so many other news sources. My own daily newspaper ‘nrc next ’, has quite short articles aimed at young busy people: if you wish to know more there is always a web page related to the story that gives more in-depth analysis and background information and that is their reaction not only
to the free newspapers but also to the web with which they are in competition.
This small daily newspaper that is not published at weekends hopefully introduces readers to its big weekend sister the NRC Handelsblad, (the Dutch equivalent of ‘The Times’ of twenty years ago and which survives today by making itself more populist). In a few years many newspapers will disappear and their online replacements will make a fortune with advertising links. Take a look at one of Britain's worst tabloids, which is leading in this field, [www.thesun.co.uk] or one of America’s best, The New York Times, [www.nytimes.com] to make a comparison.
At one time nearly everyone on the train was reading a purchased newspaper or a book; now people read the free papers and fiddle with their mobiles. The Foundry now spends a lot of time making sure its fonts work well on screen as well as in print.


•About Architype 1: How do you look a this continuation of the avant-garde?
Is it rather a cultural gesture or a return to the basics – our modern tradition?
Could it be the reviving of a set of principles (not only aesthetic ones)? As you well known, those typefaces were thought by their creators as part of a new art, of a revolutionary change and had a quite powerful ethical and political aspect. How can you relate this to the present context? This question is very important and complicated for architecture now: is modernism a style or an attitude? Do you feel any connection between these developed fonts and contemporary architectural movements?

There is a whole group of graphic designers in London using the language of the International Style, with its strict adherence to the grid, only sans serif and neutral typefaces (usually Helvetica), with text always ranged left. This is in no way revolutionary or avant-garde, it takes its starting point from the Swiss designers in the 1950s, designers such as Josef Müller-Brockmann, Karl Gerstner and Armin Hofmann, this visual language that they developed was the synthesis of all that went on before, starting after the First World War with Constructivism in Russia, Bauhaus in Germany, De Stijl in Holland and the avant-garde all over Eastern Europe. The work of the Swiss graphic designers is very formal, logical and objective, it also kept some of its social content too, though not in the same revolutionary way as before where designers thought they could help produce a better society. The synthesis they perfected is a very distilled and pure version of what went on between the wars, it was design for an emerging consumer society that was still socially conscious and democratic. This International Style is also seen in the architecture of Mies van der Rohe and his post war success building corporate sky-scrapers in North America. But this was not the Mies we new before the war with his Barcelona pavilion or Gropius’ Klee/Kandinsky master houses in Dessau. I always thought before I saw them that these master houses in Dessau would have beautiful clean white interiors, but I was totally surprised to find rich textures and coloured walls, they were still experimenting with designing a future, nothing had settled down yet. In designing the Architype series we wanted to show this excitement that was generated at that time in the search for a new aesthetic, that sadly after the Second World War became the International or Modernist Style and instead of rich colours, DADA, Expressionism and Paul Renner's Futura we got pale grey walls, Helvetica and high- houses with social problems.

Your question is modernism a style or an attitude is a very intriguing one. There are many graphic designers/architects that just simply wish to make earn a good living and do some nice work. Others in their profession wish to help people and affect a positive change in society and the environment, the latter option gets narrower
year by year as our lives, culture and society become increasingly commercialised. In England for instance many of the government agencies that once looked
after housing, hospitals, transport etc, have been privatised, designing for the social sector has largely disappeared and the social responsibility of the privatised company is reduced. Now these companies have to make money for their investors, and in doing so they have to sell and market themselves to us the prospective client (before we were a patient in a hospital). Graphic design in some instances now is no longer helping people but working against them. Instead of being given a simply designed fact sheet that we can easily understand and see the advantage/disadvantage of the service being offered; now we get an attractive brochure in marketing speak with photographs of smiling people selling their services!

So working in a modernist style is a style choice. What the style originally incorporated was social or democratic content, but that is now no longer allowable or relevant in today’s capitalist society. Living in Amsterdam and visiting two
other cities in rapid succession recently, London and Düsseldorf, I came to the conclusion that in all three the market rules. Perhaps in Amsterdam the council’s requirement of mixed housing developments, private, social and student accommodation stays nearest to the original socialist concept of good affordable and surprisingly modern housing, for all.

Architects in England are now asked to take part in design competitions in order
to win a commission to design a new hospital (or housing estate). Once the
architect has won, the hospital trust, which has commissioned him, strips out all
the expensive design features to build the hospital as cheaply as possible.
The hospital looks like commercial architecture, how does the architect feel about all this, his profession has been high jacked by commercial interests. Housing in England is still being built as cheaply as possible in a pastiche Victorian style with mean plastic double glazed windows and bays. Is there any integrity left in design? Of course individual integrity is still there, graphic designers and architects always do their best but maybe collectively we are not as strong as we were.

A very interesting book on the subject of urban future development published by the NAi, ‘Urban Politics Now’ has some many interesting articles on the subject.
To quote;

‘The form and future of cities is increasingly regarded as the product of inescapable processes: the strategic decisions of businesses, consumer preferences,
deeply rooted cultural reflexes. Specifically, with the rise of a neoliberal and
neo-conservative view of society, fundamental decisions about the everyday environment are increasingly determined by the laws of supply and demand or the clash of cultures. Is there still a place for democratic urban politics in such a climate?’


•Can you feel any influence of your teaching experience on the way you design?

Seeing what students do often challenges my own work. Looking at their work keeps me fresh and inspired, keeps me open to new ideas, and keeps me on
my toes!