Architype Schwitters is a geometric sans-serif typeface based upon a 1927 phonetic alphabet designed by
Kurt Schwitters
Kurt Hermann Eduard Karl Julius Schwitters (20 June 1887 – 8 January 1948) was a German artist who was born in Hanover, Germany.
Schwitters worked in several genres and media, including dadaism, constructivism, surrealism, poetry, sound, pain ...
(1887–1948). The digital revival, shown at right, was produced by Freda Sack and David Quay of The Foundry.
Like many new experimental types to arise from the early twentieth century avant garde in Europe, Schwitters' type is an attempt to remake the Western writing system through reduction, and the abandonment of idiosynchronies. Schwitters proposed a monocase system, adopting a rectilinear interpretation of roman capitals, and contrasting these with six vowel alternate characters, A, e, J, O, Ü, and y scaled to the same height but based upon Carolingian lowercase. The vowel alternates, though primarily used for the short sound, are used somewhat indiscriminately in his print work. Unlike his contemporaries,
Herbert Bayer
Herbert Bayer (April 5, 1900 – September 30, 1985) was an Austrian and American graphic designer, painter, photographer, sculptor, art director, environmental and interior designer, and architect. He was instrumental in the development of the ...
,
Theo van Doesburg
Theo van Doesburg (, 30 August 1883 – 7 March 1931) was a Dutch artist, who practiced painting, writing, poetry and architecture. He is best known as the founder and leader of De Stijl. He was married to artist, pianist and choreographer Nel ...
, and
Jan Tschichold
Jan Tschichold (born Johannes Tzschichhold, also known as Iwan Tschichold, or Ivan Tschichold; 2 April 1902 – 11 August 1974) was a German calligraphy, calligrapher, typography, typographer and book designer. He played a significant role ...
all who produced experimental ''universal'' alphabets that rejected uppercase, Schwitters retained the form of roman capitals.
Schwitters first developed four intermediate systematic scripts that had round bold vowels combined with straight consonants. The Architype Schwitters revival is an adaptation of those. His actual ''Systemschrift'' should have each letter correspond to its point and type of articulation, similar to
Hangeul
The Korean alphabet, known as Hangul, . Hangul may also be written as following South Korea's standard Romanization. ( ) in South Korea and Chosŏn'gŭl in North Korea, is the modern official writing system for the Korean language. The let ...
. Consonants would be built as strokes diverging from a vertical I-like bar, vowels would have base forms that ranged from a turned U, over O to U and that could have their stems shortened or crossbars added. Letters would form complex ligatures as in
Brahmic script
The Brahmic scripts, also known as Indic scripts, are a family of abugida writing systems. They are used throughout the Indian subcontinent, Southeast Asia and parts of East Asia. They are descended from the Brahmi script of ancient India ...
s.
See also
*
Architype Albers
*
Architype Aubette
*
Architype Renner
*
Architype van der Leck
References
*Friedl, Frederich, Nicholas Ott and Bernard Stein. ''Typography: An Encyclopedic Survey of Type Design and Techniques Through History.'' Black Dog & Leventhal: 1998. .
*Haley, Allen. ''Type: Hot Designers Make Cool Fonts.'' Rockport Publishers Inc, Gloucester; 1998.
*Lupton, Ellen. ''Thinking with Type: A Critical Guide for Designers, Writers, Editors, & Students,'' Princeton Architectural Press: 2004. .
*Macmillan, Neil. ''An A–Z of Type Designers.'' Yale University Press: 2006. {{ISBN, 0-300-11151-7.
External links
Architype 2 types
*[http://www.dbnl.org/tekst/_int001inte01_01/_int001inte01_01_0078.php Kurt Schwitters: ''Anregungen zur Erlangung einer Systemschrift''. In: Internationale Revue I 10 1927–1929. Kraus Reprint, Nendeln 1979] (reprint of original article in German, introducing Systemschrift)
Geometric sans-serif typefaces