Le Système Typographique Imparfaite

Only in the theoretical realm a system remains viable, at least until a new theory replaces it’s thesis, or until we try to use it on practical applications. Werner Heisenberg (°1901 – †1976), was a german theoretical physicist whom was awarded the 1932 Nobel prize in physics for his work in the field of quantum mechanics. he’s most known for his discovery of the “Heisenberg uncertainty principle” which put simply, states that when measuring or observing an experiment, we are involuntarily influencing the results. So when we try to test an idea to take it from the theoretical to the practical realm we basically put it into a situation where a myriad of things will prevent it form achieving the prior foreseen outcome. As long as we keep it on a theoretical level — using previous theorems — however paradoxical they might seem; theories can be proven or negated. When asked to create a line, plain or surface that folds into itself, most people will be startled. yet it can be done by constructing respectively the mind- boggling möbius strip or Klein bottle. Even more paradoxical is Tupper’s self- referential formula that when graphed out in two dimensions visually reproduces the formula itself. this mathematical ouroboros might be the theoretical equivalent of the Droste effect, where a picture of the same picture, displays a picture of the same picture … ad infinitum. No matter how many times you’d graph out Tupper’s formula you will return to the starting point: the formula itself.

Nobody can create something from scratch, everything caries within itself a certain zeitgeist and history upon which it is a reaction. this can be through ameliorating, fixing, discarding, … previous systems, objects, ideas, creations, … Picasso knew this and aptly so once said that “Bad artists copy. good artists steal.”. Well he was right, … sort of. If you’re reading this there’s a big chance you’re a graphic designer or have a designer’s background, if so you are aware that discarding faulty idea’s is inherent to the job. after we have deduced from the brief the right question, we constantly have to judge wether a proposed idea will sufficiently comply to the problem at hand, or another might be more suitable.

1. Some of these ideas are discarded almost instantly.
2. Some of these are deemed solutions and get tested in practice through a model, mockup, sketch, …
3. only a handful ideas turn out to offer a fulfilling solution to the situation

It sounds like a daunting task and it frequently is so, however over time, experience from previous projects drastically improves the skill to filter out unsuitable ideas. another options is to look and see how others, when faced with a similar problem, have responded. Basically to steal the reason why, and Not the form of, what they came up with.

When people set out a certain goal, finding a useful system can become the holy grail of the entire enterprise. During the space-race in the 1970’s, NASA started to work on it’s visionary concept for a reusable space vehicle. it had to provide a reliable shuttle service to bring both people and cargo in an orbit around planet earth. Although their solution — essentially a reusable glider attached to three massive rockets — was ingenious, unfortunately the program was never stable enough to provide the reliable service that the engineers had envisioned. So on July 8th, 2011, following 2 major malfunctions (the Challenger in 1986 and Columbia in 2003) the 135th Space transportation System, STS-135 in short, was the last to reach orbit. On paper the engineers were on to something, but the Space transportation System was just too expensive and not the most reliable of options. therefore the Americans have now joined the astronauts from most other countries by piggy- backing to the iSS using the Russian’s Soyuz spacecraft.

Skylab (°1973 – †1979) is another one of the enthralling past inventions from the minds of the NASA engineers. this space laboratory, that was a platform to investigate the effects of space on a human body, was a predecessor of the ISS (°1998) and even the Russian’s MIR (°1986 - †1996). Being the first laboratory outside of earth’s atmosphere, it involved many unusual features to test the human body in a weightless state. one of them was a padded ring on the inside of the cylindrical craft, that was used as a perpetual treadmill. instead of a hamster staying still in it’s spinning wheel, the pioneers of Skylab could revolve until exhaustion in the inert inner rim. this way they could test what physical exercise an astronaut has to do in order the have the same physical fitness upon re-entering the earth’s atmosphere. Otherwise their body would have converted the muscles to energy, basically letting them deteriorate due to inactiveness. When all their testing was finished and thus the lab became redundant they let Skylab re-enter the earth’s atmosphere. on disintegrating during the descent, the debris was scattered across Western Australia.

Regardless the temporality of any system, we still depend on them since basically: they just make stuff much easier and more productive, and therefore more economically viable. Society is a system that was implemented — and is constantly being questioned and redefined — when humans first started settling and organizing themselves as a community. all these years later we have learned that feudal, Communist and Capitalist systems all have their detriments, but depending on where you live that’s what you have to live with. it’s what keeps you and your peers from a state of total anarchy. When in the late eighteenth century Jeremy Bentham designed a new type of building: the panopticon — from: to see (gr: optikon) + all (gr: pan) — at first glance this seemed like the perfect solution to a specific problem: how can you keep as many people under control — whilst they don’t know wether they are being watched — using the minimal amount of manpower?

His solution was essentially to make a huge circular structure with a guard post placed on a pillar in the centre. in the pre CCTV-era, a single guard sitting in this centralized bunker could check on each inmate through the bars of their cell. the idea being that, not knowing wether the sentry was looking at them or not, the convicts would always behave themselves. Now with the omnipresence of CCtV and thanks to new insights in social rehabilitation, prisons are being constructed using totally different principles. older prisons that were built as a panopticon have either been abandoned, repurposed, demolished or at least substantially revised. in one of the three panopticons that were build in the Netherlands — the Koepelgevangenis in Arnhem — the central sentry post has been interchanged for a large domed yard.

Although Bentham’s idea seemed like a paradox, theoretically it could have worked. he just forgot to take one variable out of consideration: the ever evolving and unpredictable nature of humans.

In 1945 when the allied and Russian forces reached Berlin, one half of both the city and the entire country had to follow the regulations of a new and alien system. the DDR nationalized most businesses, including the eastern german type foundries. under this — what could nowadays be compared to a — hostile takeover, one company (the government) took hold of all the foundries and centralized the production, administration research and development, …

Instead of one foundry copying the work of a rival, the idea was that now matrices would be licensed in the West, of which type could be cast to be distributed around the republic. however, since licensing costs were too high and local typedesigners would otherwise be out of work, clones of the “Western typographic canon” were produced. “Timeless” as the name implies was a redrawn version of times. for other copies, such as those of Futura or Helvetica, the designers of VEB Typoart had more freedom. “Maxima” from the hand of Gert Wunderlich was in my eyes the most successful. this blend of modernist sans serifs such as Helvetica and Univers took all traits of a then cutting edge, modern look and injected it with an eastern german zeitgeist. It is a nice example of how in a system where people are forced to copy existing designs, the inherent freedom of the design process — even when allowed only small deviations from the source material — can produce refreshing new material.

The typeface you are currently reading is the result of a similar situation. it’s and exploration into the liberties and restrictions of a unified grid. a grid meant to systematize the multitude of shapes required for the roman alphabet.

In 1876 Joseph A. David acquired the patents for such a system he had invented for sign writers. With his universal stencil — the Plaque Découpée Universelle — all UPPERCASE, lowercase, number, punctuation, accents, … could be sourced from the grid on the stencil. a basic understanding of letter- forms and some trial-and-error is all that stood between a literate person and some well executed signage. for this reason David also envisioned marketing the stencil to educational institutions. he thought that young students could get a grasp for, and understand the construction of, each individual letter whilst goofing around with a pencil or marker. To the untrained eye these shapes might seem as the skeleton form for aLL typography, when in reality it’s only oNe answer of the many possibilities in interpreting the idea of a glyph into a functional group of glyphs. it has to be said that from a type designer’s perspective it isn’t even a successful, coherent collection of glyphs! many lack necessary optical corrections for their height or weight corrections within glyphs. and then we haven’t even addressed individual problems with certain glyphs, such as the counter of an “a” or the awkward central connection in the “S”, that could be constructed in a more fluent, organic way.

Yet although a typographic purist might at first see these as a handicap, he will realize that these are necessary generalizations without which the grid behind the PDU couldn’t exist. The inherent beauty of the grid becomes apparent when using a physical copy of the stencil itself. There is a freedom hidden within the PDU that allows for different variations for many letters. In the digital version of the PDU, this “rebellious” act against the grid has been incorporated into some exuberant alternates which defies it’s apparent rigid nature.

Together with the stencil, specimen and fonts the PDU should not be seen as a means to commercialize the aesthetics of the Plaque Découpée Universelle, but as an attempt to rejoice over the inventiveness and possibilities that David was able to put into his system. in the PDU font, many of the possibilities and limitations of the stencil have been explored and added to the font. for example, besides the exuberant alternates, some of the pattern making capabilities of the stencil have also been added to the family.

Although based in the USA, David launched the stencil in Paris during the “Exposition Universelle” in 1878. When working with it, it quickly becomes clear that he hadn’t envisioned it to be used in many other countries. on the top of the stencil, extra shapes have been added to allow the construction of the basic diacritics: circumflex (ê), acute (ó), grave (ù) and ring (å). although impractical for a practicing sign writer, the other diacritics common for Spanish, Eastern European and many other exotic languages, are a little harder to construct, but can be by recycling bits of the stencil itself.

David could have implemented a broader language support, yet these and all other — more specialized — glyphs as included in the PDU fonts have only been constructed by moving the stencil — so without drawing curves from thin air or rotating the stencil. many of these puzzles — like for example the euro sign — were even non-existent in 1878, so this speaks for the PDU’s adaptability.yet this didn’t solve one mayor problem: what to do with the capitals?

When constructing the ascenders and descenders of the lowercase the stencil has to be moved either upwards or downwards for a second tracing. as such an /h/, /g/, … has to be constructed by combining two individual parts. But this leaves the capitals on the same height as the lowercase, making them fade away in a paragraph. this wouldn’t be problem as smallcaps or if you are setting a text about the bauhaus, but is quite useless when you try to set anything else. although there’s no evidence of this, there’s a good chance David marketed his stencils in different sizes for a variety of applications, so the liberty was taken to construct a bigger stencil for the enlargement of the — now — smallcaps.

As such PDU regular and outline contain a whopping 1578 glyphs each and 229 more for the pattern versions. this is the result of an attempt to explore all the possibilities and defects of the stencil, so you don’t have to, but can quickly explore the ideas of David by using all the different opentypeTM features. Nevertheless, if you acquired this specimen together with a copy of the stencil, i do hope you take the time to construct some of your own signage. only this way will you really understand the charm and beauty of this seemingly handicapped system.