on a red stage

“Six women dancing together on a red stage naked
The leaves are green on all the trees in Paris now
I will be home in two months and look you in the eyes”

—Allen Ginsberg, Message, 1958, from Collected Poems 1947–1997.

a fine prospect

“‘I like a fine prospect, but not on picturesque principles. I do not like crooked, twisted, blasted trees. I admire them much more if they are tall, straight and flourishing. I do not like ruined, tattered cottages. I am not fond of nettles, or thistles, or heath blossoms. I have more pleasure in a snug farm-house than in a watch-tower and a troop of tidy, happy villagers please me better than the finest banditti in the world.’”

—Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility, 1811.

A Magna Carta

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Michael Bierut’s portfolio

‘əpoɔı̣un sı̣ pooɓ ʇɐɥʍ

Why is The Red Cross, Red?

the traditional Latin name for Switzerland

“The emerging International Typographic Style was exemplified by several new sans-serif type families designed in the 1950s. The geometric sans-serif styles, mathematically constructed with drafting instruments during the 1920s and 1930s, were rejected in favor of more refined designs inspired by . . . Akzidenz grotesk. . . . In 1954 a young Swiss designer working in Paris, Adrian Frutiger, completed a visually programmed family of twenty-one sans-serif fonts named Universe. . . .
In the mid-1950s, Edouard Hoffman of the HAAS type foundry in Switzerland decided that the Akzidenz Grotesk fonts should be refined and upgraded. Hoffman collaborated with Mex Miedinger, who executed the designs, andt their new sans serif, with an even larger x-height than that of Univers, was released as Neue Haas Grotesk. When this face was produced in Germany . . . the face name was [changed to] Helvetica, the traditional Latin name for Switzerland. Helvetica’s well-defined forms and excellent rhythm of positive and negative shapes made it the most specified typeface internationally during the 1960s and 1970s.”

—Phil Meggs & Alston Purvis, Meggs’ History of Graphic Design, 2006.

Akzidenz Grotesk

“The Berthold Foundry [at the turn of the twentieth-century] designed a family of ten sans serifs that were variations on one original font. This Akzidenz Grotesk (called Standard in the United States) type family had a major influence on twentieth-century typography. In addition to . . . four weights . . . Berthold released three expanded and three condensed verions. Akzidenz Grotesk permitted compositors to achieve contrast and emphasis within one family of typefaces. It was a major step in the evolution of the unified and systematized type family.”

–Phil Meggs & Alston Purvis, Meggs’ History of Graphic Design, 2006.

medium-weight monoline serifless capitals

“Sans-serif type made its modest debut in an 1816 specimen book issued by William Caslon IV. Buried . . . in the back of the book, one line of medium-weight monoline serifless capitals proclaimed “W CASLON JUNR LETTER FOUNDER.” It looked a lot like an Egyptian face with the serifs removed, which is probably how Caslon IV designed it. . . .
Sans serifs, which became so important to twentieth-century graphic design, had a tentative beginning. The cumbersome early sans serifs were used primarily for subtitles and descriptive material under excessively bold fat faces and Egyptians. They were little noticed until the early 1830s, when several typefounders introduced new sans-serif styles. . . . Vincent Figgins dubbed his 1832 specimen sans serif in recognition of the font’s most apparent feature, and the name stuck.”

—Phil Meggs & Alston Purvis, Meggs’ History of Graphic Design, 2006.