Pioneers of Modern Typography

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Pioneers of Modern Typography was a book written by Herbert Spencer in 1969.

In both his Typographica journals and in Pioneers of Modern Typography, Spencer brought the typographical experiments and design history of Continental Europe to Britain and the English language. In Lund Humphries description of the book: "Modern typography does not have its origins in the conventional printing industry. Its roots are entwined with those of twentieth-century painting, poetry and architecture, and it flowered quite suddenly and dramatically in the twenty years following the publication of Marinetti's Futurist manifesto in 1909." [1]

The book influenced later graphic designers. Peter Saville, designer of record sleeves for Joy Division, New Order and other Factory Records artists, was notably influenced by the book: "...the look of Punk didn't offer much hope for a fresh graphic language. This is where Malcolm Garrett was to be invaluable. Malcolm had a copy of Herber Spencer's Pioneers of Modern Typography. The one chapter that he hadn't reinterpreted in his own work was the cool, disciplined "New Typography" of Tschichold and its subtlety appealed to me. I found a paralled in it for the New Wave that was evolving out of Punk. In this, as it seemed at the time, obscure byway of graphic design history, I saw a look for the new cold mood of 1977-78 ... So for me, the door to graphic enlightenment was the book, Pioneers of Modern Typography. My entire education about the art and design movements of the twentieth century, other than Pop, began at that point."[1]

Pioneers of Modern Typography was revised and reprinted in 2004 by Rick Poynor, prolific author and founder of Eye magazine.

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  1. ^ Eye, Number 17, Volume 5, Summer 1995.