Stylogeny combining Die Neue Typographie × Wendingen

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Style combination · Contrasts

Die Neue Typographie × Wendingen

While Wijdeveld centred ornamental rule frames, Tschichold's asymmetric programme threw them out; pit a centred Wendingen title page against a flush-left sans layout to make the choice between monument and function explicit.

From the research on Wendingen & Amsterdam School Typography

Mix them and make something Die Neue Typographie Wendingen

RiseDie Neue Typographie × Wendingen1923 · 1918
A sample layout drawn from the recipe: shapes from Wendingen, their arrangement from Die Neue Typographie, the finish from Wendingen. Not a real work, and not an image of either style.

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What each style brings

Each part of the design comes from the style with the stronger say in it, and each style gives at least two.

Die Neue Typographie Wendingen & Amsterdam School Typography

Type from Die Neue Typographie
Colour from Die Neue Typographie
Form from Wendingen
Composition from Die Neue Typographie

Wendingen avoids dynamic asymmetry: this is where the two pull against each other, which is the point of the contrast.

Surface from Wendingen

02

The type

Open fonts standing in for each style’s own type, which is often hand-drawn or commercial.

Display · Die Neue Typographie

Rise

Jost, standing in for Futura (Paul Renner, 1927)

Text · Wendingen

The graphic language of Wendingen (1918–1932), monthly of the Amsterdam architects' society Architectura et Amicitia, and its editor H. Th. Wijdeveld: the Amsterdam School's brick Expressionism in print. Wijdeveld built heavy capitals and meanders from compositors' brass rules and centred them in thick rule frames on square, Japanese-sewn pages; invited artists drew the covers. The School also built such capitals in brick and on bridge nameplates. Avant-garde covers, such as El Lissitzky's Proun (1921 no. 11, out 1922) and Vilmos Huszár's De Stijl design (1929), sit outside the house style.

Newsreader; Wendingen used H. Th. Wijdeveld's capitals and meanders assembled from compositors' brass rules and type-case pieces and Architectuur NF (Nick Curtis, Nick's Fonts, 2006), a digital revival of the rule-built letters of Wijdeveld's 1925 Frank Lloyd Wright issue, with his meander ornaments

03

The colours

The ground and leading colours come from Die Neue Typographie, with a counter-accent from Wendingen. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.

Die Neue Typographie Wendingen & Amsterdam School Typography

  • #f3efe4 ground · 36%
  • #141414 ink · 14%
  • #d32a1f accent · 18%
  • #7d7a73 accent · 14%
  • #b8913a accent · 10%
  • #8e2a1e accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #f3efe4;
  --ink: #141414;
  --accent-1: #d32a1f;
  --accent-2: #7d7a73;
  --accent-3: #b8913a;
  --accent-4: #8e2a1e;
  --font-display: "Jost", sans-serif;
  --font-text: "Newsreader", serif;
}

04

The two styles

Bold lowercase lettering reads “higher together” above a stylised black and grey elevated structure whose repeating supports recede toward the lower left. A large red disc sits behind its rising diagonal edge on a cream background. 1923–1940 · Central Europe, Western Europe Die Neue Typographie The programme that turned avant-garde experiment into a functional typographic method, named by Moholy-Nagy in 1923 and codified in Jan Tschichold's 'elementare typographie' (1925) and Die neue Typographie (1928). It demanded asymmetric layouts, sans-serif type, standard paper formats, photography and active white space, all justified by clarity of communication, and spread through the Ring neue Werbegestalter and designers from Delft to Prague. A symmetrical geometric poster in rust orange, ochre, black and cream features a rising semicircular sun with angular rays above the large word “HORIZON.” Stepped shapes, vertical bars and small squares fill an elaborate border on a grainy, aged-paper background. 1918–1932 · Western Europe Wendingen & Amsterdam School Typography The graphic language of Wendingen (1918–1932), monthly of the Amsterdam architects' society Architectura et Amicitia, and its editor H. Th. Wijdeveld: the Amsterdam School's brick Expressionism in print. Wijdeveld built heavy capitals and meanders from compositors' brass rules and centred them in thick rule frames on square, Japanese-sewn pages; invited artists drew the covers. The School also built such capitals in brick and on bridge nameplates. Avant-garde covers, such as El Lissitzky's Proun (1921 no. 11, out 1922) and Vilmos Huszár's De Stijl design (1929), sit outside the house style.

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More combinations

With Die Neue Typographie

All 17 combinations with Die Neue Typographie

With Wendingen

Every style combination