Paul Renner and His Typography

¶ … Paul Renner, and his typography. Paul Renner was born in 1878, in Wernigerode, Germany. He died in 1956, in Hodingen, Germany. Despite his strict upbringing, during which he learnt the value of duty, of leadership and of responsibility, he was an artist in every sense: a painter, a designer, an author, but he is perhaps best remembered for his skills as a graphic designer, and in particular, as a designer of fonts.

Paul Renner studied architecture and painting in Berlin, Munich and Karlsruhe; he then worked as a painter in Munich. From 1907 until 1917, he worked as a Production Assistant and Presentation Manager for Georg Muller Verlag in Munich. In 1911, he became one of the founders, along with Jan Tschichold, of a private school for illustration in Munich. During the years 1925-26, he was Head of the commercial art and typography department at the Frankfurter Kunstschule, and in 1926, he became Director of the city of Munich's Grafische Berufsschulen, and from 1927, the Meisterschule fur Deutschlands Buchdrucker.

In 1933, and very much as a representative of the German Reich, he was given total control over the design of the German section at the Milan Triennale, for which his talents were recognized, and where he received the Triennale's Grand Prix. In 1933, however, under suspicious circumstances, he was dismissed from teaching: it is said that he was arrested and dismissed from his post by the Nazi regime, after speaking out strongly against the regime (most loudly in his Kulturbolschewismus, the text which led to his arrest).

Following this, he again worked as a painter, from 1934 onwards, until his death in 1956. During this period, right up to his death, he wrote books and monographs on topic pertaining to typography, graphics, lettering and color studies.

As we have seen, Renner was a multi-talented artist, and was a central figure in the major artistic movements in Germany throughout the 1920's and the 1930's. He was also a talented book designer, and created his first book designs for various publishers around his native Munich. Whilst undertaking this work, he wrote numerous books on the subject of graphic design, in particular the design of fonts: his Typografie als Kunst (Typography as Art) and Die Kunst der Typographie (The Art of Typography) were hailed in their time as greats, and are still considered to be amongst the most influential of such texts: indeed, it is said that with these books, he created a new standard for design.

In addition to his many artistic skills, such as painting and writing, he designed many popular fonts, many of which are still very much in use today: Plak (1928), Futura (1928), Futura Black (1929), Futura Schlagzeile (1932), Futura licht (1932), Ballade (1937), Renner Antiqua (1939), and Steile Futura (1952). Indeed, it is for his skills in designing fonts for which he is best known: his Futura still stands as a landmark of modern graphic design.

In the book Paul Renner: The Art of Typography by Christopher Burke, the political, economic and social forces that led Renner - and others - to develop the artistic movement in Germany are discussed. Burke argues that the shortages of the 1920's led the Bauhaus (the members of the artistic movement, Bauhaus) to link art and technology, in order to produce machine-made objects: Renner was very much a part of this movement, alongside Mies van der Rohe and Walter Gropius, and his industrial designs were very much a production of this time.

Burke also reveals also interesting facets of Renner's life and work, and the connections between these and the political and social conditions of the time. For instance, throughout the 1940's, the Nazi party banned the 'Gothic' typeface, arguing that it was 'Jewish' and an 'abomination': this helps us to understand the reason for Renner's development of the Futura typeface.

What makes his most famous typeface 'Futura' so special? It is said by many to be a fusion, a bridge, between the traditional (the German 19th century), and the modern (the 20th century, with its fusion of styles, and new opportunities for art): it is said to be an attempt to fuse the Gothic and Roman typefaces, a fully modern derivative of the Sans Serif typefaces.

The Sans Serif family of typefaces has certain characteristics, for example: little or no variation between thick and thin strokes of the character, no serifs on the characters, no stresses in the rounded strokes of characters, and larger x-height than most other characters.

Futura takes the fundamentals of this family, but derives a new expression.

The original idea for Futura was based on the idea that the typographic character could be expressed as a design element; the original design for Futura, therefore, was based on the design philosophy of the artists of the Bauhaus movement: that form should follow function, not vice versa. The design of Futura uses basic shapes, basic geometric proportions, with no stresses on weights, no serifs, no excessive frills: it is a very economical font in a design sense, and is completely devoid of ornamentation.

Futura also has long ascenders, and long descenders, which lend the Futura typeface a certain amount of elegance, when compared with the other Sans Serif fonts, perhaps for which reason, Futura became, and remains, one of the most popular typefaces. The beauty of Futura for many people is that it can be set as short text blocks, due to its wide range of weights, and its condensed faces, which lends the overall look a sleek, and strong, well-organized appearance (many people say a very 'German' appearance). Futura can also be used, and indeed is perfect for, headlines and shorter amounts of text. It is a sparse letterform, ideal for sparse communication (short, compact, bursts of text).

Further characteristics of the Futura font also lend the impression of being a 'rational' font to the typeface. It was one of the first typefaces to omit the difference in form between upper case and lower case, and in so doing transferred modernist, no-nonsense principles of design to the typeface.