equality of provision; no longer the artist and the privileged sensibility, but
the engineer and the ordinary citizen.
If Tschichold's prose in these opening pages seems excited- especially in
the context of a handbook for printers - it is of its time. One could argue
that it is actually a few years behind the leading formulations. For example,
Tschichold's play with the figure of "the engineer" - which he sets in bold
type, at a crucial rhetorical moment (p. 1 1) - is clearly in the same spirit
as Le Corbusier's rhapsodic argument in Vers une architecture, first pub
lished in book form in 1923:
Not in pursuit of an architectural idea, but simply guided by the
results of calculation (derived from the principles which govern our
universe) and the conception of a living organism, the engineers of
to-day make use of the primary elements and, by co-ordinating them
in accordance with the rules, provoke in us architectural emotions
and thus make the work of man ring in unison with universal order. 24
And this is also the spirit of Tschichold's references to automobiles, tele
phones, electric light-bulbs, boxers, and other icons of the modern age.
Tschichold's argument here gains particular force and authentici ty, because
in his publisher (the Bildungsverband) and its readership of printers, he
was directly in touch with real "engineers." And for internal evidence of this
contact, one could cite the beautiful detail on page 122. where he advises
that numbers indicating fold-marks on a letter-heading should be made
from brass (rather than the normal predominantly lead alloy), because,
standing isolated in the margin of the sheet, they are subject to greater
pressure and wear. As already noted, Tschichold treats the artist-designer
with considerable disdain. In his account of "the old typography
( 1 4 50- 1 9 1 4) ," the artistic and decorative approach is only excused as per
haps valid in its day. Those who still try to practice such an approach in the
modern world - the "book artists," for example - are condemned as out of
touch with the new age and are thus mere formalists:
But the difference between these modern works and their classical
models is that the models really are an expression of their time,
whereas the imitations are the expression of a highly sensitive eclec
ticism, which is an attitude foreign to the present day, looking for its
ideal in another time and world. (P. 25)
Tschichold's arguments may employ the terms of use, need, and function,
but they are deeply and explicitly infused with the idea that form must be
created and that it must be the form of the new age. In this he was
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