Dl N (Deutsche lndustrie-Normen) standards for office-work and printing
would seem to have been Walter Porstmann. from whose writings
Tschichold would have drawn most of his knowledge of the matter.
Porstmann had written a doctoral dissertation on measurement systems.
and had also worked as an assistant to the scientist Wilhelm Ostwald,
among whose varied activities was the proposal for paper-size standardiza
tion that Tschichold describes in his outline history of the subject (pp.
96-97).34 From at least 1917 and through the 1920s, Porstmann was an
active participant in the development of the DIN standards that were of
importance to printing and typography.
Of the "principal categories" discussed in the second half of the book, the
business letter-heading was the most ubiquitous and most fundamental item.
and the one most thoroughly affected by standardization. One could also see
it as the ground on which business efficiency and design-aesthetics most
clearly come together. or confront each other. First. the DIN standard fixed
the size of the letter-heading as its A4 format (297 x 210 mm): the size
that has become standard throughout the metric world (that is. everywhere
except North America). And then. within the sheet, fields were established
for the disposition of categories of information. as well as a minimum left
hand margin and positions for fold-marks and punch-holes.
As Tschichold makes clear. he did not think that a DIN standard was any
guarantee of design quality. His view of the design of publications issued
by the Deutscher Normenausschuss. and the examples that it had designed
to illustrate its standards. was that they were "of astonishingly low quality"
(p. 112, footnote). Tschichold developed, here and elsewhere in his writ
ings of this time. a set of terms that he deployed to brilliant pedagogic
effect.35 The possibilities form a spectrum from "unstandardized and unde
signed" (the example on p. 1 21), "standardized but undesigned" (p. 1 23) ,
"unstandardized but designed" (p. 11 3). through to the most desired state
of "standardized and designed" (p. 1 20). In particular. the contrast
between the examples facing each other on pages 120 and 121 shows the
order and clarity that Tschichold - more than the other New Typographers
- was by then able to achieve.
LETTERFORMS
"Among all the types that are available, the so-called 'Grotesque'
(sanserif) ... is the only one in spiritual accordance with our time" (p. 73).
Here, as throughout the book. Tschichold gives his argument the larg est
world-historical resonance. But, by comparison with his arguments con-
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