Compacta is Todays Black Letter

[HVB]

So is this or is this not a blackletter?

It's Karl-hairline, designed for the New York Times T Magazine by Berton Hasebe.

- Herb

[Joshua Langman]

Category: Blackletter.
Consists of: Textura, fraktur, bastarda (bâtarde, schwabacher), rotunda …

[russellm]

As a conversation about relative popularity perhaps. Anything beyond that is a non sequitur.

[Ryan Maelhorn]

Should I change the name of the thread to 'Compacta is today's Textura'?

[typerror]

So Ryan, are you defining "blackletter" solely by its "color?" If that is the case, you would have to agree that Compacta is the new "Old English," which is more stupid than the term "Old English." Is this what qualifies as a real thread or am I having a nightmare?

Look up Textus Precissus!

[John Hudson]

Ryan, I'm sorry but you really do not know what you are talking about, and you are using terms without understanding their conventional and specialist meanings, or the context of their origins. What characterises the various blackletter styles are their modes of letter construction, and since all originated as formal bookhands to suggest that blackletter is by nature 'partly about decoration "for the sake of decoration"' is simply not true. Decorative blackletter styles are mostly later developments, notably products of Victorian signpainting and engraving, ergo 'Old English'.

Should I change the name of the thread to 'Compacta is today's Textura'?

This, at least, is a good question, because it enables one to see the basic problem with your whole approach. Ask yourself, what distinguishes textura from other forms of blackletter? It isn't particularly the weight or the horizontal compression, because those can be found in other blackletter styles too. Rather, what enables one to look at a sample of writing or type and classify it as textura is the construction of the letters, what a scribe (hi, Michael) will call the ductus. So you can only suggest that Compacta and similar styles are 'today's Textura' if by this you mean only 'Compacta is today's heavy and narrow style of type' and that as such it is a kind of parallel to earlier heavy and narrow styles of type, of which you have chosen textura as an example. To what degree is the second part of this true? Is there a parallel? I don't really think so, at least not in general typographic terms, because I don't see much of a similarity in the way types like Compacta are used. Remember, textura was, as the name suggests, a text face, whereas Compacta is a display face. I think Michael is closer with his jest that Compacta is the new Old English, since if there were a parallel it would be in display lettering, and we're back to those Victorian signpainters who wanted heavy for impact and narrow for fit.

[HVB]

Or, to obfuscate a bit more, "Compacta is the new Gothic"

[Té Rowan]

One very technical definition of blackletter I ran across I-know-no-longer-where was based on ink coverage (black ink on white paper). More black than white = blackletter. Less black than white = whiteletter. Yes, it completely ignores blackletter styles.

[quadibloc]

Times Roman is the new Caslon!

While that is obvious enough, does this mean that Univers is the new Baskerville, and Futura is the new Bodoni? (Or Optima is the new Baskerville, and the new Bodoni is something we are yet to see?)

Given that, clearly... Century Expanded is the new blackletter??!?

[Ryan Maelhorn]

Ok, so is there a term for what I thought I was talking about? :)
High tight and bold scribal hands?

And where did the use of 'fontname-black' as a weight come from?

[Riccardo Sartori]

Impact was the new Compacta.

[Nick Shinn]

Never mind blackletter.
The catchphrase "x is the new y" falls apart when discussing things which aren't hot trends.
"Compacta is the new..." only makes sense if Compacta is massively popular, which it isn't.

[FrankSmith]

This thread's title caught my eye and resonated clearly instantly because I'm not a typographer, but a signmaker. In the display arena of everything including posters, propaganda, signs, newspaper & magazine ads and even postage stamps blackletter is easily interchangeable with Compacta because the attitude of both is much the same. They both express a mix of no-nonsense modernism and traditional discipline bordering on brutalism.

[Chris Dean]

Don’t you know the golden rule of hipsters? If it’s stupid, and no one else is doing it, it’s the next cool thing. Ergo, duct-taping sandwiches to your face is the new black(letter). Duh.

[Té Rowan]

Mefinks another rule needs exposure: It's cool if I say it's cool.

[oldnick]

Té—

Right on, dude. So: am I cool, or not? I busted up a black ops mind-control ring last week by spending eight days in solitary confinement, then staging a hunger strike…which means that I now have some street creds as a working-class hero (thank you, John Lennon), but I'm still not sure how that ranks, Ryan-wise, on the Cool-o-meter…

[Té Rowan]

Ask the Monks of Cool. It's their rule.

[John Hudson]

To which the Monks of Cool inimitably say 'mimi numinum nivium minimi munium nimium vini muniminum imminui vivi minimum volunt'. Now try reading that in textura.

[Ryan Maelhorn]

Ok, so is there a term for what I thought I was talking about? :)
High tight and bold scribal hands?

And where did the use of 'fontname-black' as a weight come from?

[Té Rowan]

Ah, a sirius question, even if I have no good answer.

[etahchen]

maybe this can be today's blackletter
http://vimeo.com/18385978

[quadibloc]

@etachen:
maybe this can be today's blackletter

While Adso is an interesting contemporary blackletter, there is a world of difference between that and something that can be called "today's blackletter".

The latter may not be typographically related to blackletter at all; "today's blackletter" is something that fulfills the function today that blackletter fulfilled yesterday.

Which means that "today's blackletter" varies depending on the value of yesterday that you use.

For the most distant value of yesterday, when blackletter was the generally used style of type, roman is today's blackletter.

For a more recent value, when blackletter was the more archaic style of type, still often used, in nearly all the Latin alphabet area, I would tend to say that Scotch Roman is, if not today's blackletter, the blackletter of the early twentieth century - after Caslon and Baskerville had been revived.

For a still more recent value of yesterday, when blackletter in the form of Fraktur was the distinctive typeface of Germany, today's blackletter might be Univers or Helvetica or Aldus (Palatina Book, in effect).

These examples, two of which I had already mentioned in this thread, show why I reject the idea of Compacta getting the title... if one thinks of the use of blackletter as a display font used for its boldness, then one might go with Clarendon or Bodoni (not really a valid choice, as it was used together with blackletter, but for a different display function, in newspapers)... the use of Compacta for this function doesn't seem to me to have any parallels to the limited use of blackletter for that purpose.

EDIT: But given the idea that Compacta is being used as an almost-unreadably narrow face, replacing blackletter for that purpose, only the lack of lowercase when it is also used for that purpose stands between French Clarendon and the designation of "today's blackletter"!

Ah: Playbill is perhaps "today's blackletter" in that sense!

[hrant]

Etah, Adso* is a great find! And has a Rotalic** too boot, pretty early on in fact...

* http://www.batfoundry.com/catalogue_2_adso_.html

** http://typographica.org/on-typography/a-fruitful-discomfort-the-face-of-...

John, good analysis.

hhp