nazi typography

[shivat]

This topic was imported from the Typophile platform

Anyone knows what was the main typeface that was used during WWII and Nazi?

[Ralf H.]

If you mean the typical German blackletter typefaces created at that time. Here are some of the most used:

Tannenberg (1933–1935), Erich Meyer
National (1934), Walter Höhnisch
Element (1934), Max Bittrof
Potsdam (1934), Robert Golpon
Gotenburg (1935), Friedrich Heinrichen

[PabloImpallari]

They had a book specifying every detail:
http://uploading.com/files/get/82d26574/Organisationsbuch_der_NSDAP_3._A...

Looks like National

[hrant]

The most "distilled" style was Schaftstiefelgrotesk (AKA "jackboot grotesk").
https://typography.guru/forums/topic/22130-forwarding
http://luc.devroye.org/fonts-61629.html

I would consider Tannenberg the best representative.

BTW the style is now used by Neo-Nazis:
http://aryanwear.com/index.php/default/

However the Nazis later denounced blackletter and switched to Roman.

hhp

[J Weltin]

And to Futura, much to the dislike of Paul Renner …

[Nick Shinn]

After the war, Jan Tschichold did a volte-face against Modernism, considering it to be a totalitarian exercise in social engineering, and disliking his previous role as its führer.

And who are today’s exponents of totalitarian typography?
Microsoft of course, with a corporate rather than political agenda, distributing Arial, Comic Sans, Verdana and Georgia to the world as Core TrueType web faces.
But that situation has receded with the introduction of @font-face.

[John Hudson]

Nick, what's your source for Tschichold considering Modernism as you describe? In The Form of the Book, as I recall, he explains his turn away from asymmetric typography in terms of how difficult it is to do well and hence how it is ill-suited to design specification of the kind he was working on for Penguin. [This is ironic considering the association of specification with modernism in other areas: in essence, Tschichold was claiming that Modernist typography was too craft-like, requiring a developed sensitivity and experienced 'feel' for the best results.]

[hrant]

Accusing MS of fascism is really out there. To me MS is one of the best things to happen to typography in the past decade or two.

hhp

[hrant]

But the Core Fonts didn't replace anything, they created a new solution. It was like adding plumbing to a frontier town.

hhp

[Nick Shinn]

You don’t think the TrueType core web fonts were totalitarian?
(And I made the point metaphorically, comparing a corporate monopoly to a political one: 10 years ago Internet Explorer had over 95% of the world market in browsers, hence the dominance of the Core TT fonts, bundled with IE.)
They were just about the only text fonts used on the Web until @fontface, and that as a result of Microsoft's market dominance, particularly with its web browser after Netscape had been put to bed.
Sure, Microsoft has done lots of good for typography, but as they say, Mussolini made the trains run on time.

[Nick Shinn]

A company town.

[shivat]

Thanks everyone for your comments/information. My main theme for this paper I'm writing is the influence and development of typeface during WWII as a tool for propaganda and its influence. So basically I am going to consider the following points:
-improvement of type industry
-effect of typefaces in delivering propaganda
-Psychological effect of particular typefaces they are using and the reason they designed those specific typefaces
Basically I'm trying to create a timeline.
@Ralf h. : Thanks very much for the information and the dates. Definitely helps a lot.

[Nick Shinn]

John, I can’t locate that quote right now, it was perhaps in the Ruari McLean biography.

[dberlowgone]

"You don’t think the TrueType core web fonts were totalitarian [Microsoft's market dominance-related squat]?"

Hu?

In 1986, Adobe published their first PS printer boards, which at Steve Jobs insistence, contained Linotype fonts, and one they made themselves.

Then in '88 or so, Apple relicensed the same designs on the same widths from Linotype, for TT development in Mac OS VII.

Then in '90, or so, MS licensed the same designs on the same widths from Monotype, in TT for Windows 3.0.

Then, the web was founded in '94 based on default fonts and them yoyos would have used anything.

Sounds like democracy to me.

[Nick Shinn]

Posters were the primary medium of graphic propaganda.
And during WWII they used lettering rather than typefaces.
Germany wasn’t the only country with an official program of propaganda posters.

https://typography.guru/forums/topic/46966-forwarding

[Nick Shinn]

Sounds like democracy to me.

95+% of the browser market sounds like monopoly to me, which can happen in a democracy.
That is why Verdana and Georgia were everywhere.

[John Hudson]

Verdana and Georgia were everywhere because Microsoft's license for them enabled them to be very widely distributed independently of the MS browser, including by third parties. If anything, the distribution model for Verdana and Georgia undermined MS's browser share, since they could be used to display text of the same quality in any browser.

[shivat]

Can we say that their typeface reflected Nazi's official ideology?

[Nick Shinn]

Nonetheless, they were distributed with IE, and 95% of browsers in use were IE.
Therefore web designers were sure that 95% of their target users had the fonts.

[Nick Shinn]

Can we say that their typeface reflected Nazi's official ideology?

Perhaps, but you would have to do so in relation to the concept of Völkisch.
But note that the Blackletter style is not inherently fascist, only in conjunction with its traditional use in Germany. And as I suggested in the linked thread above, because the communists had adopted the modernist sans as their style.
Elsewhere in non-fascist countries, they had their own folksy culture, such as Little England with its Olde Shoppes with “Old English” blackletter.
In the Anglosphere, blackletter was popular for newspaper mastheads, e.g.

[hrant]

Shiva, make sure to get a copy of Bain and Shaw's "Blackletter: Type and National Identity".

Blackletter style is not inherently fascist

On the other hand the rigidity of Schaftstiefelgrotesk does fit...
It's hard to imagine the Nazis going for something round and plump!

hhp

[Werfer]

Blackletter typefaces have a rich and beautiful history. It always makes me very sad to see people associate them with WWII and WWII only. That is soooo unfair, and these typefaces do not deserve such ignorance.

[shivat]

Thanks hrant, I will definitely use it for my paper, the other book I'm also using for the research is Paul Renner: the art of typography, have you heard of it?

[hrant]

I've handled it (to observe Burke's execution of optical scaling) but not read it.

Pike, I agree. That's why I always mention that the Nazis were in fact disloyal to blackletter.

hhp

[Joshua Langman]

You can see some excerpts here of Hitler's edict wherein he banned blackletter in favor of Roman type:

http://www.quora.com/Typefaces/Is-it-true-that-Hitlers-Third-Reich-favor...

The whole letter is reproduced in Bain and Shaw's book Hrant mentioned.