On the typography of democracy

A Reading Note

Sandberg’s typography suggested a way out of the modernist impasse of perfect technique. Conditioned at first by sheer material scarcity, his typography seized the opportunities offered by ordinary materials: characteristically, paper or board normally reserved for wrapping or packaging. Roughness and chance were prime qualities of his work,…but Sandberg also stuck to DIN formats and to a limited and mundane selection of typefaces. He was also an early user of text set with equal word-spaces (unjustified). This mode of setting synthesized the two aspects: open to exact specification and thus more rational than the approximations of justified setting; but also “ragged” and informal in appearance. Sandberg’s was a typography of open, democratic dialogue, and a continuation of the spirit of resistance into the post-war world.

Kinross, Modern Typography, page 125

Selected essays

Writing essays & notes

  1. The open universe

    On The Language of the Night and The Real World of Technology

  2. Umyazu

    Reading is the art of attention.

Reading books

  1. Was

    by Geoff Ryman

  2. Kraken

    by China Miéville

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