The beauty of the Grotesque : a history and semiotics of serifless typefaces

Abstract

This is a study of a style of typeface - the Grotesque - and a way of thinking about this style that was central to twentieth-century typographic discourse. It traces both the development of Grotesque styles, and the development of thought on the Grotesque as manifested in the writings of typographers and writers on typography. The Grotesque emerged in nineteenth-century England in the context of a general explosion in typeface styles, and matured into a sophisticated style of type by the dawn of the twentieth century. Although initially relegated to particular marginal uses, in the 1920s the Grotesque was elevated by modernist designers as the one style oftypeface to replace all others - the Grotesque was viewed as a letter without style, and therefore the antidote to stylistic pluralism.