However, Koch broke with black letter typesetting standards by stripping Neuland of the delicately interlocking serifs commonly used in black letter typography. He inserts woodcuts and Greek cross-shaped (+) ampersands as well ( Plate 4), a common practice with black letter texts. He sets the type with minimal leading and kerning as black letter was typically set ( Plate 3). Koch’s settings of Neuland in the original German specimen book published by the Klingspor Type Foundry support Gambell’s suggestion. Renner’s Futura, the quintessential example of modernist typography, was designed in 1927, only four years after the Klingspor Type Foundry released Koch’s Neuland (Rock). Koch’s “new black face” attempted to preserve the flared, interlocking forms of the traditional black letter style, while at the same time adopting the sans-serif style around which modernists, like Paul Renner, were building their typefaces. Black letter fonts were used at the time for the setting of important texts, especially Bibles and church-related documents. Yale University Printer John Gambell suggests that Koch designed the face with the intent of making a modern version of the German black letter (or black face) style. – not books to demonstrate his religious fervency” (11–13). Guggenheim notes, “Koch’s fonts after the war were designed for broadsides, postcards, etc. Having experimented with the art of calligraphy shortly before enlisting, Koch returned to the art after WWI with the intention of making bold, noticeable typefaces that would shout to other Germans that following God’s path would help them find comfort from the trauma of war. The horrors of war inspired Koch to seek religion for himself and then preach the benefits of a religious life to his countrymen. Upon returning from the war, he commented to his close friend Siegfried Guggenheim that he was “profoundly stirred” by his experiences (10). Rudolf Koch was born in 1876 and had a career that was both uninteresting and undistinguished until he enlisted in the German Army in 1907 to fight in World War I. The Question can be put simply: How did these two typefaces come to signify Africans and African-Americans, regardless of how a designer uses them, and regardless of the purpose for which their creators originally intended them? The investigation of this question has four parts: first, an examination of the environments in which Koch and Twombly created the original typefaces second, an examination of the graphic culture that surrounded African-Americans prior to the creation of Neuland through a close viewing of tobacco ephemera third, an examination of the Art Deco (French Modern) style, the graphic culture most prevalent in the United States at the time of Neuland’s release and finally, an examination of the ways designers use Neuland and Lithos today. The “Neuland Question” to which Jonathan Hoefler refers involves not just Neuland, a “display” typeface hand-carved in 1923 by Rudolf Koch ( Plate 1), but also Lithos, another “display” typeface digitally created in 1989 by Carol Twombly ( Plate 2). “The Neuland Question comes up regularly, and alas without much resolution….” –Jonathan Hoefler New Black Face: Neuland and Lithos as Stereotypography
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