I would say that we are in a middle of a post modern typographic trend. Seems that everyone is doing their own characters based on the topic.

I.e. check out the swedish super skilled girls behind Hjärta Smärta at http://www.woo.se/. They have done some very skilled and cool things that at least I concider post modern.
Then try to find a typeface called Found type, don't remeber who donnit but another swede (jenny mörtsell) have done a similar thing http://www.jennysportfolio.com
A third swedish girl, hey whats up with our girls!, did a very cool typeface for her graduation project. She actually had the first ones as mentors I belive. You can see an 'a' here: http://www.andyland.se/product.asp?product=125&sub=16&page=1

When it comes to the more theoretical parts maybe you should have a look at Åbäkes work? http://a.b.a.k.e.free.fr
Not so much there, but they have a very clear agenda and produces some very distinct work that often incorporates po-mo typo.

Hope I didn't missunderstand what you where looking for.

I am really really doubt that there is or has been such a thing as postmodern type. The closest thing to postmodern type might have been the FUSE experiments but really I don't think even that was post modern. Some people think some of Johnathan Barnbrook's type is postmodern. I don't think so.

But It sounds to me like you want your homework done for you and I can't get behind that. You are not asking an informed question. You just want to be served.

To the teacher who assigned this topic: Are you serious?

Try reading through No More Rules: Postmodernism and Graphic Design by Rick Poynor. Once you figure out where postmodernism kicks in figuring out what typefaces fit in is pretty simple. At least it is until you get to stuff from the last couple of years, which are too new to be declared postmodern by historians :)

Thanks for all of the information everyone. I can't tell you how much I appreciate it. You guys are the best!

martinlofqvist, I'll definitely take a look at those sites. jpad, thanks so much for pointing me in the direction of that book. I had looked everywhere for information on Post Modern type and nothing was coming up. I had even asked another one of my design professors and they gave me a weird look.

Eben Sorkin, while I appreciate your help, I did not like the way you insinuated I wanted my homework done for me. I am a second year design student and I thought that after exhausting all of my personal textbooks, the small selection of type books at my school's library, and the internet that I could get some assistance here. No where in my question did I ask for anyone to do my assignment; I asked for direction. I thought this place would be an open, friendly place to learn about typography from people other than my professors.

I am sorry if I offened you. You are right I went too far.

The thing I have against this kind of assignment is that if your teacher had been able to show you what postmodern means then you would not have to take it from a book or a person that a typeface ( or song or book ) is postmodern - it would be something you could detect for yourself. And if you saw a false claim you could detect that too. But you haven't been given the idea of what Post Modern is. It's sort of unfair in a way. Or tough.

Think about it this way: Can you look at a typeface an decide for yourself if it looks Venetian, Aldine or Egypitine to you? If you study type history a little it can become pretty easy.

Look here & you will be able to:

http://typophile.com/courses/type101

However I am arguing that postmodern is not detectable in the same way. Not at all. It's not like apples & oranges it's like apples and civilizations. It is a whole different thing.

What you can already say without understanding postmodern ideas very well is 'this font seems to be the result of a sort of postmodern sentiment'. Or you could say 'here is a font using pastiche - so is that pomo?'

Thats the sort of thing which will get you further. But It isn't what you were asked to do. And won't ansswer you question very well even if it's a start.

weird looks

The reason you may have goten that look could be:

a) they don't think it exists
b) the don't think it should exist
c) they are looking for a most specific kind of question like the kind I gave eamples of above.
d) It doesn't exist
e) They might wish your other teacher would give reasonable assignments

I am not they guy to explain Pomo to you. Still, since I insulted you I will do my best to give you my take on it. I will warn you that you should take it with some salt & look around for a better explanation. And maybe read some Derida.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_Derrida

To do it I will comment on some previous posts:

Type revival as recontextualization.

This isn't really pomo. Not Caslon is a a pomo-ish title. The designer may have been influenced by pomo sentiments. But I don't know that the font is pomo.

http://www.emigre.com/EFfeature.php?di=111.

I say that because I think pastiche is not enough in itself to label a typeface as 'Pomo'. There would have to be intent.

curation-as-art methodology

Curation is not type.

But then I’m not sure where to draw the line between where things are postmodern by design, or postmodern because of the environment in which they were created.

Here the distiction should be made between the aesthetics or qualities that resulted from post modern ideas and impulses and the ideas and impulses themselves. Design cannot be Pomo but the content/narrative in a design ( magazine, greeting card, whatever) can be aesthetically reinforced by Design. This can be done by employing pastiche, rejection of genre distictions, etc.

So far I have just ben negating things. There should be a postive example as well.

I think Pomo is a little bit like Murder vs. Manslaughter. If there is intent it's Murder/Pomo. If there isn't it's maybe Pastiche or Parody or Ambiguous - but it's not Pomo. Sorry my 'postive' example is murder.

Put in less bloody terms; Pomo implies and requires either an audience that receives the intent of an author/maker, a viewer that constructs a narative on his/her own, or just an author with intent. Immediately the wole thing is complex and gets ever more complex. It's that complexity that creates a sense that ambiguity ( as opposed to modern objectivity ) is inherently inevitable.

Also, identification of something as Pomo automatically sets up narative and a triagulation of the labeler, the object in question, and the maker or author - even if the maker is labeler.

So; no narrative - no Pomo.

Stories have narratives. Films may have them. Art can (or not).

But Type does not.

A promotion of type could be postmodern. But they type cannot be. It's too simple a thing.

Here is one last example: Iron or even Iron compounds are not an organism. But Iron or Iron compounds can be in an organism. Pomo is complex like an organism. Type is simple like Iron compounds. You wouldn't ask if a compund of Iron had Ape-like qualities would you? But You need Iron to make Apes.

Again, sorry if I irked you. Hopefully this is of some help.

BTW: the post modern thing to do now would be to ask your teacher why he/she gave you this assignment and what the intent of it was. And then to deconstruct that intent, to spectulate on the way in which the assignment related to the history of the teacher's life, and to indicate the subjective value the assignment had for you while acknowleging that your opinion is not well informed enough, while also admitting that the narritive you are constructing cannot help but be constructed - however unobjective it may be.

Eben, thanks for the apology and the help. I had a feeling Post Modern was going to be a little complicated. I agree that I hate this sort of assignment, too, but I’m stuck doing them. I think she feels the need to pile on more work.

During my course, we had studied the usual type classifications like Old Style, Transitional, etc., but never once did my professor mention Post Modern as a classification in any of our lectures. This was part of a very, very long essay for the end of the semester, supposedly hitting on all of the important things we had gone over. But it was never covered in any form so it was a bit…odd.

The analogies helped a lot. I was looking through one of the books recommended to me on here and I saw that it had all sorts of typefaces in it—from all different classifications, making it impossible to pin down one specific typeface, year, characteristic, etc. Your explanation made it clearer.

Hahah…you have me half-tempted to ask my professor why she gave us the assignment, deconstruct it, and write her a note. She’ll probably just glare at me.

Dalliance by Frank Heine: the italic is based on lettering from a map of around 1800, the roman is, mostly, those italic forms, backslanted to upright.

By all means ask your teacher why she gave the assignment - or whatever else you want to ask her. Point being that teachers are not omniscient quasi-deities, but resources and guides to be engaged. (This seems very obvious to me now, but unfortunately took me a long time to realize.)

Also, you may not like the assignment or think she's piling on work, but just in this thread I've learned a lot and the discussion is fascinating. Try embracing the assignment and making it your own, instead of trying to figure out exactly what a teacher wants. You will probably learn more and remember it longer. Good luck and post a little summary of what you learned if you have the time.

> teachers are not omniscient quasi-deities

In fact the best teacher is an eternal student.

hhp

This topic has merit, but personally I have trouble getting over the discomfort of associating the hooliganism of the 90s with PoMo. I see so much amazing potential in PoMo type, but so very little of what most people claim is PoMo type is actually worth mentioning, much less admiring.

So write something on the subject. PoMo gets distilled down to 90s rebellion and Emigre fonts because so much was written about that era—get more stuff out there for people to read and think about.

> So write something on the subject.

You mean something coherent and formal...
Man, what a drag. :-)

hhp

You could impress your teacher by explaining the two ways that Helvetica sucks: it's overused; and it's spaced too tight. Spiekermann alludes to the latter -in his own special way- in the movie when he says that if you're thick in the middle you shouldn't wear tight shirts. Speaking of shirts, you could wear this during your class(es): http://typophile.com/node/33285

hhp

Since Hrant has demured the task of writing something coherent & formal ( and I did too actually...) I asked a friendf of mine whose views of these things I respect and this is what he wrote to me:

" Well...here's the short version of "postmodern" literary theory, as I understand it. Others might suggest otherwise:

1. Postmodernism, before the 1950s, was primarily a mode of description for certain kinds of appropriative forms.
2. At some point, in the 1960s and 1970s, it works its way into both literarure and literary criticism as a self-aware attitude. From my point of view, it is more substantial in literature as an "artistic" development--Borges, Calvino, Barth. Novelists like Barth theorize it into things like "The literature of exhaustion". In philosophy, there are related-but-quite different developments, like "The Social Construction of Reality", etc.
3. In the 1960s and 1970s, poststructuralist literary theory (Derrida, etc) makes its way through the intelligentsia. This is a separate development from postmodernism,. as it is a specific reaction to french structuralist theory. It is "relativizing", but doesn't particularly relate to developments in the arts, or their modes--there is a certain kind of intellectual sympathy/interaction. From the point of view of postmodern theorists, I suppose, it might itself be considered a kind of development of postmodernism, if you are a postmodern theorist..
4. In the late 1970s, postmodern philosophy becomes a broader, more articulated idea. Lyotard writes "The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge". Rorty writes "Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature". Postmodernism is articulated into a more general description of contemporary thought and knowledge--suspicion of metanarrative, etc.
5. In the 1980s, "postmodern" and "poststructuralism" become catchwords for undergrads everywhere, like ourselves, and often become conflated or generalized into relativized relationships to knowledge.
6. Eventually, it becomes a kind of cultural catchword--Republicans mistake it for "relativism". Everything self-conscious in the arts becomes "postmodern". People get fed up and stop using the term.

You are probably right that a font is not "Postmodern" in the same way that a Calvino novel is postmodern, and also right that that might have been one of the most interesting moments in postmodernism, or the most useful phase. As far as architecture goes, you may also be right, since a piece of architecture is fundamentally a kind of aesthetic object as well as a functional one that has things fonts do not--like a physical context. If you build a modern building in an old neighborhood with certain kinds of self-conscious allusion to the older forms of architecture surrounding it, that may be postmodernism. But a font might be more like a construction material--or not exactly, but it in itself is mostly a form/object which can be put into different contexts.

I think the bigger question has to do with, as you say, technique, which of course is not "postmodern"--dada is a good example--for that matter, 18th c novels, etc. That's the problem with step 5, in the 1980s. I wish people would use the phrase "self-conscious" or "self-allusive" when they just mean self-conscious, instead of invoking a confusing intellectual lineage every time. This is especially a problem since its original uses are real developments in intellectual history. Also, often people really mean "modernist", which as you say used all of those techniques and more--no one is more self-conscious/pastiche-using than Dadaists, Surrealists, Theater of the Absurd-ists, Woolf, Joyce, Godard, etc. etc. One might say that postmodernism was a kind of shift in ideology that stripped modernism of its idealist/elitist project, but is still basically modernist in technique. In a way, what people mean by postmodernism is a kind of popularization of modernist technique.

Oh well..."

Enjoy! Or Not.

> ubiquity does not imply lack of quality

In terms of "inherent" quality the opposite is generally true. But in terms of contextual quality, when a font is used for everything from soup to sex to septic tanks it becomes too diluted to use for anything effectively. Contrary to what some people claim, it's not that it becomes neutral, it's that it becomes confused, hence unreliable. Think of Trajan, poor Trajan.

> spacing preferences are relative

Not when it comes to reading.
When it comes to delivering good notan a font's various attributes have to be in balance. Helvetica's vertical proportions, color and spacing are each optimal for different types of settings. It. Is. Badly. Made.

> tracking can be applied

Tracking ruins the spacing of "boundary condition" glyphs,
most famously the right side of the "r". Tracking is for brutes.

--

But there is a good reason to pass on my advice: chances are your teacher, being a graphic designer and not a type designer, really has no idea how (or even that) Helvetica sucks, and might react badly.

hhp

ffetish

Brilliant.

Gerald

We've all just plunked any new type into a "post-modern" group. I guess what I'm saying is it's just not Black and white anymore with a few types crossing the border of different styles, it's a whole lotta mix and matchin'.

As Bringhurst said: it's a parody of neoclassical, Romantic or Baroque form.

it’s just not Black and white anymore

None of it ever was. And in fact when I posted my friend's long analysis I was interested in showing that pomo has in fact meant many things over time. You can pick from a series of definitions of you want. How is that for shades of grey?

Joseph, the other thing your post suggests is that type has existed in neat catagories up until recently. This is also a mistake. To be sure you can talk about how 'aldine' a type is or not but it isn't a border. It's hazy too. Less than pomo for sure but hazy none the less.

But the real point I wanted to make was that Pomo isn't really that descriptive a term for type. It isn't that useful. It's closer to spin - or hype. A description that gets closer to what is going on like 'parody' or 'pastitche' or whatever is actually helpful. Saying 'Pomo' about type is as much or more an assertion about the state of the maker mind as it is about the type. Pomo is scattershot & weak as a descriptor.

I am willing to climb down a bit and admit that saying pomo about type is might be okay if you are a graphic designer or a memeber of the public. I am sure there are contexts in which that is going to be a useful way of describing work. I would prefer it is they said type that supports a Pomo direction or something but it isn't worth the arguement. Talking about type isn't easy and they should be given some slack.

On the other hand, if I have a class I want my teacher to teach something that can use intellectually or practically. That is why I say that for somebody involved in type as a type designer or a teacher; using Pomo as a serious description amounts in intellectual sloth or laziness.

"using Pomo as a serious description amounts in intellectual sloth or laziness."

Well, I wouldn't level that charge at Robert Bringhurst. Here are a few pithy extracts from pp135-36 of v2.5 of his book:

ELEGIAC POSTMODERNISM:

"Postmodern letterforms ... frequently recycle and revise Neoclassical, Romantic and other premodern forms. At their best, they do so with an engaging lightness of touch and a fine sense of humor. Postmodern art is for the most part highly self-conscious, but devoutly unserious...."

GEOMETRIC POSTMODERNISM:

"Some postmodern faces are highly geometric. Like their predecessors the Geometric Modernist faces, they are usually slab-serifed or unserifed, but often they exist in both varieties at once or are hybrids of the two. They are rarely, it seems, based on the pure and simple line and circle, but almost always on more mannered, often asymmetric forms. And like other Postmodern types, they are rich with nostalgia for something pre-modern. Many of these faces are indebted to older industrial letterforms, including typewriter faces and the ubiquitous factory folk-art of North American highway signs. They recycle not Romantic and Neoclassical but Realist ideas...."

"Postmodern art, like Neoclassical art, is above all an art of the surface: an art of reflections rather than visions. It has thrived in the depthless world of high-speed offset printing and digital design, where modernism starves. But the world of the scribes, in which the craft of type design is rooted, was a depthless world too. It was the world of the Gothic painters, in which everything is present in one plane...."

And this from Bruce Mau's fabulous catalogue of "Postmodern" culture (although I doubt that he uses the "P" word):

"There is no longer any distinction between text and non-text, image and non-image. The entire surface is now described in one language. Everything is now image. With [PostScript] Adobe ushered in an entirely new aesthetic and a new model of 'thinking the page' that will change the way typography itself is conceived." (Life Style, p. 65)

So, perhaps looking at the technologies of so-called 'postmodernity' (Macintosh, PostScript, Fontographer, Internet, etc.) would allow the cultivation of a valid meaning for the term 'postmodern type'.

Inevitably, letterforms are always going to refer to something other than themselves (i.e., alphabets). Experiment: try and decipher John Cage's '62 Mesostics for Merce Cunningham,' scattered throughout his book _M_. (Find specimens here: http://www.ubu.com/historical/cage/index.html). Is Cage's use of Letraset in these musical compositions still 'typography'? This would be another way of approaching the question of 'postmodern type'.

>> "There is no longer any distinction between
>> text and non-text, image and non-image."

Hogwash.

hhp

"Maybe you would like to explain what you mean & stop simply waving your hands. Conflation is not a helpful way of thinking - especially about this."

Please don't get me wrong: hand-waving was hardly my intention. Since you make that criticism in relation to my comments on technology, let me cite Mau once more:

"If we look closely at the history of typography, it's principally a history of evolving typographic production techniques. The forms are in fact inseparable from the ways in which they were produced. The same will apply to PostScript. The consequences remain to be seen."

That's the context for Mau's remarks I quoted previously: the "principal innovation [of PostScript] was the invention of a 'page description language' used to describe any point on the surface, whether it was text or image." If text and image are not yet one and the same thing, they are well on the way to becoming so. That, at least, is Mau's conjecture. Technologies such as OCR and image-tagging do tend to blur the boundary somewhat.

Eben: I appreciate that. You've certainly provided ample food for thought. For example, it strikes me that what Cage achieves in his graphic mesostics at the level of the page is analogous to that which a postmodern typeface would achieve at the level of the font: i.e., hybridity, pastiche, playfulness, etc. -- even (if only rarely) at the expense of legibility itself (or in the case of Cage's mesostics, grammar and syntax). Cage's mesostics exemplify a kind of 'visual poetics' which have often been associated with the initial, more creative and experimental phase of postmodern writing. The arrangement of text as visual image dominates even theoretical writings on postmodernism, such as Hassan's The Postmodern Turn. But unlike concrete poetry, etc., Cage's mesostics and other writings (Mureau, Empty Words) deliberately defy the imperative to communicate a syntactic message. I doubt whether typography could ever be so experimental as to completely disavow its conventional raison d'etre (the result would be the "Silence" font -- a blank specimen page -- or sheer noise; in any case, something other than typography as traditionally conceived).

Cage's is of course not the only literary aesthetic to qualify as 'postmodern.' Consider Thomas Pynchon's novels as a contrast. Mason & Dixon, a weighty historical novel written in parody of eighteenth-century style (although with plenty of historical anomalies) is set in a period typeface (Pynchon scholars have seized on the ebullient ampersand that adorns the book's jacket). This "putting on the costume" (and indeed, "parading") of past styles is also a feature of postmodernist literary aesthetics. Arguably, it comprises a more complex relationship than that which might be discerned in such typefaces as NotCaslon or DeadHistory. But the same principle -- reviving historical styles in order to comment on them, and our lingering attachments to them; usually critically -- seems to inform both projects.

Just a couple of random thoughts to throw into the mix.

Teach is right on with wanting specific faces, characteristics, and dates.
That way you have to look and think about what you're seeing. Having a variety of "finds" by students will make for interesting discussion.

It's possible to describe typefaces from a number of different perspectives, which is perhaps a Post-modern idea. Typespeak and Techspeak are de rigueur, but Artspeak has some relevance to post-modern designs -- however, you will have to decide how much of the irony is po-faced, piss-taking, or both.

Literally and playfully Post-modern, Artefact (1999) deconstructs the Modern (Didone) class of 19th century types to question the conventions of stress inherited from earlier, chirographically-informed types, governing the acceptability of which strokes are thin, and which thick. Rephrasing the Didone vocabulary, Artefact generates a revisionist colour of corroded notan.

Mostly it’s just removing thick parts

Yes, I stopped short of thickening horizontals. And I drew it, with adjustments for balance, rather than using cut and paste, so it's true I didn't go all out. The criticism I have always made of my own post-modern work is that I compromise it by relying so much on traditional drawing aesthetics to make it look pleasing to the eye, well, my eye anyway.

There's a mid 19th century face, can't remember the name, Italian something or other, that completely rotates stress through 90 degrees. So, was that kind of thing purely a formal exercise, or just how knowingly post-modern (Eben's criterion of intent) was it? Does it matter whether the intent is literally articulated as such by the author/designer, or is the articulation non-linguistic, in the work itself? How important is the artist's statement, or should we just leave it to critics to discern and impart intent?

much newer than that release date!

Here's how I blurbed it in on release (Shinntype Specimen Booklet #1, Nov. 1999):
"A systematic, precisely finished deconstruction of the late nineteenth century modern genre."

Only later did I discover notan...

Yes, I was wondering where the quote could come from. I assumed since it was not cited that it was Nick speaking in a faux authoritative italicized voice thus critiquing the underlying assumption I have made that we could or should define PoMo one way or the other. After all are there not multiple perspectives? Why take a single definition to (a modern attitude surely...) to the PoMo? Of course I don't see it that way but that's okay. Still, nice job of taking the part on Nick!

It’s possible to describe typefaces from a number of different perspectives, which is perhaps a Post-modern idea. Is that idea encoded in your sample face? If a type face seems to you to be referencing a idea is that enough? Or is this a case of litteral visual deconstruction ( a technique ) minus a PoMo intent. What is there in the font itself that would let you decide?

When reading about revivals I have often read criticism of the the idea that it's possible or even desirable to imagine what the type designer was thinking based on study of their type. So far I agree with the critique and that leads me to think there is nothing in the font itself ( leaving interviews & critiques of the font out of it ) to suggest intent. What do you say about that? How does that relate to our arguement?

have to look and think about what you’re seeing
I am all for that. I just think it's more helpful to say 'type from the post modern period in design' rather that 'PoMo type'. I know it's a subtle distinction but worth making especially in an academic context where you are meant to be looking and thinking about what you’re seeing. Also, students will have a better shot of actually finding some examples because the won't be wasting time trying to put round pegs in square holes. Or chasing an 'essence' of PoMo which would be a Romantic sort of idea I think...

the post modern period

The distinction must be made between the idea as a principle and as historical movement.
That stems from the Post-modern understanding of modernism, eg "modernity's awareness of itself as modern announces merely the empty flow of time itself' (Pinkney). Or, "modernity can only define itself in terms of a temporal break with an organic past, but it is a break that has always already occurred no matter which moment one chooses as its starting point." (Kantaris).

So Italian Fat Face is not part of the Post-modern era, but may still be a post-modern type design.