Devětsil vs The New Typography

デヴィェトシル / ニュー・タイポグラフィ

Devětsil comes from Publishing and Editing and The New Typography from Experimental Typography. One is style and the other layout. They are reached for with different intent, which is the fastest way to tell them apart.

Devětsil

Devětsil — カレル・タイゲ《旅からの挨拶》1923 — Wikimedia Commons / Public domainDevětsil — カレル・タイゲ《キテラ島への船出》1923–24 — Wikimedia Commons / Public domainDevětsil — インドジフ・シュティルスキー《ファントマ 切られた手》装丁 1930 — Wikimedia Commons / Public domain

Teige gave the Czech avant-garde group its picture poem. Setting photograph, type and sign together as verse, the group's lyrical strain of constructivism turned interwar Prague into a laboratory of book design.

The New Typography

The New Typography — モホリ＝ナジのタイポグラフィック・コラージュ 1922（CC BY 3.0）The New Typography — モホリ＝ナジ『絵画・写真・映画』バウハウス叢書8 — Wikimedia Commons / Public domainThe New Typography — バウハウス叢書の広告 1925 — Wikimedia Commons / Public domain

Turned printed matter into rational information structure through asymmetry, sans-serifs, photography and functional hierarchy.

DevětsilThe New Typography
Era1920–19311920s–1930s
FamilyPublishing and EditingExperimental Typography
KindStyleLayout
CuesPicture poems / Photographs fused with type / Geometry used lyrically / Constructivist bookbindingAsymmetry / Sans-serif type / Photography / Functional white space
Best used forPoetry books and literary journals where a visual poem runs beside the text · Spreads pairing photograph and type to be read by association, not explanationRebuilding letterheads and forms so they read in order without ornament · Fixing the hierarchy of headline, text and picture in a single decision
TypeGeometric sans broken like verse lines, numerals and signs read as wordsOne sans in two weights, with hierarchy carried by size alone
CompositionThe spread banded horizontally, photograph and type staggered across itDrop centering, set a left axis, divide areas with rules and space
MaterialPrimary flats with thin black rules, collage edges left showingBlack and red, halftone photography, plain rules, no ornament
CautionBorrowing only the constructivist signs loses the poem and leaves a book decorated with geometry that means nothing.When asymmetry becomes the aim in itself the reading order is never settled, and the page ends up harder to read than the ornamented one it replaced.

Put these two together

Publishing and Editing ／ Experimental Typography

IndexStyle