Letter Perfect

Since Gutenberg and his movable type heralded the world of printing, typography has been continually evolving into a graphic art. Today, thanks to computer technology, the world of graphic design is accessible to everyone. Type size, typeface, leading, boldface, italic -- all these and other typographical considerations are now a part of our visual vocabulary.

In a fifty-year period from the turn of the nineteenth century to the 1950s, innovative letterforms reflected the tremendous upheaval being generated by the avant-garde in all the arts. Among the famous artists involved in the series of modernist movements during this era were William Morris, Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Marcel Duchamp. Letter Perfect: The Art of Modernist Typography 1896-1953 -- through eighty paperworks in full color -- documents the important advances made in the Arts and Crafts, Art Nouveau, Dadaism, DeStijl, Russian Constructivism, and Bauhaus movements.

David Ryan's lucid profiles accompany each work and place each image in context with the period. He also explains the innovative techniques used in the artworks, including lettering methods, sans serif alphabets, emphasis through all lowercase letters, and the combining of color, pattern, and type.

Posters, lithographs, exhibition catalogs, covers -- all reveal that the modernist typography was anything but "letter perfect." The individuality of the fractured letters, smudges, and hand-rendered elements reveals the irony behind the book's title. But it is this peculiar character that is so attractive to today's graphic lovers. Letter Perfect is a fitting homage to the foibles and artistic skills of the typographical artists of themodernist movements.