[1999#05] 399 words

A Letter to Cesare
My Dear Son, what a hell of day you choosed to work on your PB1400 that you named EscherScript, and now you call Escher55, and so on, in a Univers-like fashion? Don’t you think it’s enough to be in charge as AD of Lanx, your school newsletter?
M Carter appreciated your first efforts (“Escher typeface is splendid”), and E Spiekermann too (“looks great, and i’d love to see more”). Very kind, both of them, and your father is proud of you.
Anyway, here in Typo99 we are, and i have to explain why i entitled our talk The Dutch Type Tradition and the Escher Script Case, in a max of 400 words. Well, T Maldonado told me once: “Complex questions, complex answers, no short cuts” - nice guy, he’s right, i guess. Wait, i’m checkin’; i’ve already used: 138 words, without the headline. Stop cheating. What’s the matter? Your font seems to be a “very consistent extrapolation from Escher’s monogram” - to quote Mr Carter, thank you Matthew! My problem is (you know, your father would like to be like Sherlock Holmes, a clue-tracer): where do they come from, these 3 negative, subtractive, xylographic letters, the “MCE”? Honourable Lords of the Court, i hereby summarize my suspicions, Have Mercy.
The West Coast flower-power-hippy-psychedelia lettering (eg W Wilson for Fillmore) of our mid-Sixties is similar to the lettering of the Wien Secession (eg A Roeller for the XVI Ausstellung, 1903), early XXth Century (no Fox). Am i wrong? Yes. Curved-biomorphic instead of straight-mineral.
More similar to the letters of CEM Kupper (you know him as Theo van Doesburg, ok?) 1919 ca. Am i wrong? Yes.
The idea of a “systematic aesthetic” (modular-proportional, ia), grown in the Netherlands of the 1890s, in people like JH de Groot or JLM Lauweriks, strongly influenced their and the following generation of designers, as well as those in Germany (i’m speaking of P Behrens). In particular, after teaching at the Düsseldorf Kunstgewerbeschule (1904-9), Lauweriks directed the Staatl. Handfertigkeitsseminar (1910-14) in Hagen, where he did his masterworks, including seminal lettering.
That’s the correct genealogy, imho. Or not?
Never trust on the written word or words, my dear son: it’s the technology of lies, by semiotic definition.
Just remember: Aut Caesar, Aut Nullus! Servus. 399 words.

[contributo online al congresso internazionale Typo99 ImageLanguage, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlino, 15-17 aprile]