Just Mies’ Type
Last week, the Society of Typographic Arts recognized the Mies Society’s website in Arts Archive11, their annual competition for design work with excellent typography.
Mies didn’t design any fonts—besides the signage in the Toronto Dominion Center—but he had some strong opinions about them. In his biography of Mies, Franz Schuze relates Mies’ contributions to the short-lived avant-garde design magazine G, which put out five issues between 1922 and 1923. Mies financed the entire third issue himself. This cost even more than you’d expect because the whole thing was printed in a sans serif font, unusual for its time.
“Sans serif” literally means “without serif.” A serif refers to the small projection at the end of each letter, giving it the appearance of having feet. The reason the modernists behind G disapproved of serifs so much is that these projections imitate handwriting. Mies and his contemporaries thought a font shouldn’t try to be what it wasn’t. This trueness to form is seen in Mies’ approach to buildings and furniture.
Today, it’s tough to imagine a world without sans serif fonts (like Helvetica, used on the Mies Society’s website), and with such vestiges of modernism all around us, it’s more important than ever that we recognize the beauty in it.
