Modern Typography in Britain: Graphic Design, Politics and Society

It is surprising that graphic design, with the obvious ubiquity of its products, has not attracted more critical attention within design history and beyond. It is clear that the critical mass of graphic design, of which typography is part, give this material a special cultural significance. This significance, recognized from William Morris and Walter Benjamin onwards, now extends beyond the scope of literary (or artistic) print culture, so as to shape the political and social spheres of our environment. Modern Typography in Britain, number eight and most recent of the University of Reading's Typography Papers, is not so much a technical manual, as a cultural history. The book presents, through a collection of papers, a history of typography in Britain during the period following the Second World War. Typography Papers comprises a number of contributions. There is an extensive and wide-ranging introduction by Paul Stiff, older papers by Stuart Hall (‘Picture Post’, 1971) and Robin Kinross (‘Anglo German Modernity’, 1997), along with a number of reminiscences about the typographic scene of the late 1950s and 1960s. Matthew Eve's contribution ‘Isotype’ and David Lambert's ‘Adprint’ are more a form of publishing history.