Integral Typography, Karl Gerstner

"Integral means shaped into a whole".

Apresento de seguida os aspectos mais importantes do texto, que serviram como base para o exercício 3.

"Typography is an art not in spite of its serving a purpose but for that very reason. The designer’s freedom lies not at the margin of a task nut at its very centre…And every solution he finds on this basis will be an integral one, will achieve a unity between language and type, between content and form…And this vitally concerns typography. Typography is the art of making a whole out of predetermined parts. The typographer “sets”. He sets individual letters into words, words into sentences.   

Letters are the elementary particles of the written language – and thus of typography. They are figurative signs for sounds without content, parts which acquire a meaning and a value only if they are combined. This means that combinations of 2, 3 and more letters show in any case a word-picture, but define letters render a definite idea only in a certain sequence: literally they constitute a words. To clarify the example from the other angle, let us take 4 letters which can be combined in 4 different ways. From this we can see that only one combination makes sense. The 23 remaining are indeed both legible and pronounceable, they contain the same elements and give the same total. But they do not constitute a linguistle whole. They remains meaningless.

The importance of the whole, the integral in general, for language and typography, is obvious. If the proportion between the correct and the possible combinations…This means that what we can write and set with our letters in all languages – if it makes sense, it makes a whole – always remains a mere fraction of the mathematical possibilities of the alphabet…

Every day new words are created. Perhaps they grow out of abbreviations like UNO, are pieced together from foreign words like Ovomaltine, or are new inventions like Persil, in each case they are independent of their source…

We are interested by the fact that the effect here not only lies in the words, the content of their factual communication, without any doubt the same words, if they, for example, stood somewhere in the middle pages, would have a completely different effect.

…With the elements so far accepted a new one is integrated. The reading-time becomes important, its rhythm is intensified, and it is incorporated into the typographical structure.  One can say that text and typography develop simultaneously, as the paper is unfolded. (what is true here for unfolding a sheet of paper can as well be said of turning the pages of a book.)

…a signature and a style of its own – but not in the sense of an unchangeable mark or of a mere aesthetic principle. Rather do the elements, definitely established though adapted in every case to the functions and proportions, constitute the signature and style in one. …Integral typography strives for the marriage of language and type resulting in a new unity, in a super whole. Text and typography era not so much two consecutive processes on diferent levels as interpenetrating elements.

Unity is reached in different phases, each successor including its predecessor:

-          In the integration of different signs, different letters into the word.

-          In the integration of different words into the sentence.

-          In the integration of different sentence into “reading-time” dimension.

-          In the integration of independent problem and functions."