Folio

Folio: (Konrad Bauer/Walter Baum 1956): Grotesque forms have been beaten against the shoreline of typography ever since their invention in 1816, but it was not until the 3rd wave that they washed away their competition. The first wave came in the 19th century when their simple construction and sturdy stroking allowed those primitive forefathers to withstand the rough printing conditions of the early “machine age” and their heavy features also allowed them to attract the rough and ready attention necessary for advertising during its infancy. Despite being denigrated for their formal crudity, they became a staple diet to the emerging marketing culture by the middle of that century, but insofar as that first wave struck during the dark hours of typography and did not sink into the typographic water table, their usefulness was washed away as the tides of early industry receded into history.

With the technical advancement of industrial printing, those makeshift grotesques were transformed essentially into white letters. The overwhelming success of Berthold Foundry’s Akzidenz Grotesk in 1898 caused the Stempel Foundry to release Reform Grotesk in 1903, American Type Founders to release Alternate Gothic in 1903, Franklin Gothic in 1905, and News Gothic in 1908, and the Bauer Foundry to release Venus in 1907, enabling this second wave to establish a cultural beachhead on the shores of typography. In the 1920’s and 30’s, under the ideological influence of the Bauhaus for geometric sans serifs, the grotesques retreated into a period of retrenchment, but as they sustained their beachhead, that retrenchment allowed them to gather strength until the next strike after World War II. When the tide turned again and young designers reacted against geometric sans, they reverted back to those second generation grotesques that never washed back to sea. It began with the reactivation of Akzidenz Grotesk (under its new name Standard, Venus, and Franklin Gothic, serving as a temporary measure, while the real storm gathered strength, battering ashore almost simultaneously in 1957.

The first to pound ashore was Folio from the Bauer Foundry of Germany, followed by Neue Haas Grotesk (better known as Helvetica) from the Haas’sche Foundry of Switzerland, Universe from the Deberny and Peignot Foundry of France, Mecator from the Typefoundry Amsterdam, and a year later by Recta from the Nebiolo Foundry of Italy. The least known of the big three was Folio because its storm-track remained too close to that of Akzidenz Grotesk. While Folio’s capitals are the size of Helvetica and Universe, its x-height, ascender height, and descender depth are virtually identical to those of Akzidenz Grotesk. As a result Folio does not have the harmonious capital to lowercase proportions that underscored the systematic regularity of Helvetica or Universe. Additionally, while Helvetica and Universe both have stronger strokes than Akzidenz Grotesk, the stroke of Folio Light is thinner. Those similarities to Akzidenz Grotesk exposed that its designers had failed to grasp that the resurgence of the second-generation grotesques were mere interim placeholders for the arrival of the real storm. Consequently its backwards look placed Folio out of synch with the post-war international business climate, and the cultural needs of the media age that followed.

Beyond the fact that the Bauhaus ideology was antithetical to the age of anonymity, the move away from geometric sans was also because the circular forms of geometric sans prohibited the post-war taste for tighter letter fit. While the shapes of the lowercase “o” and the roundels of Folio are more typical of grotesque forms in the medium weight, they begin to look circular in the light weight variant. More puzzling still, is that while the lowercase letters of the medium weight are not circular, their capitals “O, and Q” are more circular than their light weight counterparts. That not only means those letters retained the residual kinship to those of the geometric sans, but the inexplicable flip-flop between the capital and lowercase letters of the two weights means the lack of systematic consistency between the weights. Those inconsistencies derail Folio from the post-war drive toward modularity. The extreme thinning of the curve strokes at the joints with the stem make the roundels look almost distorted. Note also how the shoulders of the lowercase “a, c, e, h, and s” are slightly flatten, while those curves are quite steep in the “b, d, m, p, and q”. Those asymmetries add to the irregularities that make Folio seem all the less like one of the Swiss boys. Note in particular, how the idiosyncratic and almost twisted shape of its lowercase “a” does not have the structural rigor of Helvetica or Universe. Indeed, the contrast of the Medium weight is extreme enough as to skew the counter shapes to one side. Not only does Folio Light resemble Akzidenz Grotesk, but the asymmetry and irregularities of Folio Medium gives it that antique quality to make it feel akin to Franklin Gothic, the uniquely American second-generation grotesque.

Since Folio did not offer as much differentiation from Akzidenz Grotesk or Franklin Gothic, its storm track did not lean forward as it struck shore. While it did make an important contribution to the post-war surge back to the Neo-grotesque form, it was neither as successful in the market, nor did it have the sort of aesthetic impact as the Swiss boys. As a consequence, while Helvetica and Universe gave voice to the international storm surge that was to transform the typographic landscape, Folio is closer to the revisionist second strike of Standard and Venus prior to the real strike that washed ashore. Following so close to the storm track of Akzidenz Grotesk, Folio did not have the wind speed of the famous Helvetica/Universe tandem strike that would blow away the past necessary to provide the clearing for the foothold and reconstruction of the future. Nonetheless, not only is Folio a decent face that offers the sensitive voice capable of bridging the gap between the generations, but as the first to strike ashore, it opened the path for the new grotesque transformation to follow.