How font affects our lives. Unusual exhibition in the center of Moscow

An unusual exhibition has opened in Moscow. It consists of more than 60 works by Solomon Telingater, a Soviet artist, illustrator and font creator. He was engaged in the visual design of everything that could be printed: books, magazines, posters, brochures… He was also constantly experimenting.

The simplest example is a font whose image conveys the content of the text. This is the style of letters he chose for books about Russian proverbs and the ancient Greek tragedy “Chained Prometheus”.

The cover of the book “Chained Prometheus” and the cover sketch of “Russian Proverbs and Sayings”

There are more daring solutions. Telingater tried to play with words and images. Nowadays, with a computer and Photoshop, not many people can be surprised by this, and many things can be done even on the phone. But 100 years ago, such works were considered more than provocative. For example, this one was made in 1925.

Excerpt from the book “Word is given to Kirsanov”

In his article, the artist noted: an idea may have more or less value, but it becomes more convincing if it is conveyed in an expressive form.

Solomon Telingater

Soviet artist

The external design of publications should not only contribute to the correct presentation of literary material, but its elements (font, rulers, simple decorative elements) should not cause the reader visual associations that give a distorted idea of the nature of the theme and content of the book.

The exhibition in Moscow at the Voznesensky Center will last until December 11. It presents the part of the works that is mainly connected with font and alphabet. Telingater presented one of his most revolutionary ideas in Leipzig in 1968 (five years before he received the International Gutenberg Prize).

The idea was to create a single alphabet for European languages. It wasn’t about getting all of Europe to start speaking one language. Italians would continue to speak Italian, Russians would continue to speak Russian, and so on, but everyone would use the same letters. A unified alphabet on a Latin-Greek basis.

Here is a tentative sketch: words are written in the unified alphabet in large letters, and words in modern European languages (German, Russian, and Spanish) in small letters.

The exhibition includes the originals of these records in French, German, Hungarian, Bulgarian, Romanian, Polish and Czech.

Telingater noted that the basis of the current national alphabets is Greek-Latin, but in the process of historical development the alphabets have lost their original merits instead of preserving them. It was suggested that the idea should be sent to specialists in different countries to be supplemented and corrected.

“There is no doubt that there are many difficulties in the realization of this idea, and each language has its own. It is quite clear that the realization of such an idea would be the practical work of more than one generation of peoples. Historical shortcomings must obviously be historically corrected”, – said Telingater. By the way, he also called it a “historical shortcoming” that the Latin “p” and the Russian “p” are pronounced completely differently, although they look the same.

Telingater’s Accidental

To launch a unified alphabet in the 20th century at the level of states was impossible, but the artist explained the practical benefits. He pointed to the growing economic and cultural ties between peoples (including through the development of transportation and in general technology).

“It is difficult to refuse the temptation to imagine what incalculable benefits the realization of this proposal represents. What opportunities, for example, would open up in the field of postal, telegraphic and other international communications, in the field of word-lite production, in the field of mechanized information, and in many others. It is extremely curious that the unification of alphabetic graphemes on a monophonic basis for some languages means practically a saving of up to 20-25%. Especially, for example, for French and English,” the artist insisted.

If we assume for a second that Telingater’s fantastic idea could be realized, then this text would be written on a keyboard with only one alphabet layout on the keys. And for some reason it also seems that great-grandfather would have appreciated that the Russian “s” and the Latin “s” are on the same button.