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Essay: From Grunge to Web: The Evolution of Font Design in the 90's

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  • Published: 1 February 2018*
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  • Words: 821 (approx)
  • Number of pages: 4 (approx)

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If you look back to the 90’s what things immediately come to mind? It might be the music, the “fashion”, the many hit tv series. It’s almost as if someone had combined every style and combined it to make something that somehow worked. The 90’s was a messy time for type design too. Words would be highly stylized and chaotic, the letter forms even jagged at times. Textures were practically a must, drop shadows were often used, and multiple combinations of fonts and color were common. Concert posters in particular, had a very “raw” handmade feel to them, it would look like someone had used stencils and spray painted words scratched out words by hand out of the paint. This typographic style became known as grunge. Eventually it caught the attention of major corporations and the style soon became appropriated and used in the advertising of major products. This in turn led to one of the biggest movements in recent font design history. What happened to grunge next is what happens to all things that become popular, it became cliché and something better came along.

David Carson, the highly regarded graphic designer who is the creator of Ray Gun magazine, was the so-called “Godfather of Grunge”. His philosophy regarding type was simple, break the rules, but still respect them and communicate with your audience on an emotional level. Carson used a variety of techniques in his work including experimenting with layouts, shredding and remaking letters, and layering of type and images, all of which hit a nerve with some people in the design community. His covers for Ray gun magazine were often bold and chaotic. “He knows that letterforms can communicate a certain emotion, depending of the shape, size, color and how they are placed in the composition. He wanted his work to be connected with people emotionally, because it creates more impact.”[1] He pushed the boundaries of graphic design, and would go far beyond design norms. His work would then inspire an entire generation to take on the same challenges. “It was almost like a societal complaint, if you will: everything was getting too clean. Design by people like David Carson also made it a very accessible direction to go on. We, as human beings, tend to follow more than lead, and everyone just started to do that David Carson look. … And there was, for a certain period of time, a certain refreshing look to it that had not been seen before.”[2]

In the mid 90’s, with the emergence of personal computers and public access to the internet, designers began shifting their attention to web design. At the time, web fonts existed for the sole purpose of clear readability. This emphasis on readability ultimately determined the direction of where fonts were going to go in the years to come. Fonts like Times New Roman, Arial, and Comic Sans were among the first fonts to be implemented into the operating systems of Windows and Mac computer. Due to the limitations of the technology at the time, experimentation with web fonts was almost impossible. “In the early days of on-screen text, fonts were rendered as simple black-and-white bitmaps at fixed sizes. In the late ’90s, software was developed to allow fonts to be rendered using mathematical equations to “smooth” the curves of letterforms using semi-transparent pixels (known as anti-aliasing). This allowed on-screen fonts to emulate the elegance of their printed counterparts. Advances in font rendering technology were also helped along by ever higher screen resolutions.”[3]

The disappearance of grunge typography can also be credited to human nature: we get bored easily. The grunge aesthetic became less appealing, less refreshing, less meaningful because it was being used increasingly around the world for about a decade. “I think after people got that out of their system and realized what they could do with their tools, typography became a lot more classic and reliant on the rules people thought were boring then. Now, pretty much everyone with the skills can design a typeface, so there are so many different voices and perspectives. There’s a lot of mediocrity, because that’s what happens when the tools are distributed to everybody. But I think the pendulum is now swinging toward good, elegant design, and that sort of trendiness of the 90s looks a little dated now. It was definitely a movement of its time.” [2] As the decade’s end neared, grunge typography had outlived it’s relevance, until ultimately it disappeared.

Overal, the death of grunge is in accordance with it’s philosophy: change is constant, and rules are not sustainable. Despite what fans of classic typefaces and design believe, design is not timeless and neither was grunge typography. It was a reaction and a retaliation to a specific point in time. It’s a testament to the power and influence of typography, that the way a single typeface is designed can embody an era.

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