Rational Language and Print Design in Communication Management

Abstract

When you boil things down in business, wrote Beatrice Warde of British Monotype Corporation nearly fifty years ago, good management is no or less than the art and science of getting things done efficiently, ultimate profit of all concerned. I For Warde, and for sculptor and typographer, Eric Gill; along with other industrial designers prominent during Anglo-American printing renaissance of thirties; what considerably muddied waters was making case for rationalism in language designed for mass market. Motivated by an idealistic belief about power of aesthetics in print communication design shape public culture, professional designers scrutinized every detail of letter shape and language used advertise printed products; including typography, news and fiction. Along with Eric Gill, Stanley Morrison and other printers and typographers prominent in movement for good design in Anglo-American commercial printing during 1920s and 1930s, Beatrice Warde asserted that they intended debunk commonly held concept that an artist took on commercial work he was really a creative failure.2 When notion of scientific management was still in its infancy (1910-1930), creative artist who engaged in commercial work struck many as anachronistic because artists were perceived as taking too long make too few things which appealed only idiosyncratic tastes of those who cared about mass-produced designer goods bearing a signature. Warde predicted in early thirties that modern management principles would grow include idea of integrated communication management in production, product design and marketing; and that rational design would become more important than self-expression of any single artist, or wonders of new machinery.3 Two instruments of production defined modernism in factory: machine and its operator. Considered diametrically opposed in decades of arts and crafts movement, John Ruskin once worried about what he called modern Michael Angelos forced pour their best talents into commercial ephemera. He also asked about how business might identify those with special genius, and how a company could preserve and disseminate such work to best national advantage.4 William Morris; who reacted against visual depravity of Industrial Revolution by promoting arts and crafts movement and its 1 Beatrice Warde, Design and Management (Lecture given London Centre of Printers' Managers