We like to think we live in a time
of radical and unprecedented change.
And in many ways, we do.
However, the early 20th century was a chaotic combination
of new inventions, technologies, and the shift
from an agrarian lifestyle to an urban culture.
Like today, there were some people intent
on holding on to the old traditions,
and other people that didn't think
the changes were fast enough.
In 1909 in Italy, Filippo Marinetti
formed a group of designers called the Futurists.
These people wanted the changes,
and wanted them to happen quickly.
They rejected the traditional approach
to art and design entirely.
They wanted to celebrate the components of the new
industrial society: speed, machines, war, and revolution.
The work used typography, energetic forms,
and chaotic composition to communicate
their idea of the new world.
Marinetti wasn't interested in
working within the confines of society.
He wanted radical and violent change.
He shocked people by demanding,
"We will destroy museums," referring to them
as graveyards littering Italy.
The Futurists hated harmony and classical forms.
They viewed these as remnants of a culture only interested
in recreating the past and pacifying the masses.
They created work that treated typography
as painting, energetic and illegible.
Like a speeding automobile or train,
typography was to be expressive and dynamic.
Energy was the top priority.
The Futurists collaged elements
from different sources together.
Since harmony requires a sense of unity,
they discarded that and purposely
slammed together found typography, paint, and drawing.
The Futurist movement was over by 1918.
Most of the Futurists revered war,
violence, and the destruction of the old.
When World War One began, they quickly enlisted.
By the end of the war, very few were alive.
In 1915, in Switzerland, a different group
of artists and designers were gathering
in opposition to World War One.
Unlike the Futurists, who revered war and destruction,
they were pacifists, and responded to the horrors of war
by creating the Dada movement.
Dada rejected reason and logic.
They were interested in nonsense,
irrationality, and intuition.
There are many ideas as to the source of the name Dada,
however most believe that it is a nonsensical word.
These designers and artists worked to shock
the bourgeoisie, or middle class, population.
Art was considered bourgeoisie, so they made anti-art.
The Dada manifesto promises the abolition
of logic, social hierarchies, memory, and the future.
Work was random and improvised.
The typography and form was often random,
or used elements of Dada poetry,
also nonsensical, as its source.
By World War Two, the Dada movement died out,
so many of the designers and artists
shifted towards ideas such as Surrealism or Modernism.
Even more were killed in Hitler's concentration camps,
categorized as "degenerate artists."
Both the Futurist and Dada movements
changed the way we look at typography.
Type was not simply a choice of a legible typeface
or a way to decorate a poster, it was a picture of a word.
Typography could be expressive and dynamic,
or, like an illustration, used
solely as a compositional element.
Today, every time we choose a typeface
as a way to communicate a tone or idea,
we are referencing the Futurists and Dada movement.