Not very long since I was asked by a printer to what extent he should accept or avoid modern trends in the design of types and books. I attempt here to answer that question.
I have a friend, connected with one of the great companies supplying machines for type composition. Not long since he spoke to me in unflattering terms of the examples of typography shown at an exhibition of the products of the Bauhaus School, originally of Weimar and later of Munich. He protested against a practice there manifested of discarding capital letters and depending solely on those in the lower-case. I consoled him by showing him a French book, printed entirely in this style. This volume, entitled Typographie Économique, was published in Paris in 1837 and so far as it had any influence on printing, then or later, is as dead as Queen Anne. The author, the Count de Lasteyrie, who promoted this scheme, was one of a race of French scientists, of some intellectual and social importance—one of the daughters of Lafayette married into that family. In the eighteenth century no less a person than the German writer Grimm tried a similar typographical plan. In the Fairy Tales containing "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs," later compiled by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, the practice was not continued. This supports the contention that many new and disturbing experiments, under the patronage of distinguished names, are merely survivals or revivals of ancient failures. Thus in the light of experience, there is in Bauhaus typography nothing for my acquaintance—or anybody else—to be excited about.
Now Bauhaus typography is of the essence of modernism. That its position may be fairly stated I quote the following from a Bauhaus Year Book:—verbatim and (I may add) literatim:
[">[ why should we write and print with two alphabets? both a large and a small sign are not necessary to indicate one single sound.
A = a
we do not speak a capital A and a small a.
we need only a single alphabet. it gives us practically the same result as the mixture of upper and lower-case letters, and at the same time is less of a burden on all who write—on school children, students, stenographers, professional and business men. it could be written much more quickly, especially on the type-writer, since the shift key would then become unnecessary, typewriting could therefore be more quickly mastered and typewriters would be cheaper because of simpler construction, printing would be cheaper, for fonts and type cases would be smaller, so that printing establishments would save space and their clients money. with these common sense economies in mind ... the bauhaus made a thorough alphabetical house-cleaning in all its printing, eliminating capitals from books, posters, catalogs, magazines, stationery and even calling cards.
dropping capitals would be a less radical reform in english. indeed the use of capital letters occurs so infrequently in english in comparison with german that it is difficult to understand why such a superfluous alphabet should still be considered necessary.[">[
Now in German printing all nouns have capital letters. In the sentence "A Dog chases a Cat into a Barn," dog, cat, barn are all capitalized. No one can be blamed for wanting to be rid of so much capitalization. But when Germans purge anything the innocent invariably suffer with the guilty. Thus all capitals must go. While it may have overcome a difficulty felt in Germany, this imported missionary zeal corrects no difficulty in the printing of English prose or poetry. In some instances such a custom brings about surprising results. Suppose, for example, a newspaper says "the white house favors black and prefers even green to a dyed-in-the-wool red." To make the sentence intelligible would need the addition of a number of words—which would not be typographie économique! We need labour this point no further but leave these experiments to the advertising of Coty and Elizabeth Arden. Such effects have what is called attention value—like Neon signs—but I am not considering that kind of typography. I have, however, here traced the source of a current fashion of printing signs and advertisements without capital letters.