Mat's notes on Dan's text

Dan’s text - notes by Mat

Futura without a future – Kurt Schwitters and typography for Hanover town council (1929-1934)

The text focuses on Kurt Schwitters appointment as artistic director to Hanover town council from 1929-34 where he was employed with the task of instating a cohesive design infrastructure for the creation, manufacture and organization of all documents for clerical and civic use.

Through the implementation of new logos, layouts and most significantly – font, a new tension arose between emerging creative disciplines, the Dadaist avant-garde and the totalitarian rule of an emerging Third Reich.

A back and forth between the grotesque and the geometric san-serif found within Futura becomes a poignant symbol of the inconsistencies within the influence of national socialist rule of the time.