“History: problematic and cool, all at once” 📜✒️🗃️
Anna Simons (1871–1951) taught hand lettering to a generation of designers. She studied calligraphy with Edward Johnston at Royal College of Art (UK), then taught courses in his place in Germany and translated his work into German. After WWI Simons went on to teach how to use broad nib pens across Europe for decades. She also designed some 1400 titles and initials for Bremer Press.🖋️
Simons was part of the BUGRA (Weltaustellung für BUchgewerbe und GRAfik; the International Exhibition for the Book Trade and Graphic Design) in May 1914 in Das Haus der Frau (The House of Women) pavilion. She was listed as a Schriftkünstlerin (type artist) but did not design typefaces. The bombing of Munich in 1944 destroyed her home and the Bremer Press building. She won many awards, influenced many designers, and died in 1951.
Since we’re talking about typography and design this season, this episode also helps everyone get on the same page about what type design includes, some key terms (letterforms, typefaces, typography, type design, typographer, fonts...), and where the metal type era fits into the bigger history of design. Nina and Bethany even talk about Comic Sans (“not that horrible“), why design is never neutral, and the “inspiration soup” that’s all around us. Plus how type design’s history of self-mythologizing influences what we know today.
Special guest: Nina Stössinger, type designer at Frere-Jones Type, teacher at Yale School of Art, fan of Nicolas Jenson’s Roman typeface
PSA: How often do you think about the Roman empire?
References 📚 Samples of Anna Simons’s work (mostly in German):
- with Peter Behrens, Dem Deutschen Volke ("To the German People") on the German Reichstag building, Berlin (1916)
- Bremer Press lettering work: Titel und Initialen für die Bremer Presse, Bremer Presse, 1926 (images via UW-Milwaukee Special Collections)
- “Der Staatliche Schriftkurs in Neubabelsberg,” Kunstgewerbeblatt, March 1910, pp. 101–7 (Simons’s students work on pp. 108-13)
- Want more? Search for Anna Simons in Gebrauchsgraphik and other period trade publications via the International Advertising & Design Database.
- See also German Designers, Luc Devroye, and A Short Introduction to Graphic Design History
Credits
Creator and Producer: Bethany Qualls
Editor: Joe DeGrand
Original episode artwork: Trifoxatops aka Jenna Mauro
Social Media Whisperer: Elizabeth Giardina
Music: "Sneaky Feet" by geoffharvey
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