The New Typography [1923]

- Laszlo Moholy-Nagy

• Typography is a tool of communication.

• It must be communication in its most intense form.

• The emphasis must be on absolute claritysincethis distinguishes the character of our own writing from that of ancient pictographic forms.

• Our intellectual relationship to the world is individual-exact

  (e.g.,this individual-exact relationship is in a state of transition toward a collective-exact orientation).

• This is in contrast to the ancient individual-amorphous and later collective- amorphous mode of communication.

• Therefore priority: unequivocal clarity in all typographical compositions. Legibility-communication must never be impaired by an a priori aesthetics.