The New New Typography

by Dmitri Siegel

I first saw the work of French design team Vier5 (Marco Fiedler and Achim Reichert) in Tokion magazine a couple of years ago, but for almost a decade they have been creating what they call “new forward-looking images in the field of visual communication.” They have also repeatedly referred to their work as modern — by which I take them to mean not Modern as it has come to be understood, but modern as in contemporary. The duo is adamant that our times require their own letterforms — the typefaces of yesterday will not suffice. This is an ambitious project, and it carries with it an implicit critique, not so much of the Modernists of a half century ago, but of the decades of designers since who have passively forfeited the idea of being new to their predecessors. Read more...

Modern generally means something that is "up-to-date", "new", or from the present time. The term was invented in the early 16th century to describe recent trends. Learn more...