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Robin Kinross

The Rhetoric of Neutrality

1) The essay was originally presented as a paper at the first Information Design Conference, held at Cranfield, England in December 1984. The author is grateful to the editors of Design Issues for their criticisms of an earlier draft. In the text now published it seemed appropriate to the aims and content of the paper to retain as much as possible of its original colloquial manner.

Introduction withinrecentyearsasa distinct hasemerged "Information design" - amongprinandinvestigation, areaof practice together bringing - graphic textwriters andtypographic designers, cipalparticipants and sciandeditors,computer psychologists, linquistic engineers, inforone mightsay thatthe entists. Riskingoversimplification, mationdesignmovement(thoughmovementmaybe too stronga whatis effective aboutdiscovering termfor it) hasbeenconcerned It been concerned has communication. and typographic graphic thanwith the expressive with the needsof usersrather possibilities with graphic presentin designtasks.Thisis its point of difference andtaught.The movementis an interdesignas usuallypracticed nationalone, thoughcenteredin Britainandthe UnitedStates.It has generated a good deal of literature, including,as forumsfor discussion,two specialist (from 1971, journals:VisibleLanguage started in the Journal Research, 1967)and of Typographic formerly in DesignJournal(started 1979). Information 1First,to discuss,through This essayhastwo broadintentions. of someof theproducts withwhichinformadetailedexamination havebeentypicallyconcerned, whether information tion designers can be neutral.And then to move on from this close criticismof socialandpoliticaldimensions to discussthe larger presexamples ent, even within the smallestand most mundanedesignedfragment. Thus, both explicitlyandby exampleof the mode of argument employed, the essay makessome criticismof information designas it is so fardeveloped. Purity of information:some railwaytimetables in anarticle is a passage The starting by pointfor this investigation sourcefor recentwork in Gui Bonsiepethat has been a principal assertionsare interlarded visual rhetoric:"Informative [durchInformation witha or lesser rhetoric to with degree. setzt] greater in which ends the break-down of out rhetoricis a pipe-dream up existsfor the andtotalsilence.'Pure'information communication As soon as he beginsto give it designeronly in aridabstraction. theproconcreteshape,to bringit withinthe rangeof experience, "2 infiltration cess of rhetorical begins.

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2)Gui Bonsiepe, "Visual/Verbal Rhetoric," Ulm 14/15/16 (December 1965): 30. See also these articles by Bonsiepe: "Persuasive Communication: Towards a Visual Rhetoric," Uppercase5 (1961): 1934; "Semantic Analysis," Ulm 21 (April 1968): 33-37; and, more recently, by Hanno Ehses: "Representing Macbeth: A Case Study in Visual Rhetoric," Design Issues I (Spring 1984):53-63; "Rhetoric and Design," Icographic 2 (1984): 4-6. In an article that leads up to the present discussion, I have made some criticism of the claims for visual rhetoric and semiotics: Robin Kinross, "Semiotics and Designing," Information Design Journal 4 (in press). 3) Bonsiepe, "Visual/Verbal Rhetoric," 30.

4) Oxford English Dictionary Fig. 1) London North-Eastern Region timetable of 1928, as reproduced in Monotype Recorder 32 (Winter 1933).

This is a clear statement of position and one that seems unexceptionable. But then, three paragraphsfurther on, Bonsiepe apparently contradicts himself: "As examples of information innocent of all taint of rhetoric, we might take the train timetable or a table of logarithms. Granted this is an extreme case, but because it is an extreme case, it is very far from representing an ideal model. Fortunately communication is not tied exclusively to the perusal of address books [or directories]. It would die of sheer inanition if these were to be its exemplar."3 Taking up one of Bonsiepe's suggested categories of information, London North-Eastern Region (LNER) railway timetables can be considered: the first from 1928 (figure 1) and the second from a redesign shortly after this date (figure 2). These examples come from a publication of the Monotype Corporation, which makes propaganda for their recently introduced Gill Sans typeface. The major change is, of course, that of typeface. A change of detail is the substitution of dashes for dotleaders in alternaterows; also,the two dots in each element of the leader are further apart. Otherwise, there is not much change. Forty or so years later, in 1974 and now in the era of British Rail, things are much the same (figure 3): another variation on the theme of leaders, bold rather than medium as the standard for times, few horizontal rules, and station namesnow set in lowercase. These timetables, by the simple fact that they organize and articulate and give visual presence to information, use rhetorical means. A dictionary definition of the term rhetoric yields the following: "The art of using language so as to persuade or influence others; the body of rules to be observed by a speaker or writer in order that he may express himself with eloquence. "4It is the sec-

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Design Issues: Vol. II, No. 2

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5) Oxford English Dictionary

ond sense (the body of rules for eloquence) that seems to describe the case of the timetables. The system of tabulararrangementthat these examples employ is like a figure of rhetoric: a framework for eloquent articulation. But is there any rhetoric involved if another definition (chronologically later and also more popular), such as "language characterized by artificial or ostentatious expression"5 is considered? Not obviously, unless one regards the replacing of a leader composed of two dots by one made up of six dots as a sign of ostentation. And, perhaps, within the sober and hushed domain of the timetable, it is just that. Another point of comparison is provided by the page from the Dutch railway timetables of 1970-71 (figure 4). The main feature is the use of color - lost, of course, in this reproduction. A green strip along the top of the page indicates that the user is in the section of the book that covers the northern and eastern parts of the country. Then red is used in the network diagramabove the tables, to show further destinations after changing trains. In the tables, red is also used as the symbol for "Tempo" or intercity trains. Other differences from the British examples: the absence of any dotleaders, horizontal rules showing when a train stops for a minute or more, and the use of medium charactersonly - no bold - for the station names and the times. Now, if small modifications in the form of dotleaders are regarded as ostentations, how can this deployment of color be described? It is hard to think of anything that is more like a rhetorical device than this use of color, especially within so tight and dry a context as a timetable. Color is perhaps like music: It can play on our senses. How, we do not quite know. But suddenly we are seduced. And is not this a rhetorical maneuver, in the sense of a set

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of rules for making information eloquent and more easily understandable, and then - more than this - for sweetening it and slipping it down our throats? At this point it is helpful to return to the meanings of the term rhetoric, and to point to its sense of "the art of using language so as to persuade or influence others." A distinction is customarily made between design for information, for example, timetables, and design for persuasion, for example, advertising, above all. The argument of this essay is that this distinction cannot be a clear one. Looking again at Bonsiepe's theses, it seems that on the evidence of the examples discussed, his first perception was correct. As soon as the move from concept to visible manifestation is made, and especially to a manifestation as highly organized as a timetable, then the means used become rhetorical. Here another definition of rhetoric might be tried, the art of directed communication - directed, that is, both internally to organize the material communication and externally to persuade an audience. For there is an element of persuasion here, which can be brought out just by asking, why do transport organizations go to the trouble of having their timetables designed and, even more significantly, redesigned? These timetables are designed to say something persuasive about the nature of the organization that publishes them. When quoting the two passages from Bonsiepe, an apparent contradiction is highlighted. The contradiction is between his asserting that information without rhetoric cannot exist in the real world and his excluding the possibility that timetables could be rhetorical. In his second passage, Bonsiepe is wrong. Even if one takes rhetoric to mean artful persuasion, timetables can still enter this arena. Using metaphor, the fusty British trains of 1960 (plush seats, patterned fabrics, carpets, lights with conical shades, little curtains

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Fig. 4) Pagefromthe Dutch nation al railway timetable (Spoor) 1970-71; designed by Tel boekje) Designi. Reproduced by permission of NV Nederlandse Spoorwegen.

- a substitute for the bourgeois interior awaiting the traveler at

either end of the journey) can be contrasted with a Dutch train of the 1970s (seating of tubular steel, some tough synthetic seat materials, plain colors - a little severe but easy to construct and easy to keep clean). This is not, of course, to claim that these contexts can

Railways Fig. 5) Pagefroma British Easter n Region "Services to Germaany"timetable, 1960. Reproduced I of British bypermission RailwaiysBoard.

be inferred from the two timetables (figures 4 and 5); but it seems * . fair to say that the sense one has of each of these examples is of a
piece with their respective contexts. And "the sense one has" of

them is a consequence of the rhetorical devices they employ. All these examples impart information of times, destinations, buffet cars, and so on through the means of typography: typeface, type style, rules, dotleaders, symbols, spaces, and color. And these means constitute an "interlarding" (to use Bonsiepe's word) of information, and this interlarding provides the data of cultural reference. The resonance of typefaces To address more specifically the theme of the rhetoric of neutrality, it is useful to isolate one component of these timetables: the typefaces in which they are set. This is not to suggest that style of letterforms - typeface - is the most important thing in typography (in practice, it often seems to be the least important element). But the choice of typeface is often telling, in that it indicates the ideas and beliefs that inform the process of design. In the progression from the first LNER timetable of 1928 to its 22

6) "An Account of the LNER Type Standardization," Monotype Recorder 32 (Winter 1933): 6-11.

7) "An Account of the LNER Type Standardization," 10.

8) For example, Jan Tschichold's programmatic statement "Wasist und was will die neue Typografie?" (1930) had appeared under the title "New Life in Print" in the journal of the advertising trade in Britain, CommercialArt (July 1930): 2-20.

was essentially one of typeface: version,the change redesigned serif serif to GillSans, thesans fromanineteenth-century typeface Eric Gill for the It is instrucdesigned Monotype Corporation. by tive to readthe explanantion put forward by the anonymous fromwhichtheseexamples writerin the Monotype Recorder, come.6The typeface was chosenas a standard for LNER,the writer as a of all its matter andits explained, way giving printed a common It wassuggested thatGillSansalso identity. signing intrinsic certain virtues: It seems to perform wellunder possesses of railway thecritical conditions travel. Toquote "apassdirectly: on a crowded on a winter engerbeingjostled platform evening, withoneeyeon thestation andtrying clockto verify theconnectionsof a giventrain. .."; without serifs andwithlinesof fairly consistent "it is so for thatas faras thickness, 'stripped action' "7 of thought. goes,it isthemostefficient glance reading conveyor to stopatthispoint.Heorshe(itmay Butthewriter wascareful thenin charge of theMonotype well havebeenBeatrice Warde, went on to that serifs are less suggest sans Corporation's publicity) in extended of text, and passages legiblethan serif typefaces have orspecial claim theideathatsans serifs rejected anynecessary the of new on the alleged This was voice the Zeitgeist. typical it in British has sometimes been traditionalism (as termed) typogof typographic atthemoment whenthevoices modernism raphy, For the new traditionalists, to be heard.8 werejust beginning needed to be modern to usemechanized typography processes andto caterto the needsof the modern world- butneeded to Thespecter of DasModernismus avoid"modernism." waskeptat of a sophisticated rival to the bay,in thiscaseby thedevelopment more rationally, new German sans conceived, geometrically serifs. As exemplified shown(figures 2, 3, 5), Gill by thetimetables in usein Britain Sans remained asthenormal sansserifwellinto Itspredominance the 1960s. wasthendisturbed on by thearrival themarket of Univers, thetypeface usedintheDutch timetable of 4. in was in Univers the Paris, 1954, figure designed by beginning SwissAdrian andfirstbecame available as Monotype Frutiger, in 1961. it wasnew,Univers matrices When carried withit anaura: thatof system. It wasthefirsttypeface whosetotalsetof forms - wasconthe variants of weightandexpansion or contraction ceivedat theoutset.Theclaim wasmade (inthename implicitly to it) andto someextent forit)thatit (inpublicity given explicitly to meetallneeds wasthetypeface inanytypesetting inany system Latin characters. language using Thefateof modernism - theintroduction Thechanges of typeface in thesetimetables of Gill Sansin the late1920s andearly1930s,replacing ninteenthand then the introduction of Univers centuryseriftypefaces,

Design Issues: Vol. II, No. 2

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II das bauhaus
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(from the early 1960s) to replace earlier sans serifs such as Gill or the grotesques - are instances of larger historical shifts that underlie this subject. To put it ratherportentously, one is here discussing the fate of modernism in the twentieth century: the attempted social and esthetic revolution that took off, shakily, from the continent of Europe in the 1920s and began to suffer drastic, almost fatal reversalsin the 1930s (in Germany above all) but which struggled on, dispersed and diluted and which reemerged in the postwar world of the West and somehow, rathermysteriously, became a common visual currency during the 1950s and 1960s. What has this to do with the rhetoric of neutrality and information design? My suggestion is that the assumptions and beliefs of information design can be traced to the period of heroic modernism (between the two wars) and that they spring directly from certain post-World War II mutations of the modern movement. Thus, in order to understand the present situation of information designers, one needs to investigate modernism and its history. 24

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froma famous artifact of this consider For example, reasonofed most compelling quotation the but for style of reasons for modernist typography, the letterheading of the Dessau Bauhaus (in one of its several variations, figure 6): "an attempt at a simplified mode of writing: 1. from all the innovations in writing, this mode is recommended as the form of the future .... 2. text loses nothing when composed only of small letters, but becomes easier to read, easier to learn, essentially more scientific. 3. why for one sound -'a,' for example - two signs, A and a; why two alphabets for one word, why twice the quantity of signs when just half of them would be enough?" This example serves as a reminder of the faith of modernism: the belief in simple forms, in reduction of elements, apparentlynot for reasons of style but for the most compelling reason of need the need to save labor, time, and money, and to improve communication. Text set in lowercase only is, it was suggested, "easier to read." If we smile at this declaration now (how difficult to Design Issues: Vol. II, No. 2
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9) For English-language readers, this is most accessible in John Heskett's article "Modernism and Archaism in Design in the Third Reich," Block 3 (1980): 13-24. See also the recent survey by Jeffrey Herf, Reactionary Modernism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984).

10) The decree is reprinted in Karl Klingspor, Uber Schonheit von Schrift und Druck (Frankfurt am Main: Schauer, 1949), 44.

on a present-day these letterheading!), anysuchstatement imagine when seenin the contextof their ideasdo becomeunderstandable time andplace:Germanysoon afterWorldWarI, when standarand when therewere posdizationwas an economicimperative sibilitiesof socialandpoliticalrevolution.However, by the midthe utopian, dle 1920s (the time of the Bauhausletterheading) economic and social life moment had and revolutionary passed, were attaining somedegreeof stability. of between-the-wars moderIt is fromthis time in the progress nismthatthe themeto whichinformation designis anheircomes anda governing beliefin scito the fore:the mood of Sachlichkeit is "essenwith small letters ence and technology.Thus, writing tiallymorescientific." Anotherdocumentfrom the periodprovidesfurtherevidence: writersfromacross a journal publishedin Zurich,whichgathered the spectrum of interests economics, science, education, technics,andart- underthe bannerof Information (figure7). In both formandcontentit is a typicalproductof the modernmovement. This is not to suggest that with this journalthe modern movementlaidany exactclaimon the word andthe ideathatnow helpsto bringinformation designers together,butmerelythatthis - "instrandof modernism'stypical concernwith information structive is thatpresent-day information knowledge" something sharetoo. designers of the 1930sin Germany, one In alludingaboveto the "reversal" is, of course, simplifyingand, it could be argued, falsifying. Revisionisthistorianshave effectivelydisposed of the myth of some absolute break (in January 1933) between modernistin "goodform"andNazi kitsch.9It is clearthatthe modernmovement in design,in Germanyas elsewhere,was alwaysa minority national socialism affair,justasit is obviousthatGerman accepted and exploitedelementsof modernity:industrial productionand technological advance. In the sphere of esthetics, however, nationalsocialismarrivedeventuallyat neoclassicism as its preferredstyle in architecture andalso in typography.Thus, following a Nazi Partydecreeof 1941,gothicor blackletter ("theJewish was the as standard letterform in GerSchwabacher") deposed the new standard was to be roman The many; (Antiqua).10 words of the thousand-year wereto be Reich,likeits publicarchitecture, lent authority borrowedfromclassical Rome. The ambiguities of beliefs and forms of those yearsin central force one to definewhat it was in the modernmovement Europe that is still alive in design now. For information design, specifically, one might separateout a commitmentto the rational,the as playingno sceptical,the democraticsocialist,the internation in nationalsocialist modernization. This collection of beliefs part - including andattitudes alsomorespecificbeliefsin simpleforms and economiesof effort- is somethingthat informationdesign

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inherited from heroic modernism, but in transmuted form, over a gap of years in which World War II figured as an enormous convulsion. The after effects of this convulsion are described below, without a pretense of understanding precise causes. Information design in the postwar world In the immediate postwar situation, the ideals of modernism seemed to find a role again. In Britain, one thinks of the programs of the new Labour government in housing, health, and education and of the surrounding discussion and presentation. But with the economic recovery of the 1950s, ideals changed. The dream then envisioned an ideology-free or ideologically neutral world made possible by advances in technology, by an abundance of material goods, by the spread of representative democracy and the eclipse of rival political systems, and by mass education.11 It was this dreamworld of the 1950s and the 1960s in the United States and Western Europe that provided the context for the spread of modernism in design. To return to the timetables, this was the context in which Univers - the universal, sans serif, sans-ideology typeface - could be designed and be so widely adopted. This was the context of the flourishing of Swiss typography: the style of technical advance, precision, and neutrality.12 If the word information can be used as a point of focus for some between-the-wars modernists, it also has specific connotations that date from after World War II in the United States. This is its use in the terms information theory and information technology.13 The science of information is then laid onto the pattern of modernism: partly fitting with and confirming it, partly modifying it. The notable feature of the post-World War II concern with information is the way in which concepts developed in electricalengineering and computing have been generalized and dispersed, so that notions such as "message," "feedback," "redundancy,"for example, could become part of anyone's mental baggage- in particular any designer's. This seepage from the laboratory into the wider world happened because such concepts could be of service. The idea was put forth that human transactions might have the same order and essential simplicity as an electrical circuit. One may suspect here a desire for the human world to be as amenableto understanding and control and as free from unpredictability as an electrical machine. If information design can in many of its aspects be traced back to between-the-wars modernism, then the other large component in its formation would be this more recent matter of what has been called the information revolution. The clearestinstance of the conjunction of these two strands- or overlaying of patterns - is in the work of the Hochschule fur Gestaltung Ulm (HfG Ulm), the institution that fostered the work of Bonsiepe, which provided the starting point for this investigation.

11)The termideology,thoughbedeviled by in its meanings, seemsimpossislippage ble to avoid.In thiscontextof the 1950s in the West, one thinksparticularly of DanielBell'sthesisof the "endof ideolin his book of this title ogy,"elaborated (Glencoe,IL:FreePress,1960).In a letter to me (11 October 1985),Bonsiepe explainedthat he was, then as now, in "thepossibility of introducinterested into the designdiscourse. ing arguments And arguments are anythingelse than If it was wrongto seek a soluneutral" tion in information theory(withits neglect of the receiver or user),the problem a realone, unilluminated remains by decadesof designmethodology. see Robin discussion, 12)For moredetailed and Kinross,"EmilRuder's Typography 'Swiss Typography'," Information 4 (1984): 147-153. Journal Design textof information 13)Thefounding theory is C. E. Shannonand W. Weaver,The Mathematical Theory of Communication (Urbana:Universityof Illinois Press, 1949);for a popularaccountof the "information revolution," see, Jeremy Man(London: Grammatical Campbell, AllenLane,1983).

Design Issues: Vol. II, No. 2

27

Fig. 8) Page from catalog (designed by its printer) investigated by Gui Bonsiepe, with the collaboration of Franco Clivio, as reproduced in Ulm 21 (April 1968). Reproduced by permission of Gui Bonsiepe.
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The HfG Ulm was set up in the early 1950s to continue the Bauhaus tradition, though tempered and developed for the postWorld WarII world (and the special problems of reconstruction in West Germany).14For example, there was at first a Department of Information to educate students in skills of writing and radio broadcasting. But the real point of contact of the HfG Ulm with
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14) The conflict-ridden history of this school lives on to obstruct attempts to document its work, but see a recent special journal issue on "The Legacy of the School of the Ulm," Rassegna 19 (September 1984).

this argument is in the interesttakenby some of its membersin communication or informationtheory, cybernetics,and related areasof inquiry.A good exampleof theseconcernsis an articlein whichGui Bonsiepe,usingthe Shannon formula,triedto quantify the respectivedegrees of order in two pages of an industrial catalog:the irrational,ad hoc approachto design in a printer's existing version (figure 8) and an Ulm-designedversion of the same information,concernedto reducevariationsof type size,
text measure, picture size (figure 9).15 In his conclusion, Bonsiepe

15) Gui Bonsiepe, "A Method of Quantifying Order in Typographic Design," Ulm 21 (April 1968): 24-31. This article was also published in Journal of Typographic Research 2: (July 1968): 203-220.

on the possibilitythatthe redesign ruminated wasmorebeautiful, as well as moreorderedthanthe original.Thus, this projectcombinedthe lessonsof the new typography of CentralEuropein the 1920sand 1930swith those of the Bell Telephone in Laboratories the 1940s. The work of the HfG Ulm represents a marriage of modernism of form and appearancewith highly developed theoretical was a convenientone: Formalexpression interests.The marriage could diminishas the theoreticallabor- the work of analysisflourished.And this did seem to fit, at least for a time (the late in par1950sandearly1960s),into the patternof WestGermany, ticular: the society of the "economicmiracle."The analytical couldfindapplication in thecomplextasksof coordinatapproach or a ing the design of productsof large concerns(a Lufthansa Braun).The style that issuedout of the analysisworkedtoo: to Thesewerethe providea senseof efficiency, sobriety,seriousness. values the of German II War So one guiding post-World recovery. arrives If nothingcanbe freeof againat the rhetoricof neutrality. The style (for rhetoric,whatcanbe done to seemfreeof rhetoric? suchit was) of the HfG Ulm was one response. Coda - proceeding This historical excursion via LondonNorth-Eastern in the Central 1920s, Regionrailway Europein the 1930s,Ulm in the 1960s,andon up to thepresent- is intended to serveasa simple reminder thatnothingis freeof rhetoric,thatvisualmanifestations historicalcircumstances, that ideological emergefrom particular vacuums do not exist.In thecontextof thepresentrather intensely of even the "stable" chargedand volatile political atmospheres Western to laborsuchtruths.The nations,it maynot be neccesary rhetorical that these cultureseffect in their material interlarding andvisualproductionhardlyneedsdecoding.Thatis certainly so if one thinksof the moreblatant of the Western cultures products of consumption:advertisements, above all.16 But, amonginformation designers,there has been a tendancyto escapefrom the of the widerworld, to deny any ideaof rhetorical assaults persuato take refuge in immaculate and black machinecasings. sion, Indeed,the whole revolutionof information technologyseemsto the view thatideology becomesincreasingly reduced encourage 29

16) "It is informally estimated within the advertising industry that on any given day the average American city-dweller takes in roughly 2,000 advertising messages;" thus Mark Crispin Miller, "Introduction: The Critical Pursuit of Advertising," Word & Image 1 (OctoberDecember 1985), 320.

Design Issues: Vol. II, No. 2

miniaturized - in step with the development of ever smaller and more powerful computing devices. Therefore, we need to keep awake, applying our critical intelligences outside, as well as inside, the black box: questioning and resisting.
Fig. 9) The catalog page redesigned (halftone pictures represented schematically), as reproduced in Ulm 21 (April 1968). Reproduced by permission of Gui Bonsiepe.

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