Rodchenko
Designed by Tagir Safayev, 2002.
Did the rigor of the Weimar grid bring bread to the proletariats, or liberation to the Gulag? Depends on whose manifesto you pulled from the press, or which agitprop piece you peeled from the wall. While these posters’ political impact may be unquantifiable, their design principles were numerically precise: geometric and bold. Constructivist letterforms were overwhelmingly capital, rectilinear, and unfailingly loud. Alongside architects, painters, and designers, Russian typographers in the early twentieth century were among the "artists in the service of the Revolution," and, as the face of the printed message, their lettering aesthetic was considered critical to the movement. The minimal urgency and form are captured in Paratype's Rodchenko, designed by Tagir Safayev and named for the seminal Russian artist and co-founder of constructivism. Armed with the stentorian tenor of three weights, two widths, and multilingual OpenType, Rodchenko recruits you to reject calisthenics with your comrades, in favor of an underground printshop and ideologies of the new utopia.
Published in Print magazine's column Hot Type.
