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When the European avant-garde reached Spain in the 1930s, local printers found themselves ill-equipped to respond. Small printshops were mostly reliant on turn-of-the century typefaces: hardly fitting for expressing this bold new world. But, in a remarkable show of ingenuity, they found their own means of responding to art deco, futurism et al: ‘type case art’. Printers found that they could imitate modernity by using the geometric shapes they already had in their jobbing cases. Bullets, dingbats, rules and ornaments were transformed into illustrations or letters aping the new styles. The younger generation of printers responsible would most likely have encountered such things as cubism through French magazines while Jan Tschichold’s New Typography was brought to Spain by the prominent German printing trade that had been established in the country. The printers’ enthusiasm to embrace this new world triumphed over their lack of means and, perhaps, their limited understanding.

http://www.creativereview.co.uk/crblog/the-art-of-necessity/

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