While "fashion" tends to have unfavorable connotations, "style" is interpreted as a favorable unity of the principles of form of a certain epoch. Questions of fashion in type design today are conditioned on different situations than before World War II, mostly due to the rise of photocomposition and easy reproduction of drawn lettering. Careful execution and self-discipline are no longer required; typographers prefer neutral types, creating their own expression through typographic design. We have today a dominance of the classicist tendency in typography: type is meant to be read. However, in printing types purely utilitarian forms hardly exist; type design has other subjective, emotional purposes. Type designers should be encouraged to create free forms.
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