Survey 8 – Typography: Fascist Futurism

By 1915, the trend of futurism was in full swing. Started by Italian typographer and writer Filippo T. Marinetti, futurism was a movement embracing “the art of the future”. He exhibited unbridled excitement for the opportunities brought by industrialization and innovation. In 1909, he published the first Futurist Manifesto in which he called artist to embrace the violent and fast nature of the future; to portray that in their art. Marinetti also wanted to combine the current art style of cubism with typography to create graphic and modern artwork.

He despised traditionalism and wanted to use his poetry to design something new and fantastic, glorifying war, violence and racism in the process. He once said, “I call for a typographic revolution directed against the idiotic and nauseating concepts of the outdated and conventional book, with its handmade paper and seventeenth century ornamentation of garlands and goddesses, huge initials and mythological vegetation, its missal ribbons and epigraphs and roman numerals. The book must be the Futurist expression of our futurist ideas.. even more: My revolution is directed against what is known as the typographic harmony of the page, which is contrary to the flux and movement of style”.

His futurist designs completely disregarded the current expression of typography, which was very traditional, straight, and left-to-right; linear. Marinetti threw that all out the window. He wanted to create exciting and graphic typography that was written in arches, vertical down the page, with varying type sizes, fonts and inks. This style is culminated in his “Zang Tumb Tumb” poster, created in 1914. This poster exemplified the tenants of the futurist movement, and had many other artists on board, which propelled futurism through the 1920’s and onward.

Marinetti, while being revolutionary in the world of typography, was also a fascist radical. A supporter of Benito Mussolini and the ORVA, Marinetti wanted to make futurism the official art style of fascist Italy, after his bid to create propaganda for the regime, which failed. He also called for the destruction and desecration of all places of public education, such as libraries and museums, as well as the removal of professors, archaeologists and other academic types. He may have been important to typography, but he really sucked, so I’m not a fan.