This 1970s film is teaching journalism students about proper design. It’s unapologetically brutalist, in the same denaturing spirit as Corbusier in architecture or Cage in music. Remove all beauty. Remove all decorations. Remove all variation and improvisation. Only stark colorless rectangles are allowed.
Replace it with squared-off type masses… Short words, short sentences and short paragraphs … Some ornaments are worse than others but all are non-functional and unnecessary. Ornamentation must be removed!
Ornaments ran wild in newspapers of the late 1800s. Here’s part of an 1878 Salina paper:
And here’s part of the Inland Type Founders catalog where the paper bought their fonts and ornaments:
(Note the Masons at upper left, IOOF symbol in the center, and socialist arm and hammer in lower right. Mutual benefit was BIG. )
When people are stuck with a brutalist medium they WILL find ways to ornament it. Facebook’s emoji selector reproduces the Inland ornament fonts:
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Ornamentation is an INTEGRAL part of nature. You might even say that nature IS ornamentation. Every plant and animal creates beauty and order for its own purposes, sometimes to deceive, sometimes to attract, sometimes for sheer joy. More complex animals create beauty and joy by moving. Birds enjoy flying in beautiful patterns. Mammals enjoy dancing and leaping.
Humans have an unquenchable need to decorate and ornament everything. Speech intonation and metaphors, melisma and cadenzas in music, frills and filigrees on clothing and hair, cornices and moldings on buildings.
CIA funded and organized brutalism in all its forms, from architecture to art to music to government. Deepstate hates beauty and order. Ornamentation must be removed!!! People must be kept hungry for something missing in their lives, and they can’t be allowed to know what’s missing. Deepstate will then generously satisfy the appetite with its own poisonous junk food.
Environmentalism hates ornament in smell and taste. Every smell is a pollutant and must be removed! No smoke! No perfume! No spice! No coloring in food! Cookstoves must be removed! Only EPA-approved distilled air and distilled water and tasteless nutrition pills can be allowed!
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Sidenote: The film briefly shows a Ludlow machine in action. It’s rarely described or mentioned in accounts of typography.
I tributed the Ludlow here.
Polistra's Mill 