The New Typography in Scandinavia

This research project provided the first in-depth assessment of the interwar period's New Typography movement in Scandinavia. In doing so it brought together two usually distinct areas of modern design history: the New Typography and Scandinavian Design. Thereby it challenged both canons. A new geography was opened up for the history of the New Typography which is usually confined to Eastern and Central Europe. At the same time, typography was brought into the history of Scandinavian design, where it previously had received scant attention.

Instead of only focusing on exemplary work by a small group of artist-designers, the research also looked at how the New Typography was used in the everyday practice of range of professionals and practitioners. By describing a representational cross-section of work it sought to demonstrate how the New Typography movement deeply affected professional practice and visual culture in Scandinavia during this period.

The project started as a PhD in the History of Design at the Royal College of Art (2012–2017). It then developed further, with notable subsequent results including a monograph based on the PhD thesis published by Bloomsbury Visual Arts (2020) and an month-long exhibition held at Grafill: Norwegian Organisation for Visual Communication (2022).

The project is financed by Other