Reading the title of this article, the first thing that will come to mind for some is the funny expression of Buzz Lightyear — the Disney character — when he stretches his arms outwards and utters the famous phrase “To infinity and beyond!” before jumping into the void. If we were to make an analogy between the production of

阅读这篇文章的标题时，首先想到的是Buzz Lightyear(迪斯尼角色)的滑稽表情，当他向外张开双臂并说出著名的短语“到无限远！” 在跳入虚无之前。 如果我们在生产

In addition to touching and revolutionizing many economic sectors of the time, including the film industry, the Moon mission opened up new paths in the field of graphic design due to the plaque anchored to the LEM leg, which reported the following words:

除了触动并革新了包括电影业在内的许多经济领域，Moon任务还通过在LEM腿上固定了一块牌匾，开辟了图形设计领域的新道路，上面写着以下词语：

The typeface chosen for the engraving was Futura, which soon became one of the most famous and commonly-used fonts in the design field.

用于雕刻的字体是Futura，该字体很快成为设计领域最著名和最常用的字体之一。

“富利，我是你父亲” (“Futura, I am your father”)

The evolution of the Futura font is full of unique events and anecdotes.

Futura字体的演变充满了独特的事件和轶事。

One of the most fascinating aspects lies with its creator or, as some claim, creators. In fact, graphic historians attribute the paternity of Futura to the German designer Paul Renner. Renner began designing the characters in 1924 and published the font in 1927 as a contribution, commissioned by the Bauer Type Foundry, for the New Frankfurt. This was a magazine in circulation from 1926 to 1931 and was dedicated to international trends in architecture, art, housing, and education. However, some studies attribute the ideation of the character to Ferdinand Kramer, a German architect and functionalist designer.

最令人着迷的方面之一在于其创造者，或者有人声称是创造者。 实际上，图形历史学家将Futura的父权归因于德国设计师Paul Renner。 Renner于1924年开始设计这些字符，并在1927年由Bauer Type Foundry委托为新法兰克福发行了该字体。 这是一本在1926年至1931年间发行的杂志，专门介绍建筑，艺术，住房和教育方面的国际趋势。 但是，一些研究将角色的构想归因于德国建筑师兼功能主义设计师Ferdinand Kramer。

The doubt about the paternity of the character is due to an archive finding discovered in Kramer’s study: a sketch entitled “Kramer Grotesk” which still raises questions, mostly speculative, about the origin of the Futura (Pohlen 2017).

对角色的父权性的怀疑是由于在克莱默的研究中发现的一个档案发现：一个名为“克拉默·格罗特斯克”的素描仍然提出了关于富图拉的起源的疑问，大多数是推测性的(Pohlen 2017) 。

成为未来的重要性 (The importance of being future)

Leaving Renner the merit of designing the Futura, it is good to dwell on the characteristics that have distinguished this typeface from its contemporaries. While presenting some similarities with characters previously known to the public, such as Akzidenz Grotesk developed by the German foundry H. Berthold AG in 1896, Futura was much more successful for two reasons in particular: its name and its geometry.

保留Renner设计Futura的优点，最好将区别于该字体与其同时代的特征留在里面。 Futura展示了与以前公众所熟知的字符的相似之处，例如由德国铸造厂H. Berthold AG在1896年开发的Akzidenz Grotesk ，但由于两个原因(尤其是其名称和几何形状)而成功得多。

Many designers of the time designed characters to celebrate the new industrial era: they wanted to create something unique for a new world. We have had other examples from German printers, some of which are very similar to Futura.

当时的许多设计师设计了角色来庆祝新的工业时代：他们想为新世界创造独特的东西。 我们还有其他来自德国打印机的示例，其中一些与Futura非常相似。

What you immediately notice is the difficulty in pronouncing or remembering names. Something different happens concerning Futura: it is a simple name and has the extraordinary ability to evoke and convey the idea of how the future and modern era awaiting humanity would look. A German name was not chosen precisely because the goal was to address a vast and universal public.

您立即注意到的是发音或记住名字的困难。 Futura发生了一些不同的变化：它是一个简单的名称，并且具有非凡的功能，可以唤起并传达等待人类的未来和现代时代的外观。 之所以没有选择德国人的名字，恰恰是因为其目标是针对广大公众。

字体剖析 (Anatomy of a font)

The influence of the Staatliches Bauhaus, the German art school, in the realization of Futura is very much evident. Although Renner was not an active member of the school, he shared its ideas. For example, he was convinced that it was necessary to create something new; to design new typographic models without replicating previous designs. The decision to produce a font that reflects the idea of functionalism and essentiality by depriving the useless character of decorations and graces was a typical element of the modernist current. Quoting Mies van der Rohe, it can be said that Renner operated typically of the Less is more philosophy. The character design, with simple and rigorous lines, incorporates the following geometries: square, circle, triangle. These features can be found by looking at the images below: you can see that the have been derived from the isosceles triangle.

德国艺术学校Staatliches Bauhaus在实现Futura方面的影响非常明显。 尽管伦纳不是学校的活跃成员，但他分享了学校的想法。 例如，他深信有必要创造一些新东西。 设计新的印刷模型而无需复制以前的设计。 通过剥夺无用的装饰和优雅特征来生产反映功能主义和必要性思想的字体的决定是现代主义潮流的典型要素。 引用米斯·凡·德·罗(Mies van der Rohe)的话，可以说，伦纳(Renner)通常以“ 少”(Less)运作是更多哲学。 字符设计具有简单而严谨的线条，并结合了以下几何形状：正方形，圆形，三角形。 通过查看以下图像，可以找到这些功能：您可以看到d源自等腰三角形。

其他Reich字体 (The other Reich font)

The path that led Futura to be adopted as one of the official Reich fonts is full of twists and curiosities.

导致Futura成为Reich官方字体之一的道路充满了曲折和好奇。

First, the use of the Gothic style was predominant in Nazi propaganda — and this clashed very much with the rigor of Futura. At that time, Fraktur was used: a typeface born around sixteeth century from the Bohemian chancellery of Maximilian I of Habsburg as a form of elegant court writing. The Reich adopted Fraktur around 1930 and used it for several years in various media dedicated to the spread of Hitler’s National Socialist policy.

首先，在纳粹宣传中主要使用了哥特式风格，这与Futura的严苛格格不入。 当时使用的是Fraktur ：一种字体，起源于六十世纪，来自哈布斯堡(Habsburg)马克西米利安一世(Maximilian I)的波西米亚大臣，是一种精美的宫廷文字。 帝国在1930年左右采用了Fraktur ，并在各种专门用于传播希特勒国家社会主义政策的媒体中使用了几年。

Another important event that delayed the use of Futura was the arrest and exile of Paul Renner himself, who, in 1932, published an anti-Nazi essay entitled “Kultur-bolschewismus.” It was around 1936 that things began to change and Futura began to appear on the pages of one of the most famous manuals known to the Nazi regime: the Organisationsbuch der NSDAP. Shortly after that, the use of Fraktur began to diminish to give voice to a more modern and contemporary and more readable style.

延迟使用Futura的另一个重要事件是保罗·伦纳本人的逮捕和流放，保罗·伦纳本人于1932年发表了一篇反对纳粹的文章，题为“文化-博世主义”。 大约在1936年，事情开始发生变化，富图拉开始出现在纳粹政权最著名的手册之一： NSDAP组织中 。 在那之后不久，Fraktur的使用开始减少，以表达一种更现代，更现代，更易读的风格。

But it was not simply the desire for modernization that led the Nazis to change fonts. The transition to Futura was also imposed by the fact that the previous character presented, according to the opinion of the time, graces too similar to Hebrew writing, making Fraktur an impure character and not suitable for representing Nazi ideology.

但是，导致纳粹改变字体的不只是对现代化的渴望。 过渡到富都拉的原因还在于，根据当时的观点，先前呈现的角色与希伯来语写作过于相似，这使得Fraktur成为不纯洁的角色，不适合代表纳粹意识形态。

美国尾巴 (An American Tail)

A typeface similar to Futura first appeared in 1929 in the pages of a magazine, Vanity Fair. Unable to use Renner’s font, Mehemed Fehmy Agha — art director of the magazine — decided to entrust the redesign of a similar typeface to the Baltimore Type Foundry. In honor of the publishing house, it was renamed Vogue.

一种类似于Futura的字体，于1929年首次出现在杂志名利场上 。 该杂志的艺术总监Mehemed Fehmy Agha无法使用Renner的字体，决定委托重新设计与巴尔的摩字体铸造厂相似的字体。 为了纪念出版社，它更名为Vogue 。

The reason lies in a well-known historical event: the collapse of the 1929 stock exchange led to the imposition of a tax on typographical characters from Germany. This therefore led to the economic collapse of many European foundries which settled in the United States after World War I, including the Bauer Type Foundry, that at the time marketed Futura in the United States.

原因在于一个著名的历史事件：1929年证券交易所的倒闭导致对德国的印刷字符征税。 因此，这导致了许多在第一次世界大战后定居在美国的欧洲铸造厂的经济崩溃，包括当时在美国销售Futura的Bauer型铸造厂。

But why switch from a graced font to a stick? The idea was to eliminate the emphasis on capitalized letters in favour of a more modern and egalitarian style, while maintaining an authoritarian and essential tone. However, the interest in Futura went beyond the walls of the publishing house, coming to knock on the doors of one of the most important government agencies on the planet: NASA.

但是，为什么从加粗的字体切换为木棒呢？ 这样做的目的是消除对大写字母的强调，转而采用更现代和平均主义的风格，同时保持专制和基本的语调。 但是，对富图拉(Futura)的兴趣超出了出版社的范围，从而敲响了地球上最重要的政府机构之一：美国宇航局(NASA)的大门。

首先 (The First)

Futura, along with its clones, soon became a mainstream font in the United States. At the end of the World War II, it was used in encyclopaedias, in tables, in graphics, in maps, and even in propagandistic elements of American politics. When the American government decided to adopt a new typeface, the choice of Futura was not surprising but it was not chosen as an aesthetic declaration of modernism. Instead, it was because of its ability to transmit authority.

Futura及其克隆很快成为美国的主流字体。 第二次世界大战结束时，它被用于百科全书，表格，图形，地图，甚至是美国政治的宣传元素。 当美国政府决定采用一种新的字体时，对Futura的选择并不奇怪，但并未被选作现代主义的美学宣言。 相反，这是因为它具有传递权限的能力。

It is no coincidence that NASA used the font for its entire communication system: from food ration labels to indications on the Saturn V control panel.

NASA在整个通讯系统中使用该字体并非偶然：从食物定量标签到Saturn V控制面板上的指示。

It was even used for the writing on the famous plaque, which reads as follows:

它甚至被用于在著名牌匾上的书写，内容如下：

This plaque, however, does not only symbolize the passage of man to another celestial body, but also represents a deep history. The story of Futura is very intense, following the evolution of man from World War I to the discovery of the Moon. Although these past events are still very much alive in our collective memory, the font is still with us and currently used. Futura not only went to the Moon, but far beyond, becoming part of our human and cultural heritage.

然而，这个斑块不仅象征着人类进入另一个天体，还代表着深厚的历史。 在人类从第一次世界大战到发现月球的演变之后，Futura的故事非常激烈。 尽管这些过去的事件在我们的集体记忆中仍然非常活跃，但是该字体仍在我们身边并且目前仍在使用。 Futura不仅登上月球，而且远不止于此，成为我们人类和文化遗产的一部分。

参考文献列表 (Reference list)

• Eisele, Petra, et al. 2017. Futura: The Typeface. London: Laurence King Publishing Ltd.

  Eisele，Petra等。 2017. Futura：字体 。 伦敦：劳伦斯·金出版社

• Burke, Christopher. 1999. Paul Renner: the art of typography. New York: Princeton Architectural Press.

  克里斯托弗·伯克。 1999. Paul Renner：版式艺术 。 纽约：普林斯顿建筑出版社。

• Edwards, Phil. “Futura: the font that escaped the Nazis and landed on the Moon,” Vox (24 Febraury 2017). https://www.vox.com/videos/2017/2/24/14702206/futura-font-paul-renner-history

  爱德华兹，菲尔。 “ Futura：逃离纳粹并落在月球上的字体，” Vox(2017年2月24日)。 https://www.vox.com/videos/2017/2/24/14702206/futura-font-paul-renner-history

• Heller, Steven. 2011. Iron fists: branding the 20th century totalitarian state. London: Phaidon.

  海勒，史蒂文。 2011年。《 铁拳》：烙印20世纪极权国家 。 伦敦：Phaidon。

• Pohlen, Joep. “The Myth of Kramer-Grotesk,” Typography.Guru (31 May 2017). https://typography.guru/journal/the-myth-of-kramer-grotesk-r51/

  波伦，乔普。 “克莱默·格罗特斯克的神话”，排版，大师(2017年5月31日)。 https://typography.guru/journal/the-myth-of-kramer-grotesk-r51/

• Thomas, Douglas, and Ellen Lupton. 2017. Never Use Futura. New York: Princeton Architectural Press.

  托马斯，道格拉斯和艾伦·拉普顿。 2017。 切勿使用Futura 。 纽约：普林斯顿建筑出版社。

This article was originally published on Quinta Colonna on December 14, 2019

这篇文章最初发表在金塔科隆纳12月14日，201 9