"Anybody who wants to know about our past should concentrate on excavating the ruins of factories. Anybody who wants to know about our present should concentrate on examining present-day factories critically. And anybody who addresses the issue of our future should raise the question of the factory of the future."
— Vilém Flusser, 1993
In The Factory, philosopher Vilém Flusser proposes that wherever and whenever you might find human beings, you will find a factory. Flusser argues the motivation, willingness, and ability to ‘turn’ an object from one thing into another – to manufacture – is at the core of what it means to be human. Flusser breaks the factory down into four evolving major categories that can be witnessed throughout our history; the factory of the hand; followed by the factory of the tool; the machine; and finally; the robot. Working from this premise, Flusser argues that each phase of the factory has in turn further alienated the human being from nature. When our hands were our factory, we were directly working with – and ‘turning’ from – nature itself. With the advent of the tool, we created a barrier between the hand and nature, but we remained central to the factory, with tools ‘radiating outwards’ from us. Using tools, we created machines, and with machines, we created a new center of the factory. The human being became ancillary, replaceable; operators. Factories were built around and for the machine, and our relationship to nature was further abstracted. In the age of the robot, the factory now deals in abstracts like never before; knowledge is ‘turned’ like things are; content manufactured, shared and consumed without ever leaving digital space.
As every factory dies a death, so does the human that inhabited it. In the process, a way of experiencing, working in, and making the world is outmoded. But, these dead factories have memories. How do these memories speak to our past, our present, our future?
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"The atmosphere was permeated by a light mist that came out of the crucibles, where the ingots, made of an alloy of lead, tin, zinc and other metals, were slowly consumed, as they turned from raw material into perfect specimens of movable type for printing. The sweet smell of molten metal could be felt in the air."
— Gaetano Donato, 2013
Established in 1852, the Nebiolo type foundry of Turin was the most significant typeface and printing equipment manufacturer in Italy through much of the mid-20th Century. Under the direction of a number of notable Italian typographers, Nebiolo’s output of original typefaces during this time reflected the optimism of post-war romanticism, and the Italian economic miracle of the 50’s and 60’s.
The output of the factory’s creative studio during this time is full of typefaces that are embedded with the weight of their own histories. Veltro, designed by Nebiolo’s first artistic director Giulio Da Milano in the 1930’s, was quickly nicknamed ‘Mussolini’ due to its formal similarity to the Duce’s signature, then post-war became the most used typeface for place-names on Italian holiday-destination postcards. Microgramma, designed in 1952 by Alessandro Butti and Aldo Novarese – and later expanded and renamed Eurostile – became synonymous with early Sci-Fi films; used for futuristic UI displays by Kubrick in 2001: A Space Odyssey, and then by the Star Trek, Doctor Who, and Alien franchises respectively. The forms of Microgramma were inspired by the rounded windows found in aeroplanes, trains and in the concrete facades of modernist tower blocks; embodying a utopian vision for a future that has been and gone. Augustea (1951), designed by Butti, was drawn from observations of Roman inscriptions found engraved in marble throughout Turin; fashioning for metal-type forms originally manufactured by hand-tools working into stone.
However, with a factory model centered on the production of metal type, Nebiolo never adapted to the advent of new photographic methods for producing typography, and the foundry abruptly closed in 1978.
Today, what remains of Nebiolo’s Turin-based factory headquarters, sits on the corner of via Bologna and via Padova – 800 meters from where I currently sit in the studios of Cripta747. The factory stretches impressively down via Padova, indicating the scale and importance of Nebiolo’s output at the height of its production. Now, the building lies underutilised; half filled with local government offices. The large, engraved typographic forms of NEBIOLO are still visible across the building’s masthead, despite attempts to cover it up with black paint.
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"Just as there are dead languages, it is natural that there should be modes of expression and communication that have gone out of use... Just as there are words that belong to other ages, so there are colours, forms, signs and so on which in our time have come to mean nothing, or would convey the wrong message."
— Bruno Munari, 1966
In the typographic production of Nebiolo we can find the ghosts of language; the memories of a factory. These typefaces are the embodiments of a moment in time, a moment in technology; in style; in societal, economic and political climates. This is the rich text of design; a language of loaded imagery; meaning stacked upon meaning. A visual language in constant flux under new contexts and in light of new experiences. The refined, simplified forms of typography become containers for these multiple meanings; for poetic interpretations and political statements; images of the world and ways of seeing it; a dictator’s signature, or a holiday postcard? A futurist vision, or failed utopia?
How might these forms continue to represent new meanings, or act as a of strange memorial to the death of a factory? How might the memories of this factory act as some kind of cautionary tale regarding our human experience of work, manufacturing, and perhaps, our pending obsolescence?
More than just the outmoding of a factory process, the death of Nebiolo also represents the outmoding of a method for manufacturing language itself; of molten alloy turning into letterforms; of a culture in which the speed, labor and weight of metal type dictated the speed, labor and weight of how the printed word was broadcast and consumed, and the death of a certain human experience within that culture.
But, despite this turn into obsolescence, the weighty production of a factory leaves traces; remains to be excavated, and understood.
This article was first published in 2019, appearing in a small publication I released as part of a three month long residency at Cripta747 in Turin, Italy. Outside of a small print run of 50, the article has never seen wider release, and is particularly relevant now as a precursor for the piece I'm currently writing for The National Grid #10, coming out in October.
