The aesthetics of the page are important. This is something innately understood by most readers, even if they do not have the understanding of why. When we open a book and see long blocks of text, readers are subconsciously aware of a kind of gatekeeping taking place within its passages. Those who do not read often will think “this must not be for me,” or “this information is too complex for my understanding.” When we see smaller paragraphs, more white space, a simpler lexicon, the reader approaches it as if by warm invitation from the author. The page itself says, “come with me.” As Bonnie Mak says on page 5 of her introduction to How the Page Matters, the page “influences meaning by its distinctive embodiment of those ideas [on the page].” The page exists as “an ongoing conversation between designers and readers. As writers, artists, translators, scribes, printers, booksellers, librarians, and readers configure and revise the page, in each case they leave redolent clues about how the page matters to them and how they wish it to matter to others.”

When we open a book, look at a flyer, without reading a single word we can likely know who the work was created for and who it was created by. The modernist movements of literature, art, and design were integral to this. Among the most prominent writers of modernist literature is Ernest Hemingway, whose style was inspired by the work of impressionist painter Claude Monet. Monet’s later works, such as “The Water Lillies” would evolve to set the foundation for what would become expressionism. Both of these art forms have been very enduring in their wider appeal, much as Hemingway is often credited with doing “more to change the style of English prose than any other writer in the twentieth century” and whose works were published in clear, easy to understand, accessible formats. The Old Man and the Sea was published in Life magazine, so as to be accessible to more readers, and one anecdote in Lesley Blume’s Everybody Behaves Badly recalls a late-night reading of the book at a truck stop, of all places, to a room full of greasy drivers and people from the sticks and hollers of West Virginia: A waitress reads from the copy of Life. People are trying to order coffee from her, a jukebox is playing and is unplugged from the wall to better hear. “She says, ‘Shut up and listen’ And in the middle of the night, in this truck stop, she starts reading The Old Man and the Sea” (236). This work was for everybody. It has been enduring. Just like Monet. Just like the expressionists.

Other forms of modernism did not last, and their fates mirror those of the political parties they ascribed to. The Dadaists fractured into many smaller groups in a way that calls to mind the Communists’ sectarian splintering during the Spanish Civil War. Dada work was staunchly anti-bourgeoise, but it was created in a way that did not allow the proletariat to understand.

Equally incomprehensible are the futurist works of Filippo Marinetti, and a look at any of his works should hopefully let us know who they were created for and who Marinetti was. Let us begin our analysis of Marinetti by making something very clear, Filippo Marinetti was a literal co-author of The Fascist Manifesto, a fact that was startlingly omitted from Phillip Meggs’ History of Graphic Design. Filippo Marinetti and Futurism helped give the world fascism, helped give the world Mussolini, helped give the world Hitler, helped facilitate the violent deaths of over fifty million people. He volunteered multiple times to serve in the military of fascist Italy, fighting on the front at over sixty years old.

He is one of the worst people who ever existed.

A viewing of his poem “After The Marne, Joffre Visited The Front By Car” immediately greets the reader with his psychosis. It is nearly impossible to read and was designed as such, much the same as fascism is designed to be hidden within a society before takeover. Marinetti once stated, as quoted by Meggs on page 4 of chapter 13, “a roaring car that seems to ride on grapeshot is more beautiful than the Victory of Samoth-race.” The past was shunned by Marinetti so much that all its beauty was lost, and the world became nothing but a forward machination. (A copy of that statue, quite fittingly, was once given as a gift to Texas Woman’s University to celebrate the “defeat of autocracy.”)

When we look at the design of Meggs’ work through the lens of How the Page Matters, what is it saying to us? Text is presented plainly in large blocks, which can be an overwhelming intake of information for the layperson. The referenced images in the text are located at the very end of the book, and this says, quite apparently, that you must conduct an extra level of research to even comprehend or be aware of Meggs’ points or what he is talking about. This information is not supposed to be easy to process, nor is it meant to be easy to find.

But this clearly well-researched section on the history of Futurism somehow omits a very important aspect of the movement entirely. An omission this large is not an accident. The death of Antonio Sant’Elia is lamented. “Tragically,” Meggs’ writes of the futurist architect’s death in World War One. If Saint’Elia was a compatriot of Marinetti and Mussolini the only thing tragic about his death is that he did not meet the bludgeoning fate of the latter. The design of the pages of History of Graphic Design is constructed to not clearly give us the information in it. We have to work for it. This knowledge is not intended for the everyman. This section of Chapter 13 reads as an apologia for fascism, but this apologia is hidden behind a series of smokescreens and baffling omissions. Much as the meaning of Marinetti’s work was hidden in its layout, and how we are often unable to comprehend works of Dada or Futurism.

The fixity of text, as we discussed in class, enables it to be difficult to challenge, this lack of challenge allows for stability and a common basis of knowledge. Some of the most fixed texts are textbooks. A central hallmark of fascism is erasure of the past. It is extremely disappointing to find this kind of omission, let alone the lauding of these architects of destruction, in a textbook, somewhere it is unlikely to be challenged, and almost certain to be made canon.

You have to dig to uncover fascism. Even through the very layout of the page. Complexity often hides an untruth.

Perhaps at the end of this very long and, admittedly, a little heated, blog post, maybe it is time to turn back to a style of modernism that valued the construction of the page and wanted its content to be easily discernible for the reader, and I will close with a quote from page 66 of Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls, something important to remember in these trying times, a very simple exchange of dialogue between Robert Jordan, the protagonist, and Pilar, the leader of a band of Spanish guerrillas during the country’s civil war, surrounded by white space on the page, easy to pick out, clear to understand, and unfortunately, still timely:

“Are you a communist?”

“No I am an anti-fascist.”

“For a long time?”

“Since I have understood fascism.”