The 1920s and early ’30s were a period of experimentation in graphic design. Constructivism blossomed in Russia, while Germany gave rise to the Bauhaus. A 1923 issue of Grafika Polska (Polish Graphic Design) called for the elimination of protruding terminals in the letters of the Hebrew alphabet: the ends were to be ‘shortened, tapered, or placed in the margins of the font’. The celebrated typographer Jan Tschichold, a fervent populariser of the Bauhaus, proclaimed: ‘I am starting a typographic revolution, directed above all against the idiotic, sick-making conception of the old-fashioned Poetry Book, with its hand-made paper, its sixteenth-century style, decorated with galleons, Minervas, Apollos, great initials, flourishes, and mythological vegetables, with clasps, mottoes, and Roman numerals’.
Everything seemed simple enough in theory. Capital letters? Waste of time. Serifs? Superfluous frills that spoiled a letter’s function. ‘Ornamentation is a crime’, a maxim famously coined by the Austrian architect Adolf Loose, was repeated like a mantra. Geometric form was the sole guarantor of objectivity and universality. In practical terms, this mean that typeface should have a functional design that was simultaneously modern, solid, and unwavering. Aviva, created ninety years after Chaim and inspired by pre-war typography, inherited these qualities.