Rising star: Eric Kindel

Eric Kindel from the Department of Typography and Graphic Communication describes his research interests and life at the University

How did your interest in your chosen research areas come about?

My research interests in graphic communication fall roughly into three areas. One, which I've named 'The stencilled text', began by chance really, when I was writing a series of short histories about typefaces including one called 'Stencil'. I quickly discovered that almost no information was available about stencil letters - odd, given how common they are. Since 1999 I have been documenting the astonishingly varied use of stencils for creating letters, texts, and documents.

Another of my research interests is Isotype, which stands for International system of typographic picture education. It is a way of communicating facts through pictures and unambiguous graphic configurations. Isotype was central to graphic communication in the twentieth century, and so is something that many designers encounter early on in their education, as I did. When I arrived at Reading, I knew I could deepen my interest since the University holds the principal Isotype archive.

A third area looks at graphic communication through the lens of print production, which often plays a creative, determining role in designing. My interest in this arose out of my own experience as a practising designer and from my attraction to the technics of printing.

Explain a bit more about your chosen areas?

'The stencilled text' can be partly explained by several studies that I have been involved in. The earliest dealt with a lengthy manuscript assembled in the 1690s, which was a component of the 'Description des arts et métiers' initiated by the Académie royale des Sciences in Paris. The manuscript set out improved procedures for text stencilling (mainly for big liturgical books), and illustrated newly designed equipment for doing the work. I worked with three colleagues to transcribe and translate the manuscript; then we reconstructed and tested the equipment and procedures it described. The next study was an investigation of a large set of letter stencils purchased by Benjamin Franklin in Paris in the 1780s. I made a detailed analysis of the set - the only one known to survive from this early period - and again worked with a colleague to reconstruct the stencil-making methods we think were used in its manufacture. A third study, now nearly finished, has looked at a 'new method of printing', which was devised by the Dutch mathematician and physicist Christiaan Huygens in the 1660s. It was a DIY means of duplicating writing and graphic matter, based on stencilling, and offered a means of circulating the information and knowledge that was so important to seventeenth-century science.

I am also the Principle Investigator on a project known as 'Isotype revisited', which runs until 2011. The study of Isotype has already been much advanced by Reading colleagues and 'Isotype revisited', as the name suggests, is a return to the subject, now on a wider front. Work within the project follows three main themes ('establishment of principles', 'diffusion and adaptation', 'legacy') taking in the main period of Isotype activity, 1925-1970, and the several decades since. Subjects we're working on include Isotype children's books, visual education in inter-War Vienna, Moscow's Izostat Institute, Otto Neurath's 'Visual Autobiography', Isotype in Africa, and Isotype's post-1970 legacy, to name just a few.

Work in the area of graphic communication and print production has so far been focussed on several topics: colour overprinting, moiré in design, engineering and the arts, and the introduction of fluorescent inks to Britain in 1950. I have also profiled individuals who have exploited print production to extraordinary effect including George van den Bergh, the Dutch economist and politician who invented a radical approach to typographic design, reading and publishing in post-War Netherlands, and Shinobu Ishihara, a Japanese ophthalmologist whose 'Ishihara' test for colour deficient vision, created in 1917, is still being used today.

How do you structure your research work?

Research within 'The stencilled text' is episodic. I study key documents or inventions in detail, and then link them into larger artistic, social, and technical contexts. The period covered by the research is admittedly expansive, but having formed sufficient connections I hope to eventually construct a credible synopsis of practices spanning several centuries. Work on graphic communication and production, is also episodic, if a bit less programmatic. The research structure of 'Isotype revisited', on the other hand, was worked out at the project's funding bid stage. But the evolving shape of our activities is determined collaboratively, by the project team, according to each person's strengths, interests and discoveries.

What has your research shown so far?

'The stencilled text' has shown that stencilling is a recurring technology which has been exploited over a considerable period of time, often quite inventively. The research has gathered evidence of a range of practices in a largely undocumented trade, and has established points of reference. In doing this research, a representative body of stencil artefacts has also been gathered together for the first time. As part of 'Isotype revisited', I have re-assembled a narrative of Isotype in Africa in the 1950s, clarifying its part in public information campaigns in trans-colonial West Africa, and assessing its contribution to social democratic reform in the Western Region of Nigeria. And my emphasis on the role of print production in the work of designing has, I believe, proven itself effective in constructing a richer understanding of graphic communication, while highlighting where production 'artefacts' have added to our visual culture, and how outsiders to our field have drawn on its tools in quite astonishing and valuable ways.

What are you currently working on?

At the moment I'm completing my study of Christiaan Huygens's new method of printing. I also hope to publish the work I have been involved in on Benjamin Franklin's stencil set. In addition, I am putting together an outline of the importance of stencils to architects, engineers, and surveyors in the nineteenth century. In regard to 'Isotype revisited', my initial findings on Isotype in Africa, given in conference papers, will now become an essay contribution to the project's planned anthology. Its preparation will parallel work on an Isotype exhibition at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, which is scheduled to open in late 2010.

What benefits can you claim for your work?

I believe my work has added to the definition of graphic communication, uncovering origins and lineages of past practices, and instances of innovation worth remembering. With regards to Isotype, I have documented projects whose goal was the enablement of large numbers of people, and whose example therefore remains instructive to us today. Benefits common to my several areas of research emerge from their underlying aims: the pursuit of new knowledge, or the conduct of research that is credible and reliable and whose presentation is clear and engaging. And there are benefits in connecting research with teaching, to refresh the latter and to give students some idea of the effort needed to add to what we already know.

How does your work relate to the University at large?

Being at the University gives me invaluable access to other researchers whose expertise I often need quite unpredictably, whether it's an analyst in Soil Science who can determine the alloy composition of eighteenth-century stencil brass, or scholars in Classics who can tease out the subtleties of Latin phraseology. I also benefit from the University's commitment to archives and collections - very directly in the case of 'Isotype revisited', and in general when I draw on our Special Collections whose holdings continue to amaze and delight me. I would also like to think that my work offers proof (were it needed) that typography and graphic communication is a field rich in research possibilities and that Reading is a very good place to get busy pursuing them.

What qualities do you believe a successful researcher has to have?

A successful researcher must first simply recognize research opportunities or be able to define them. This may involve devising new angles of approach or discerning areas not yet dealt with. Researchers must source information and expertise in an intelligent, strategic way and know where and how to look. They should think laterally where necessary, and reconfigure their assumptions when alternatives are required. Attention to detail is crucial, as is perseverance. Researchers must also tell others about what they've discovered, so the ability to finish work is important, as is securing a public place for it that others will notice and can find.

What have been your proudest achievements?

As they connect with research, directly or in support of it, several recent ones come to mind. The first is putting together each new volume of our Department's scholarly journal Typography papers. I have been involved in this work since 2002, along with the journal's superb editor Paul Stiff and the Design & Print Studio at the University. Another was being awarded an AHRC grant in June 2007, which enabled us to get the 'Isotype revisited' project underway. And a third, on a much smaller scale, was one of those too-few moments of hard-won discovery: in September 2006, I tracked down Jean Gabriel Bery's 1786 post mortem inventory in the Archives nationales in Paris. This document revealed so much about someone whose work I had studied intently - Bery was the maker of Franklin's stencil set - but whose personal life and professional circumstances had until that moment remained a mystery.

What do you enjoy most about your work?

Insofar as opportunities arise, I am drawn towards uncharted areas. This of course leads to primary sources and handling them is immensely satisfying, whether it's administrative documents that have gone unread for centuries or letters by the giants of seventeenth-century science. I also enjoy assembling credible narratives through writing and visual evidence. So, too, I have been lucky in my very stimulating collaborations. And I enjoy translating research into teaching, where one's findings or methods can be shared, put to use, or re-configured by students to their own ends.

Looking ahead, what are your aims for the next few years?

Many of my aims for the near future have to do with consolidating research and getting it into the public domain. This is true of 'The stencilled text' where individual topics, which have so far been reported in papers and articles, have yet to find a larger synthesis. More immediately, 'Isotype revisited' has several challenging goals for the next 18 months to two years, for publishing and exhibition, and these will occupy a good deal of my time.