The FACIT Model Our Form of Book Vaguely Specified Objects
The FACIT Model – Globalism, Localism & Identity, a project by Jens Schildt & Matthias Kreutzer, 2015–2019
The FACIT Model is an archival study of printed ephemera which were produced by the legendary Swedish typewriter and office machine manufacturer FACIT AB throughout the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. The project began in 2015 as a visual research at the FACIT AB archive in Åtvidaberg (Sweden), and was concluded in spring/summer 2019 with the release of a book, a series of typefaces, and an exhibition.
In Sweden, the FACIT brand is as well-known as IBM or Olivetti. Based in Åtvidaberg, the company produced mechanical calculators, typewriters, and office furniture in the period between 1922 and 1998. By the 1970s the company had grown from a local family business into one of the world’s leading manufacturers. The company-sponsored football team ÅFF was playing in the first division. A few years later the FACIT organisation had disappeared – worn down by global capitalism.
Spread from the book The FACIT Model – Globalism, Localism & Identity, Spector Books, 2019
The FACIT Model looks at this peculiar outgrowth of corporate modernism through the printed matter produced in FACIT’s in-house print shops. Type specimens, manuals, advertising leaflets, and product catalogues bear witness to a culture in which many of the codes and forms familiar to us from today’s world of work were defined or invented.
The book was published by Spector Books, Leipzig.
Printed ephemera from the FACIT archives on display at Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, 2020
Typefaces collection we developed as part of The FACIT Model:
All typefaces (including italics and bold cuts) available through Our Polite Society Type:
www.ourpolitesocietytype.net
The exhibition was shown at Fanfare Amsterdam (2019), Åtvidabergs bruks och FACIT-musem Sweden (2019) and Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam (2020).
The FACIT Model exhibition at Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, 2020
The FACIT Model exhibition at Åtvidabergs Bruksmuseum, Åtvidaberg, 2019