In the Post-modern view, formalism was symbolic of function more than the result of it, and this is certainly true of modernist types—prompting a reconsideration of the reductive notion of functionality espoused by 20th century sans-serifs. In Brown, functional complexity engenders a gently stylized distress (signifying the trace of letterpress process from which the neo-grotesque types were by no means immune), pre-empting the dulling action of offset printing at text size, while providing the otherwise austere form of headlines with the visual interest of display details.
