I read an article today called "The New Typographer Muttering in your Ear" by Kevin Fenton. It was an interesting read on his view of the twenty-first centuries use of typography and I'd love to share it! Sorry if the text seems slow moving, but just read it. It's good :)
"Every published word is filtered through the sensibility of a typographer or a designer acting as a typographer. Writers have a great deal to lose or gain from the choices thus made." He, as a writer, talks about how passionate yet humble he feels about typography, not being educated in design but having a love for words. He then talks about the book "Typography 15" by Dirk Rowntree. In this book, he quotes they praised design that: "participates in the meaningful dialect of deconstructionism, challenges the way we read -- thereby subverting messages and creating alternative readings of a text, and ensuring that the usual hierarchy of text and design is subverted by its message."
He then asks the question... "what was wrong with the traditional hierarchy? What are typographers subverting and why?... Subversion without a discernable purpose seems little more than vandalism."
But then he explains that he believes it is more a reaction to staleness, a return to expression...
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AN INSERTION OF GHOSTS INTO THE MACHINE.
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By introducing emotion and irony, the new type corrects a tradition of soullessness." The article goes on, and then ends: "Some of the new work is beautiful; much of it is fun; a fraction of it may be profound. As a writer, I am disturbed by the penchant of contemporary typographers for inserting yet more self-expression into an already narcissistic society and for creating confusion in a world which already seems sufficiently confused. I believe that, if it is skillfully used, the new type has the power to introduces us to new feelings, new interpretations, new shades and shadows of thought. But, at the very least, type shouldn't make us any more stupid than we already are."
After reading this, I felt inspired to work harder on my typography skills, and understanding what is appropriate and when. He states that the known is less intrusive than the new, that typography may be more interpretive than creative, and that the typographer can overinterpret and suffocate type.
This article was controversial to me as a designer. When dealing with type, we are dealing with a writer, and the need for clarity of the message. If the words just ask for more visual substance to further it's message, than I say go for it and see what fun you can have with the type. But we don't need to over design when there is no need.
