This is typography.

(The following is a transcript of a talk I delivered to the Art Directors Club of Germany in November 2020.)

This sentence is typography.

And the Gutenberg bible is typography.

And Letraset rub-down lettering is typography.

And layout in InDesign is typography.

And the billboard you drive past is typography.

A sentence in an article, the Gutenberg Bible, rub-down lettering, a page-layout program, and a billboard are all very different things. Yet, they all exist as typography.

There is no one typography. Only typographies.

Typography is a lot of different things. In the past, I’ve used a triumvirate definition of History, Form, and Use (adapted from printer and type scholar DB Updike). I like the tidiness of it:

the study of the thing—its history);

the type itself—in the form; and

the designs made with type—in the use.

Designers love threes and this succinct explanation defends against typographic interlopers—like lettering.

Now, lettering has been attached to typography since the very beginning. Gutenberg’s Bibles weren’t finished until the lettering was applied.

Of course, lettering is typography.

Though in the back of my mind, I’m still saying, “No, it’s not,”—because allowing lettering into the world of typography means that calligraphy will be there too. And actually, that’s fine. The world of typography is certainly large enough—that lettering, calligraphy, and sign-painting all belong there.

And typography is so much more than that. So much more than the history, the form, and the use. Can we fully define typography? No. Can we make a more accurate and, at the same time, more messy definition? Yes. We can do that. What I would like to do, right now, is to describe some of the ways we see and define typography. As I do that, I’d like to also try to compare, juxtapose, and intersect these definitions to map a highly-inclusive world of typography.

I’ll begin outside—looking in. What is typography to non-designers? It’s the way the letters and words look. This is a rudimentary definition.

It’s admirable because it’s a view of typography that designers no longer have. The effect of typography is pretty much destroyed once you start practicing it. You can never see the type the same way again.

Typography for a graphic designer is a tool for shaping the text. It is the choice of type—the font—and it’s the way the type is set (the size, the spacing, the leading, the kerning, the color, the proximity, and other tiny adjustments that give the raw type its style and its effectiveness.

And here, there’s another subtle distinction: typography is the shape of the text and the shaping of the text. It’s the thing and the action.

And there’s at least one other interested party here. That’s me. The type designer. The type designer sees typography as both the design of the letters (the act) and the letters themselves (the product)—noun and verb.

So—there’s a typography for the reader. And there’s a typography of the graphic designer. And there’s a typography of the type designer. These distinctions are permeable.

A reader can choose a typeface—blurring the distinction between designer and audience. And an author can of course choose a font—or two or three. These are “acts of typography.”

In the distant past, these would have been rare instances—interventionist readers—accidental typographers—but today, my 79-year-old mother is a typographer. She has favorite fonts and some that she hates.

And the boundary between type designer and graphic designer? The two “professional” typographers? It’s pretty permeable these days too. We all bristle a little when outsiders begin dabbling in our profession—but occasionally we learn a thing or two from a na?ve take on our craft.

What has happened in the last 30 years is an increased awareness of the shaping of the text. The audience is aware. The graphic designers are more aware. And there are more type designers than ever before. That awareness translates into opinions and points of view.

There are intrinsic points of view (like those of graphic designers and type designers) and there are extrinsic points of view (like those of readers and the general audience).

My point of view—like yours—is being shaped by my times and places. The time I have spent on this Earth and the places I have been to have changed my view of typography. I’ve ceased to think of type as what it was when I was ten.

I am from the Midwest in the U.S. and I was born in the 20th century. In my time on the planet, I’ve traveled and heard first-hand accounts of Linotype machines setting Chinese type in the jungles of Indonesia. I’ve participated in the effort to create a type super-family covering every language living and dead. And I’ve advised brands on typographic pairings for new languages as they break out of their previous times and places.

While my view of typography has changed, typography itself has evolved too—in the US and every nation, language, and script. Whether we’re there to observe it or not, it’s happening. There are hundreds of typographies that we’ll never know. They are the histories, the forms, and the uses that we’re not familiar with—that we won’t have time to learn.

Scripts and languages can separate us. They can be foreign to us and intimidating. But they can also broaden our understanding of typographies—broaden our definitions of typography. They offer us the opportunity to celebrate typographic fellowship and to see ourselves and our own typographies with fresh perspective.

Okay. Time for the first recap of typographies.

First, are you in or out?

There’s a typography for the audience—the reader—the extrinsic. There’s a typography for those who design with type—the graphic designers—the users of type—the typographers for whom type is one of many elements for communication. And there is a typography for those who make type—the type designers. In each of these three typographies, there is the thing (the typography itself) and the action (the reading of type, the designing with type, and the designing of the type).

Secondly: Are you there or here?

Your typography has a particular geography, script, language, and culture. It has its own present and its own history. It has its own traditions, prejudices, strengths, limitations, and weaknesses—moments of pride and moments of failure. The typography of others has the same particulars.

Moving on, what brought that type into being?

Typography arrives at its audience and purpose from hundreds of technologies. Anything that makes a letter or a word is a type-technology. The screens?we use to set type are type technologies. And of course, there are the technologies built specifically to set type—metal and wood type and printing presses—and photo-type, cathode ray tubes, digital typesetting machines, personal computers and software—anything that makes type for distribution is a type technology and a form of typography. And expanding further—we can draw, paint and otherwise craft type. The pencils, pens, brushes, and chisels are all type technologies and typographies.

And how did that type arrive to you?

Typography is the carrier and the medium. A business card. A newspaper. An app. An encyclopedia. Every way that’s ever been invented to carry type for communication is typography. A billboard to a postage stamp—an album cover to a codex—all of them are potential typographies.

So—another roundup:

Typography is the audience and typographers

Typography is culture, representing geography, nationality, script, and language.

Typography is the tools and technologies for making it (how type is made).

Typography is the object that carries words via type (the audience-facing object).

Typography is a verb and a noun:

Typography is both the type maker designing type and the type itself.

Typography is both the designer working with type and the objects they make.

Typography is the audience reading type and the resulting effect.

Typographers observe the effect of their work and create in new work in response to the effect it has on the audience.

Typography is an ecosystem:

A cycle of making type, using type, and reading type

Typography is form

Typography is use

Typography is experience.

Moving on again. Typography is big and small.

Digging into the making and the use of type, let’s observe and celebrate the key bifurcation in typography: display typography and text typography. Display type is the big stuff—the attention-getting headlines. Despite the fact that so much more typography is text typography—the type we get immersed in—the type that carries prose and extended thought—the text we engage with for weeks on end—the type of contracts and novels, of newspapers and magazines. Despite that, display typography is the typography people tend to fall in love with.

Display type is much more likely to provide us the seductive marriage of form and content. Display type is where typographic form modulates the meaning.

Text type is full of rules and precedents, reasons and conservatism.

Display breaks boundaries. Text type follows them.

When we talk about principles of legibility, we’re talking about text typography.

When we’re talking about beautiful typography, we’re often talking about display type.

What appears to be a divide between display and text type—a divide between the beguiling type and the useful type—is actually two sides of the same coin. Great text type gives veracity to seductive display type. And the charm of big, beautiful display type draws the reader in to the density and complexity of text type.

Morphology.

Morphology is the study of form. Typographic morphology is a well-established typography. The broad morphology of type in the West—the overly-generalized version—starts with Old Style and ends with Sans Serif. It’s a blunt instrument. Old Style gives way to Transitional types in the 18th century. The beginning of the 19th century gives us Modern types. The exuberant variety of the mid-nineteenth century gives us Slab Serifs, and finally, the beginning of the 20th century gives us the first meaningful Sans Serif families.

By being broad and focusing on form, morphology tries to avoid National associations—though they represent still another typography or typographies:

The Italian types of the late 15th century;

The French types of the 16th century;

The English types of the 18th century;

Bodoni the Italian;

Walbaum the German;

and all of that European focus being separate from the pioneering accomplishments of the Korean printer Choe Yun-ui around 1250—a full 200 years before Gutenberg.

And, shifting national boundaries and the travel of craftspeople put nationalities on unstable footing too. Consider the amazing French type cutter Nicholas Jenson who did his best work in Venice in the 1400s.

Morphology, geography, and nationality aside, there is the problematic historical classification. Problematic because we don’t have the best of any given time in the past, but only what survived—which we then judge by standards perhaps completely foreign to the time in which the work was made. Which leads to yet another classification model—the hierarchical—the purported best of each of the other classifications: The best old style, the best French type, the best of the 16th century.

My favorite classification—and I’m a typographer, mind you—is alphabetical. Putting things in A–Z order seems so logical, but it couldn’t be more random. The order has nothing to do with the way fonts look, or where they came from or who made them, or when they were made.

It seems rational because the use of the alphabet for organizing has been reinforced for most of us in the west for most of our lives. But it’s arbitrary—which is great—if you love serendipity.

These classifications taken together are a typography—and each of them alone is a typography.?

Typography is also the study of typography.

You can be a typographer and not set type—not make type—not be a designer at all—but be someone who collects and organizes information about type. You can be an historian of typography—carefully studying what was. You can be a critic of typography—assiduously collecting and commenting on what is contemporary typography.

And of course, the typography that studies typography is applicable to all other typographies—not just history and criticism—but typographic geography and cultural origins, type ecosystems, type technologies and applications, type manufacture and type use—anything that is a typography can be a study for typography—and its own typography.?

It is time for the litany.

If you read, you know something about type.

We’re all typographers.

There is the pragmatic and excitable typography of reading.

There is a typography of designing with type.

There is another typography of designing with display type.

And another of designing with text type.

There is a typography of the display type itself.

There is a typography of text type.

There is a typography of comprehension.

There is a typography of the U.S.

There is a typography of England.

There is a typography of English.

There is a typography of Chinese in China.

There is a typography of Chinese in Hong Kong.

There is a typography of Devanagari.

There is a typography of Cyrillic and another of Bulgarian.

There is a typography of the East and a typography of the West.

There is a typography of metal type and the composing stick.

There is a typography of metal type and the automated composition machine.

There is a typography of wood type.

There is a typography of inscriptional letters.

There is a typography of sign-painting.

There is a typography of PostScript type.

There is a typography of photo-type.

There is a typography of chromolithography.

There is a typography of transfer type and vinyl letters.

There is a typography of dot matrix and laserprinters.

There is a typography of quills, of steel nibs, of ruling pens, and all manner of writing and lettering.

There is a typography of coding.

There is a typography of printed material.

There is a typography of digital publishing.

There is a typography for advertising.

There is a typography for branding.

There is a typography for signage and wayfinding.

There is a typography for broadcast and motion graphics.

There is a typography for books.

There is a typography for magazines.

There is a typography for newspapers.

There is a typography of movie titles.

There is a typography of some of these things.

And there is a typography of all of these things.

There are typographies. ?