Admit constraints: then having admitted, fill with discovery

In this paper I argue for the need to maintain rigour in a definition of typography that intentionally emphasises its limitations as a distinct and systemic area of practice.

The first reason for doing so is to draw critical attention to the limitations embedded within typographic practice, not only the implicit modular constraints of working with type, but also the wider production systems upon which professional workflows continue to rely, even as technologies have shifted. The second reason is to challenge the ongoing flattening of the boundaries between definitions of typography and lettering with a view to maintaining a space for acknowledging the skill sets of each, and more particularly, for re-evaluating the achievements of lettering.

To argue for difference within contemporary contexts is to go against a general trend of opening out definitions as a mechanism for facilitating inclusivity. Collette Gaiter makes a persuasive case for such an opening out of the definitions of typography in her 2021 lecture on the typography of civil protest. She argues that the lettering work characteristic of graphic resistance operating outside the professional workflows and systems of design should be acknowledged within the graphic design canon. And rightly so. But does lettering need to be reframed as typography to be more legitimate within the design canon? What might we learn instead from acknowledging the constraints that rendered the typographic inaccessible yet allowed lettering to flourish?

The title of this talk comes from a 1967 essay by Anthony Froshaug in which he proposes the admitting of constraints as a prompt for meaningful reassessment of the possibilities for practice. This talk builds a case for the reassessment of the dominance of the typographic voice over the craft traditions of lettering in the professionalisation of graphic design and its associated historiography.

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J4EvTqoj...