Language and form: the work of Phil Baines

A reflection following the exhibition at Central Saint Martins in 2023 ‘Extol: Phil Baines celebrating letters’ which elaborates on the central place in Baines’s work of letters, words and language.

Contribution to knowledge:
• To reflect on the challenges of curating the Extol exhibition and identify the key narratives
• To position Baines in relation to ideas of graphic design orthodoxy making the point that Baines’s typographic work requires contextualizing within the much broader and older history of lettering.
• To surface the impact of both analogue and digital technologies in shaping an approach to design as a means of exploring language.
• To articulate the myriad ways material culture research informs contemporary design practice through the exhibition’s exploration of one designer’s practice.

In summary this was an opportunity to summarise the key points of learning from the Extol exhibition, especially for those who did not see the exhibition, thereby extending the reach of that exhibition. Forum is the journal of Letter Exchange, an organization founded in recognition of the importance of knowledge-exchange across the different letterform related practices, for example, epigraphy, calligraphy, type design etc. As such it offered an appropriate platform for the core messages from the exhibition about the creative opportunities in practice to be found in wider perspectives and understandings of the material cultures of letterforms of all kinds.