Still in search of typographic optimism: self-reflections on change-making, bridge-building, and embracing community

An article revisiting my introduction of the Alphabettes community to the wider international typographic community during my keynote presentation at the Association Typographique Internationale (ATypI) conference in São Paulo in 2015. I had no idea that I was the first to speak publicly about the network. There had been no coordinated plan for me to do so. It was just one of those ‘being in the right place’ moments of life, but a moment it was suggested might be worthy of reflecting on for an Alphabettes 10-year celebratory publication.

What had seemed like a straightforward idea for a text became, in practice, however, something far more complex—a personal reflection on my own wrestles with feminist and decolonial perspectives, or, as Marisa C Sánchez puts it, a space in which “to embrace and expand my own unlearning.”

Contribution to knowledge
• To surface the political dimensions and power implications embedded in my own experiences of practice cultures.
• To illustrate and model the benefits (and vulnerabilities) of a critically reflective practice in terms of reshaping perspectives and challenging former assumptions.
• To share insights generated in the elaboration of my very individual feminist approach to type in a publication that refuses to present a monolithic answer for what that might mean, and allows for a multiplicity of ideas and experiences.

Impact
• The editorial process was the most caring and supportive I have experienced and offers a model for non-hierarchical and inclusive publishing practice.
• My individual experience is amplified through the collective assembly of voices bringing nuance to polarized gender debates in design and opportunities for wider distribution to a mixed and broader design (not necessarily type specialist) audience through the engaging formatting of the book.