On Typography

I sat Jacob down at the table and presented him with ten bits of cut-up paper. Five of them had the same phrase written on them in different weights of Helvetica and the other five contained the meanings that I was trying to communicate. Jacob's task was to connect the correct type treatments with the correct meanings.

This was an experiment in the emotive communicative power of type.

I had made what seemed to me some fairly obvious decisions (although looking back now there are quite a few changes I would make) regarding how the type was laid out, whether it was bold or thin, broken or in a sentence, legible, illegible, backwards forwards etc etc. Interestingly enough Jacob correctly matched only one of my treatments to its corresponding intended meaning.

I had to sit back and ask myself: what does this mean? There were several possible outcomes.

• The treatments were poorly designed.
• Jacob doesn't respond to typography in the typical way.
• Trying to design type using the Carson-esque method is pointless.

Well what is the definition of poor design? What are the criteria for judging it? It has to be something to do with the suitability of the final piece to fulfill its particular role. It doesn't have to be about effective communication, "you can't not communicate".

I don't think my treatments were poorly designed per se because after I explained my rationale behind each treatment Jacob agreed that they made sense.

Proving whether or not Jacob responds to typography in the typical way is difficult. Whether there even is a catch-all reaction to type is questionable. Sure there will be a majority reaction but no one person can be expected to follow the designer's every whim. The fact is that type is like walking into an art gallery. You bring your own life to the works. If a typographer walks past a billboard plastered with Gotham and images of New York he will (or should) immediately "get" the big apple connection. If a lay-person walks past the same billboard he will likely be completely ignorant of the connections and the decisions that the designer has made.

Also being restricted to one typeface means that expressing anything in more than one or two different iterations of meaning is incredibly difficult.

What can be concluded if this is the case? Is type purely expressive? A personal decision that only serves to distinguish the designer from his peers?

No doubt there is a large ergonomic factor that we have thus far ignored. Different typefaces have been specifically designed to function optimally in their intended contexts (i.e. Times in newsprint, Frutiger in signage, Garamond in books etc). With the advent of digital type, however, a new avenue of detournement has emerged, giving designers another layer of meaning to play with. We can use Georgia, a face designed to work best on-screen, in six-foot letters on the side of a building, or conversely we can use 8-point Didot on screen where her delicate hairlines are rendered as slabs. The question is what are you trying to say by choosing to do that? Will anybody else even get it? Doesn't it just make the words less legible?

Confusion ensues.

What of the final point; is Carson's method pointless? No, because he enjoys it. In which case is type design a purely self-gratifying process which pays lip service to the consumer but whose real work is for the designer herself? An ego-massage dressed up as social responsibility?