Surrogate Multiplicities: Typography in the Age of Invisibility

Abstract

ABSTRACT Historically, much critical discussion, particularly among typographers, has centered on role typographic form plays in conveying meaning. Beatrice Ward's image of crystal goblet, evoked in a 1932 essay of same name created a framework for considering ways in which value and meaning are assigned to a text based not only on what is written, but how it was written. While Ward was primarily concerned with dynamics of letterform and legibility, this essay attempts to extend her metaphor into realm of social difference by exploring myriad ways in which spaces of cultural inclusion and exclusion are mediated via typographic form. Within such an argument, qualities of transparency and lightness attributed to crystal goblet operate as agents of invisibility for non-standard speakers, or a whole host of others that fall outside of normal izing boundaries of linguistic standardization supported by Ward's image of an undifferentiated typographic surface. discussion begins by tracing historical precedents for marking of social difference through distinctions in typographic form. Typefaces from Jim Crow to Tiki Magic demonstrate how display of otherness relies on historicizing mechanics of cultural standardization. Similarly, an analysis of pictorial trademarks developed in mid to late-nineteenth-century reveal how fractured letterforms served as visual equivalent to broken English of a growing immigrant population. Finally, a connection is made to ways in which contemporary software, through specified feature sets and default settings, supports a long traditionl of representational standardization. 1 TRACING THE INVISIBLE Beatrice Ward's 1932 incantation The Crystal Gopblet invokes images of transparency and lightness as purveyors of an enlightened typographic project. Utilizing a form calculated to reveal rather than hide the beautiful which it was meant to reveal typographic crystal proposed by Ward was not only functional but virtuous as well, implying an inherent, althought hardly unproblematic connection between form and moral sphere. Historically, much critical discussion, particularly among typographers, has centered on typographic form plays in conveying meaning, as Ward's valorization of transparency as in means of semantic revelation no doubt demonstrates. Far less attention, however, has been given to an analysis of transparency and lightness as agents, of invisibility for non-standard speakers, or those who fall outside of frame of the beautiful thing Ward's crystal goblet was meant to contain. One way of thinking about this concept of invisibility is to consider phenomena of typographic visual which constitutes a national symbolic environment, as well as organic process by which a standard voice is generalized across an entire range of cultural expression. [Template Gothic, Univers, Century Schoolbook] standard typographic voices we are accustomed to are utopian, belonging nowhere, regionless, without accent. [Helvetica, Bell Gothic, Interstate] Seemingly transparent, these forms offer up representations of generic, symbolic, superficial and stereotypical. [Citizen, Democratica, Frathouse] In case of visual voice-over, language not only marks (or unmarks) identity, but functions as a kind of cultural border as well. As Dick Hebdige notes,...there can no longer be any absolute distinction between these two terms (form and content) and primary recognition that ways in which things are said - narrative structures employed - impose quite rigid limitations on what can be said., Taking Hebdige's narrative structures to include both syntactic and semantic elements of written word, an analysis of systems of subjectivity at play within typographic discourse can reveal myriad ways in which visual form supports structures of cultural standardization, marking exclusionary distinctions between standard and non-standard speakers. …