Typographic literacies

This paper develops themes introduced in my paper Teaching typography in the 21st century: Reviewing the fundamentals of typography in a post-modern design culture, delivered at the AGRAFA International design education conference in Katowice, Poland in December 2007. The paper will identify and consider emerging issues in the teaching of typography at degree level. It considers the view that while a typographic education remains fundamental to a designer’s visual literacy, its parameters and precepts should be re-examined in the light of the post-modern conditions of the twenty-first century. The paper contrasts the modernist perception of typography as a practical organizational discipline with the postmodern development of typography as an interrogatory or interpretative medium, and considers the nature of contextual and theoretical teaching required to complement and support intelligent and informed typographic practice. The paper maps the emergence of typography as a medium of cultural awareness, an expression of response to language, and a medium for exploration of ideas and meanings. The paper will conclude that the postmodern condition requires a different kind of typographic literacy, that the education of a typographer extends beyond the mechanics of process into the exploration of culture; and that in order to ensure that students develop the necessary typographic literacies to function effectively, we must ensure an awareness of the culture of typography.