Foreword by Steven Heller for the Visual Voices for Change - Fight for Kindness 2025 annual
- TypeCampus
- 18 mag
- Tempo di lettura: 5 min
Kindness as Typographic Style
Type and typography designed with kindness as its goal is not only interesting, it is a vexing proposition. Is not all type design at its core created with human values? The very purpose of type is to support and encourage literacy; and is not literacy a kindness in its own right? To be literate is to be freed from the darkness of ignorance. In fact, this is much more than kindness it is a human right.
In the universe of letterforms, there are, however, some designs that fail to meet this responsibility. These can be considered unkind. Typefaces that are difficult to read and abhorrent to behold are in this category. Still, arguably, type designers rarely take on the intensive task with a goal of harming others. There should be no victims of typography… but there are faces used to send—and be interpreted as—exclusionary and mean. In the end, judgement is a matter of context. Blackletter typefaces, for instance, embody a menacing air, while most scripts exude a celebratory sensibility.
I find that the kindest forms, ornamental typefaces, are pleasing to the eye—they bring a sense of play to a typographic message. But this is not always the case. Typographic kindness is in the eye of the beholder and depends not simply on the intent of the designer but the capacity of the receiver to navigate the meaning of what is typeset.
Although specifically referring to architecture and products, Austrian architect Adolf Loos mounted the barricades in 1908 with his essay “Ornament and Crime.” And when he proclaimed, "the evolution of culture marches with the elimination of ornament from useful objects," design was in an ornamental quagmire. Eleven years after the advent of Art Nouveau (Jugendstil, Vienna Secession)— which began in 1896 and was popularly considered a welcome change from the status quo— forests of twisted vines and tendrils, what critics have called floriated madness, covered everything from posters and typography to furniture and buildings. Was this kind or mean? Loos’ preference for “smooth and precious surfaces” derived from his fervent belief that functional objects swathed in ornament were guaranteed almost instantaneous obsolescence. This concept is essentially unkind. Loos’ believed that superfluous design was not merely a waste of a designer’s time it was downright mean. Obsolescence was a venal sin.
"Ornament is not ostensibly evil, nor does it signify the baser nature of man or woman. Like any graphic manner or style, symbolic or literal meanings derive from the reality of the thing or idea that is represented. To the contrary, ornamental and even convoluted typographic manifestations add to the reading and viewing experience in kind ways."
Loos’ critique, published in Europe when Art Nouveau was at its most eccentric, made a certain amount of sense. The time was right to throw off the shackles of egregious style and move forward to a purer stage of cultural evolution. Yet arguably, no matter how excessive the ornamentation, labeling it sinful was unwarranted hyperbole. Not all decorative impulses are unkind. Visual austerity could be seen as the denial of aesthetic pleasure. After all, who could argue that a Persian miniature, with its complex graphic layering, or The Book of Kells, with the interlocking patterns and serpentine filigree that fill its pages, are not among the most beautiful (and in a sense, most functional) of graphic artifacts? How could Baroque and Rococo motifs in print or on edifices be pilloried for crimes against the eye or society in general, despite what they have come to symbolize?
William Morris, late nineteenth century artist, designer, printer, author, social critic, and founder of the Arts and Crafts movement, bathed in ornamentation as a high form of expression. The Kelmscott Chaucer, the pinnacle of his career as a designer, reintroduced the medieval or gothic approach from its lavish ornamental borders to its decorative capitals and frames. When first published it was a joy for readers to read. But The Kelmscott Chaucer did more than simply revive an antique style. It was the realization of Morris’s belief that a combination of modern printing techniques and traditional arts and crafts could counteract the corrosive impact of industrialization, which contributed to a culture of social abuse. Ornament was not merely a veil to hide ugly industrial machines and wares; it was an antidote to the perceived poisons spewing from factory chimneys. Expediency trumped kindness.
Ornament is not ostensibly evil, nor does it signify the baser nature of man or woman. Like any graphic manner or style, symbolic or literal meanings derive from the reality of the thing or idea that is represented. To the contrary, ornamental and even convoluted typographic manifestations add to the reading and viewing experience in kind ways.
The Bauhaus adamantly rejected unnecessary excessive typeplay. The progressive German design school proffered and maintained an overriding ethic expressed, which can be construed as a kind of kindness. Bauhauslers replaced unnecessary flourish with minimal functional ornament (black and red rules and bars), which was by any other name still decoration—albeit with a structural underpinning. Followers of the Bauhaus and adherents of Modernism, even to this day, have maintained the belief that minimalism enables the clearest communication. Yet there has long been a desire to inject graphic complexity into design languages.
Playful ornament has made a spectacular comeback since the late 1990s and is widespread today. Kindness in type and typography can be reduced to the concept of aesthetic delight. During the mid to late sixties, for instance, responding to the dominance of Swiss International School’s severe minimalism, eclectic designers—notably The Push Pin Studios, Seymour Chwast and Milton Glaser—reclaimed once outmoded an ornamental approaches. With the advent of the computer in the late 1980s and early 1990s graphic designers initially leaned towards austerity, which is what the computer could provide. Yet that preference quickly “devolved” into more cluttered, anarchic, flaw-inspired typographic designs of David Carson and kindred graphic grunge-mongers. He brought joy through complexity, which was kindness insofar as his work was sympathetic to a generation that sought new forms of expression. Sometime during the early 2000s, well over a decade after the computer became the primary design tool, Neo–Art Nouveau, serpentine, floral ornamentation returned with a vengeance. No less significant, the traditional boundaries of design and illustration were once again blurring, as they had at the turn-of-the century with the Sachplakat (Object Poster). The introduction in the 1990s of font creation software enabled illustrators to become more engaged in letterform and type design. The grunge and DIY movements of the mid-1990s contributed to the growth of digital foundries that offered scores of “novelty” faces made from countless non-traditional type materials. A new kind of floriated madness blossomed.
As a groundswell of typographic kindness took hold the concept of kindness in advertisements, editorial and package designs grew more common. Type and typography became the principle vehicle for ornamentation. Illustrated letterforms—not calligraphy in the classical sense, nor illumination in the biblical context—became the most appreciated as a gift from designer to receiver. Kindness is in short supply in the world in which we live. Graphic design is a small artform that plays a large role in people’s lives. Injected kindness into visual communications is in itself a great kindness.
This interview is part of the Visual Voices for Change 2025 Fight for Kindness Annual book
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