Type talks

We know that typefaces convey emotion as well as information.

Sarah Hyndman’s talk at the Museum of Packaging set out to explore the connections between social change, popular sentiment and typography.

In a time of increased industrialisation and globalisation, where jobs and livelihoods are threatened, where an influx of labour from elsewhere depresses wages, where old certainties are stripped away as financial systems, social order, and country borders are threatened. New leaders articulate a radical vision of the future, whilst those outside of the elite look on powerless and in search of a voice.

Sound familiar?

In 1970 the raw anger of a generation that felt excluded, marginalised and ignored found their voice in Punk. Expressed through attitude, music, style and typography, Punk’s anti-establishment stance found its visual expression through the work of Jamie Reid.

The stylistic conventions of Punk included mixing type styles and weights, overprinting, cluttered pages, deliberate mistakes, cultural references, blurred photography and an embrace of general messiness. All elements that rejected the rules and structure of the international style, took the typographic grids of modernism, a visual shorthand for the corporate industrial complex, and tore them apart.

Treating type as if it was a photograph freed designers from the restrictions of typesetting within a structured grid. Cut-out, photocopied and hand-drawn type also had the advantage of being able to bypass expensive printers, the rawness of the layouts on labels, flyers and zines perfectly matching the urgency and language of the authors.

 Ironically, the vibrancy of the look led to it becoming co-opted by the very establishment that Punk aimed to subvert. First ignored and feared, then embraced and tamed.

Kellog’s Squares anyone?

The creation of an expressive style that symbolises opposition to the establishment has historical precedent, and the inevitable co-option of anti-establishment typography into the mainstream follows a similar pattern. First World War Germany saw the appearance of Dadism. 1960’s America brought us psychedelia and pop art against the backdrop of the Vietnam war. The industrial decline of The UK in the 1970’s gave rise to Punk, whilst the 1980’s brought New wave and the postmodern typographic design of Brody, Saville, 8vo and Tomato (amongst others).

And so to 2016, and the rise of the Snapchat generation. With one typeface, limited tools and only a 10 second viewing window, Snapchat is the latest medium for millennials to share the moments that matter to them. it’s really immediate and ugly. You’re not designing, it’s just Times New Roman or Ariel and then it’s gone. It’s the closest thing now to how Punk looked like then.

Unstructured information and emotion that is explicitly short-lived and self-deleting, so it can’t be filtered, searched, indexed or saved, but provides today's authentic voice.