Teaching the relational nature of typography

Denise Gonzales Crisp, Associate Professor, North Carolina State University

Human beings don’t acquire spoken language by identifying phonemes and reciting vocabulary. And design students don’t become versed in typographic nuance by studying the parts of characters, imitating font combinations or measuring out columns. Students who master this kind of knowledge can only be expected to produce competent, if not clumsy, typography. Why? Because they lack the fundamental understanding that formal convention is (but one) context driving their choices. I propose that the only rule in typography is not a rule at all, but an overarching principle: good typography is created and judged within contexts — circumstances prompted by discrete and elaborately interconnected systems. This “principle of typographic relativity” is rooted in the notion that all design choices are negotiated within formal, linguistic, technological and cultural systems, through which authors, readers and designers construct messages.

To be conversant — or better, to think and make beyond preferences, defaults, and “correctness” — students must be sensitized to these systems, from day one of Type I. Whether or not students are able to distinguish Old Style from Transitional, when they understand the principle of relativity, the potential of typographic invention, production and communication comes into full view. I will present ways in which teaching typography in relational terms changes how students respond to working with type; show exercises and outcomes of a three-course typography series; and read excerpts from my upcoming textbook written from this perspective.