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Type Matters: The Rhetoricity of Letterforms
Stephen Bernhardt warned almost thirty years ago that our "preoccupation with conventional essay format" excludes the rhetorical rigor of typographic elements. John Trimbur extended this argument, noting that "one of the main obstacles to seeing the materiality of writing has been the essayist tradition and its notion of a transparent text." Visual rhetoric scholars have interrogated the ways in which meaning-making happens iconographically, photographically, and via other visual means. Type Matters now focuses on the visual, rhetorical work of typography.
Type Matters bridges the scholarship of typography and design with the field of rhetoric. Contributors address the ways in which and places where typography enacts or reveals rhetorical principles. The collection includes chapters that situate texts broadly; frame their discussions and analyses rhetorically, technologically, and culturally; draw from scholarship ranging from rhetoric and writing studies to graphic design theory and beyond; and explore the ways that the visual and tactile shapes of letters persuade and convey information to readers.
"Typographic rhetorics, typeface meaning studies, semiotics of typography, histories of print capitalism--the approaches to writing gathered in this groundbreaking collection show how understanding texts can never be just a matter of words alone. Instead, as co-editors Christopher Scott Wyatt and DAnielle Nicole DeVoss make clear, it is time to recognize that type matters: type signifies, it has personality, it makes things happen. From the intersection of writing studies, visual rhetoric, and graphic design, the contributors to this volume explore how the rhetoricity of typography works and, as a result, deepen our knowledge of the materiality of writing, its styles of inscription, and its worldly force." --John Trimbur, Emerson College
The text is presented in full color on white, 70# paper.
Type Matters bridges the scholarship of typography and design with the field of rhetoric. Contributors address the ways in which and places where typography enacts or reveals rhetorical principles. The collection includes chapters that situate texts broadly; frame their discussions and analyses rhetorically, technologically, and culturally; draw from scholarship ranging from rhetoric and writing studies to graphic design theory and beyond; and explore the ways that the visual and tactile shapes of letters persuade and convey information to readers.
"Typographic rhetorics, typeface meaning studies, semiotics of typography, histories of print capitalism--the approaches to writing gathered in this groundbreaking collection show how understanding texts can never be just a matter of words alone. Instead, as co-editors Christopher Scott Wyatt and DAnielle Nicole DeVoss make clear, it is time to recognize that type matters: type signifies, it has personality, it makes things happen. From the intersection of writing studies, visual rhetoric, and graphic design, the contributors to this volume explore how the rhetoricity of typography works and, as a result, deepen our knowledge of the materiality of writing, its styles of inscription, and its worldly force." --John Trimbur, Emerson College
The text is presented in full color on white, 70# paper.
- GenresNonfiction
412 pages, Hardcover
Published October 11, 2017
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July 9, 2018
Type Matters: The Rhetoricity of Letterforms edited by Christopher Scott Wyatt and Dànielle Nicole DeVoss provides in-depth history, research, and cultural reactions to the matters of type and the explorations of why type matters. Type Matters is a collaboration of various histories and research projects that investigate the visual, rhetorical and cultural meaning of type. From historical characteristics and layers of typography to the technological advancements that incorporate print and various type forms, co-editors Wyatt and DeVoss demonstrate in this pioneering collection how understanding typography and its visual impact creates and conveys meaning. Wyatt and DeVoss gathered and explained this collection to focus on type and type matters illustrating that typography symbolizes cultural significance, possesses personality traits, generates rhetorical responses, and can produce change. From Googles newest serif logo to comic books on up to evaluating typography and technology via video games – Wyatt and Devoss combine and evaluate the research of letterforms, type as content, the development of various fonts and logos to discover the significant cultural motivations and reactions that took place to and through typography throughout history. Through the use of rhetoric, Type Matters connects the study of type and the field of design to overcome the historical theory of “transparent text” to expand designers, students and scholars’ knowledge of the rhetoricity of typography, the command of letters and shapes, and its far-reaching cultural influence.
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