Sound Perspectives on Critical Type

Abstract

In Sound Perspectives on Critical Type the subject of typography is approached from the perspective of “skewed” and distorted music. The project explores how diversions and glitches can add values and communicating layers to a text that the “good” typography is lacking. With small gestures the norms of typography is questioned in an infiltrating manner, aiming to open up the field and invite alternative voices to enter the stage. The investigation has been carried out in the form of interviews (with graphic designers, musicians, writers, and critics), workshops, writing of texts and producing typography with experimental methods that make the text flow behave in alternative ways than the traditional, rule-bound. The strategies and results have been documented, collected and visualized in the format of a book that can function as an introduction to, and an extended discussion of, the issues conversed within. The book gathers voices and attitudes, and makes visible a desire to approach the field of design and typography in new ways. Sound Perspectives on Critical Type is an investigating project illustrating how expressions found in alternative music can offer new ways of thinking and discussing typography today. The music perspective could in a new way contribute, open up and invite to a critical discourse of the subject of typography.