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70 TYPOGRAPHIC BINARIES
Typographers and lettering artists have always created letterforms that ignore binary oppositions such as roman/italic or serif/sans serif. Systems of typeface clas- sification often banish decorative display faces and cursive scripts to a catch-all anticategory such as “decorative” or “display.” Relegated to the junk drawer of typographic history, these designs refuse to conform to such neat categories. Today, many type designers are exploring irregular proportions, flaring strokes, horizontal stresses, and ambiguous stroke endings. These designs embrace typography’s or- namental history rather than its modernist, classical, and Eurocentric canons.
The concept of a “type family” is rather patriarchal. A type family is a group of indi- vidual styles unified by an originary list of features. Real-life families are less matchy- matchy and predictable. Living families fall apart, break up, and get repaired—with varying degrees of success.
When is a type family nonbinary? Leah Maldonado’s experimental typeface Glyph World rejects oppositions such as roman/ italic, serif/sans serif, uppercase/lower- case, and bold/light in favor of a weird and open landscape of ideas. The fonts of Glyph World cohabit and coexist without obediently conforming to a master set of rules or filling in spaces on a grid.
I ← This is a serif. I← So is this.
I ← This is a serif. I ← And this.
I ← This has no serif. I ← What about this? I ← Nor does this. I ← Or this?
I ← And this.
JOHN BERRY This diagram challenges the divide between serif and sans serif.
I ← And this, too.
I ← Nor this. I ← Or this?
Sans serif letters have no serifs. Historically, sans serifs started
Sflerifs take muany diffierendt forms, depending on the design of the typeface. (Those forms are one of the ways that type historians sort out the different kinds of type designs and categorize them.) These capital-I’s all have serifs at both top and bottom.
TYPEFACE | CAPUCINE BOLD ITALIC | ALICE SAVOIE
blotted
TYPEFACE | MANDEVILLA BOLD | LAURA WORTHINGTON
flared
appearing in type in the early 19th century, although they have
roots that stretch back to the ancient Greeks.
TYPEFACE | INJURIAL | SANDRINE NUGUE
nibby
TYPEFACE | AMPERSANDIST | LYNNE YUN