Article by Ray Masaki on It’s Nice that exploring issues of inclusivity in type design.
Masaki “argues that a more equitable and diverse future of design will rely less on tools and technology and more on the decisions made by type designers.”
Masaki talks about the availability of modern digital tools and software and how this has increased access from previously marginalised communities, something that Catherine Dixon talks about in her conference presentation on Lettering and Typograohy.
“Due to the accessibility and relative affordability of modern type design and typesetting software, as well as multilingual support enabled by Unicode standards, the barriers to diverse typographic expression have been lowered over the past few decades.”
“While access to a more formal type design education is still limited in many parts of the world, the software itself has a much shallower learning curve, which makes it much more possible for one to become a self-taught type designer.”
He touches upon non-latin scripts:
“Accessibility towards designing non-Latin scripts, though not quite equal, is steadily evolving and improving as well.”
“I often wonder if there’s currently a lack of criticality and cultural sensitivity missing in that process.”
“A future of more inclusive type design and typography, in my opinion, is less about the tools and technology, but more about the unintentional or subconscious decisions that type designers are making around language support.”
“when language support is limited or designed improperly, the expression that is embedded within also becomes limited to people who are within similar language borders.”
“This, by extension, means that certain types of typographic visual expression are limited only to typographers who come from similar linguistic backgrounds.”
“Designers often hear the tired argument that there’s too many fonts out there, but when you consider that a Vietnamese typographer only has access to four per cent of the same tools, it places into perspective how typographic expression can be stifled by a lack of inclusive thinking.”
References
Masaki, R. (2023) ‘How typography can make a more inclusive future’, It’s Nice That, 4 Jan. Available at: https://www.itsnicethat.com/features/forward-thinking-how-typography-can-make-a-more-inclusive-future-graphic-design-040123 (Accessed 4 December 2024)