Typography, the visual manifestation of language, communicates meaning through printed or digital alphabetic forms. Typography can be described as a vehicle to transport language, serving as the material expression of language and is therefore a critical component of language. While words and text hold semantic and linguistic value, they also embody a materiality that extends language from within. This practice-based research examines materiality of language where it is positioned as an associate and co-producer in meaning construction. The materiality of language explored here relates to the medium or form by which language presents itself or that through which language is constructed. It builds on Sheena Calvert's (2011a), research in 'Materia Prima, text-as-image' where Lyotard’s concept of the ‘figure’ is employed as an approach to consider the materiality of language as something other, disrupting or interrupting discourse. The practice is undertaken through a series of seven process-led typographic ‘events’ that utilise analogue and digital experimental typographic approaches to supplement Calvert’s theoretical propositions to reexamine and re-configure the visual and material attributes of language. Situated in a post-digital context, this research employs the methodology of the reflective practitioner, where tacit knowledge is a valuable aspect in the making process, reflecting and knowing-in-action (Schön, 1983). It considers materiality of language through experimental typography, interrogated as an expanded practice, or investigated as ‘a practice of possibility’ (Parrinder, Davis, 2015). Therefore, this research is proposed as a re-examination or a re-materialisation, where physical and virtual can assemble and collide enabling interactions of typographic form, while simultaneously observing and collapsing boundaries in the re-materiality of the language object. The outcomes, through the typographic events, interrogate, disrupt and expand this overlooked feminist material space, challenging the patriarchal logic and fixity of language, to deepen understanding of graphic design and typography as a critical and creative practice.
- materiality
- language
- typography
- screen printing
Di-alogue: materiality and the language object
Clancy, P. (Author). Sept 2025
Student thesis: Doctoral Thesis