Font & Identity - The Futures Project
April 1, 1998
Corporate identities are, despite their pretentions, not unlike the alphabet itself in that they are essentially symbols invested with human meaning. The major difference is that, whereas the basic alphabet is a neutral vessel for information, the logotype relies on visual association for its success. Instead, Futures invests the alphabet with the emotional inferences of the logotype ‑ trust, reliability, fear, respect and so on. In doing this, the corporate identity's capacity for these emotional triggers is diminished to the point where it is stripped to the bare essence of what a typeface is ‑ line and form.
It is widely considered that the most effective logotypes are often read as form and not as words. The result is type represented as image. Futures is the reversal of the process of the corporate identity, namely image as type.
Just as the ideal of the machine age represented efficiency and mass production in the time of Futura, our own time is governed by different factors such as abstract entities known as corporations, trademarks and an overwhelming financial perogative.
Futures is a typographic snapshot of the present day.
Writer: Stephan Banham
publication accompanying the exhibition