Abstract:
Over the past forty years, studies concerning visual rhetoric have become
increasingly prevalent, seeping into multiple areas of research, from visual
studies to architecture and design. Robin Kinross’s The rhetoric of neutrality is
arguably one of the most influential pieces on visual rhetoric in design. The
article was published in 1985, alongside Richard Buchanan’s Declaration by
design: Rhetoric, and demonstration in design practice and marks an important
moment in design and particularly typographic design. The article mirrors
sentiments from postmodern typographic design, where stiff modernist grids,
formulaic layouts and neutral letterforms were fervently outcast.
Central to this paper is Kinross’s rejection that any visual medium can be
described as neutral. From the mid-2010s, there seems to have been a renewed
interest in “neutral” typographic application. In pursuit of “accessibility”, designers
and design agencies working in the spheres of branding, motion, advertising
and user-experience steadily strip letterforms of their distinctive characteristics;
purging them of cultural symbolism to satisfy a kind of “global palate”. In this
paper, I revisit Kinross’s treatise on neutrality and explore possible reasons for
a renewed interest within “neutral” letterforms within a global context.
