Abstract:
Over the past few decades, numerous prominent authors in various spheres of design
discourse have discussed the rhetorical potency of type “icons” and how they come to embody
cultural connotation. As icons, typefaces offer a universal language system—an expansive
visual vocabulary that immediately references what we already know of their context. Iconic
typefaces and their letterforms are subject to a process of narrative interpretation where
what we “already know of them” is in a constant process of resignification. Here, critics tend
to follow a Barthesian view that, as mythic structures, letterforms’ narratives are continuously
used and reused as signification in different contexts. This widely regarded view presumes
that iconic meaning develops as a chain of signification, where one narrative builds onto
the next. This, however, leaves little explanation for instances where symbolism embedded
in iconic typefaces develops in unexpected ways. In this article, I therefore investigate and
unpack other means by which iconic typefaces evolve rhetorical meaning. By referring to
examples throughout, I explore typical perspectives on iconic type in the Barthesian sense,
but also trace different processes of signification. In doing so, I aim to offer alternative
insights into ideological type as a more fluid rhetorical entity.
