Type-cast? Insights on the rhetorical fluidity of iconic type

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.