I was particularly inspired by Netflix’s Abstract: The Art of Design documentary series, which contains an episode on the work of Paula Scher, an American graphic designer who specialises in typography (Abstract: The Art of Design, 2017). Scher’s artwork shows how letters could be used as patterns in drawing. In her branding project for the Public Theatre, she placed the glyphs in funky beats for its poster—you could almost hear the sound just from reading them. By using a mixture of pioneering and traditional typefaces, Scher conducted types like they were instruments in her jazz band with unconventional spacing, various font colours and weights in perfect harmony. Scher’s work amazed me and had a transformative impact upon my own practice. I found that typography can communicate not just based on linguistic interpretation. The choice of typefaces, type size, kerning, leading,
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Introduction