The politics of typographic placemaking

The cases of TilburgsAns and Dubai Font

Bibliographic Data

ID12700617
AuthorsJohan Järlehed (0000-0002-0117-9458, University of Gothenburg, corresponding author), Maryam Fanni (0009-0002-1325-0079, Academy of Art and Design, University of Gothenburg, Sweden)
Year2022
Volume23
Issue2
Pages244-264
Publication date2022-02-12
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueVisual Communication (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1470-3572 • E-ISSN: 1741-3214
PublisherSAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/14703572211069612
OpenAlexW4211213093
LanguageEN
Citations received5
References cited20

This article explores typographic placemaking by comparing the design and public launch of two city fonts: TilburgsAns (2016) and Dubai Font (2017). Building on recent work on semiotic technology and graphic ideology, the authors examine how these fonts’ visual features and the promotional discourses surrounding their launch are utilized for placemaking, and how this is facilitated and constrained by technology and ideology. The results show that the two projects of typographic placemaking build on a similar repertoire of semiotic technology, but make different use of it. The authors sustain that this difference is explained by the political aims of the two projects, on the one hand, and their economic and organizational scale, on the other. A postcolonial perspective further underlines their geopolitically and historically different preconditions

Art · Font · Ideology · Linguistics · Literature · Media studies · Placemaking · Political science · Politics · Repertoire · Semiotics · Sociology · Urban design · Visual arts · Comics and Graphic Narratives · Law · Media, Gender, and Advertising · Public Spaces through Art · Architecture

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