–
Subtext: Typedesign

_ On the growing importance of digital typedesign
_ New consequences regarding design and distribution
_ Current typeface design of 50 designers
_ With contributions by authors

Digital type design provides an essential building block in the architecture of modern media. Type functions thus not only to facilitate the conveyance of content, but is often a central, identity-establishing element in both commercial and artistic production. Advances in the area of information technologies make type design increasingly important, as the visual strategies for differentiation and the ever-changing requirements placed on design demand originality not only in print, but also on-screen. The democratization of the means of production has also changed the rules of the game for sales and distribution: typefaces are often hosted and advertised online, the designers often functioning, via direct marketing, as the retailers of their work.

“Subtext: Typedesign” has been published in connection with the exhibition of the same name and introduces and documents the designs of more than 50 designers working locally and worldwide and presents more than 450 pages of recent type designs, some with close and others with more distant connections to Austria. Exhibiting further uses of the type designs, a comprehensive text is included in which well-known authors from various cultures and academic disciplines explore their relationships to type design.