Fonts of Potential: Areas for Typographic Research in Political Communication

Abstract

As the prevalence of digital technologies has increased, so too has the prevalence of graphically designed content. In particular, typography has emerged as an increasingly important tool for visual communication. In recent years, political actors have seized upon the expressive potential of typography to communicate their messages, to support their campaign efforts, and to establish viable brand identities. However, researchers have been slow to address the new role typography plays in the processes of political communication. Therefore, this article both synthesizes and proposes key areas for research on typography in political communication. Drawing on extant literature across the fields of design, communication, and political science, this article identifies the ways in which typography contributes to the communicative and organizational aims of political actors, demonstrates these contributions with examples from recent political campaigns, and concludes by pointing toward unanswered questions for future studies to address.

Social Media Research and the Impact of Graphic Design: a case study examining an Indonesian political campaign.

“…Zavattaro (2010) attributes Obama's political success to his positioning as a brand through the use of graphic design, this changing conventions in political advertising. Thomas (2010) sees the campaign's consistent application of graphic design using familiar, US-themed elements as enhancing a sense of trust in Obama, while Billard (2016) argues that the range and online distribution of campaign materials allowed the public to engage with and disseminate the campaign.…”

Citizen typography and political brands in the 2016 US presidential election campaign

“…I previously pointed to the Obama campaign as a key example, showing how supporters used the campaign's brand resources (the O logo, the typeface Gotham, etc.) to signal their membership in his brand network and, through visual continuity with the campaign, contribute their messages to the stream of campaign-originated communications (Billard, 2016). In doing so, they transformed the Obama brand, attributing qualities to his brand through their communications that did not necessarily conform to the platform developed centrally by the campaign.…”

“…Significantly, this ability of brand networks to alter candidate brands is made possible by what I have called the ‘elasticity’ of campaigns’ design materials (Billard, 2016), which allows technologically empowered citizens to create their own (aesthetically) authentic designs with little effort. However, the choice campaigns make to produce brand designs intended to be manipulated in this way – which is part of the effort to generate a networkable brand space – constitutes an emerging logic within brand-driven campaigns of what I’m terming participatory aesthetics .…”

“…Brands are also inherently ideological to the extent that branding – with its ‘socially constructed signs, marks and meanings’ – ‘is the principal symbolic practice of the marketing imagination’ (O’Reilly, 2006: 268). In the realm of politics, therefore, visual brand resources become markers of political meaning, and the citizen participation in their generation and transformation allows citizen voices to shape the ideological messages of a candidate’s brand (Billard, 2016). Thus, by designing visual brand resources in ways that permit citizen transformation, campaigns foster such connective action.…”

“…About 2 months before the election of Donald Trump to the presidency of the United States, I published an article on the importance of typography – and, by extension, graphic design in general – to the American political process (Billard, 2016). At the end of the article, I postulated that, given the brand logics orienting contemporary politics (O’Cass, 2009; Scammell, 2007; Smith and French, 2009) and the prevalence of memetic activity in political discourse (Jenkins and Billard, 2018), citizen typography would emerge as increasingly relevant to the organization of political campaigns.…”