The Latino-ness of type: making design identities socially significant

Abstract

To reflect on current Latino-themed typography in built environments and marketing venues, this paper examines the early 1990s, barrio-inspired typographic design of Pablo Medina, a Cuban-Colombian-American award-winning designer currently working in NYC, in relation to two diverse socio-aesthetic value systems. The first value system is a modernist ideology, which insists that language and expression can be universal and communicate across racial, ethnic, and cultural differences without carrying any particular meaning, bias, or identity. In contrast, Medina's Cuba typeface is in conversation with an ethnic place approach to cultural production that has its origins in 1960s Latino social movements that sought to affirm the cultural value of barrios. This design approach is often associated with postmodern socio-aesthetic preferences that "localize" culture. I argue that this type's articulation with the urban requires rethinking its postmodern categorization. This short article offers a window into new ways of thinking about hand-painted lettering -produced by designers and sign artists -that indexes barrio landscapes.

Ideological framing of vernacular type choices in the Galician and Basque semiotic landscape

“…As illustrated by several contributions to this special issue (Kupferschmid 2015;Londoño 2015;Shep 2015), the ongoing typographic homogenization and mainstreaming of contemporary cityscapes, brands, and façades, is contrasted with a growing interest in and value of vernacular typography. That is, typographic forms and styles that are perceived as locally produced, as embedded in and indexing local culture and economic and political histories.…”

“…This might be seen as a paradox given the high degree to which their form contrasts with the ideals of invisibility, anonymity, and legibility imposed by modern typographic design (see e.g. Kupferschmid 2015;Londoño 2015;Spitzmüller 2015). Yet, these instances of vernacular typography are not primarily thought to be read, or to transmit a message, but rather to be seen as expressing cultural identity and belonging and to mark territory.…”

Crosscutting environmental risk with design: A multi-site, multi-city socioecological approach for Iowa’s diversifying small towns

“…The situation is like what environmental justice advocates describe as a “double jeopardy” of injustice where people with the fewest resources reside in low-income communities with high level of environmental risk and unable defend against social threats like racism [ 9 , 10 , 16 – 18 ]. The recent change has left many decision makers wondering how to use limited community resources to address new and existing population needs [ 19 – 24 ]. In contrast to theories describing urban-rural change as evidence of environmental racism [ 2 ], our research paper seeks to understand how environmental risk and design in small towns may unintentionally impact vulnerable populations.…”

Typographic landscaping: creativity, ideology, movement

“…Typographic landscape arises out of a representational process including movement, creativity, and ideology. It depends both on the movement of human bodies and gazes through physical, virtual, and writing spaces (Shep 2015), and inscribed and emplaced letterforms and types moving through time and space (van Leeuwen and Djonov 2015;Londoño 2015). Landscape is thus an imagined and integrative space which comes to life through people's movements through it and their interaction with it (Pennycook 2010a, 148).…”

“…For example, Teal Triggs (2006) demonstrates how the typographic esthetic of punk emerged out of the creative resistance to cultural and political hegemony of its time. Social actors' metacultural sense-making of typography -their "typographic ideologies" (Spitzmüller 2015), self-reflexivity, and metapragmatic awareness -can be traced in such domains as art and design (Drucker 1994;van Leeuwen and Djonov 2015;Jaworski 2015aJaworski , 2015b, wayfinding systems (Kupferschmid 2015), commercial signage (Curtin 2015;Jaworski 2015a), discourses of national emancipation and branding (Järlehed 2015), ethnic identity (Londoño 2015), as well as hegemony and political contestation (Screti 2015).…”