Urban Typography as a Reflection of Talkative Behavior in Malang City

Abstract

There is a phenomenon of large sign letters presence in almost all cities in Indonesia at present to mark names of places that are already known by the public, including Malang City. This trend shows that there seems to be a contagion that infects one city to another without apparent reason. This mimetic phenomenon represents bad talkative behavior. Large or monumental letters assembled into one striking word as a sign (signage) of a place. Urban signage should be able to show a structuring role by building a unique identity and sense of place, thus creating an image in the form of the environment. However, the presence of monumental sign letters is no longer unique when all cities are busy to imitate and become stereotypes. How to interpret the large sign phenomenon as urban-talkative on architectural populism in the context of semiotics? This study aims to interpret the phenomenon of urban space typography design through semiotics from the pragmatism paradigm based on the first semiosis process of interpretant pole in Malang City. This research uses pragmatism, deductive and mixed-method methods. The research results indicate that the process of interpretant affirmation from the level of secondness to thirdness occurs in three ways; (1) not linear, (2) cross, and (3) linear. Not linear affirmations indicate the problem of communication between public institutions and citizen as interpretant. Cross affirmations indicate that interpretants tend (1) to look at accompanying elements of typography rather than the typography itself and (2) encourage typography as a city identity. Whereas linear affirmations indicate that (1) the presence of urban typography is a talkative behavior and becomes a problem of urban psychology and (2) interpretants tend to look urban typography in terms of subfunctions or content rather than the design of the typography itself.