THE NEW NON-TYPE

"We rarely come across speech bubbles in the everyday world. But what happens if we do? What does that do to the message? Do "Pow", "Yaay" and "Kawoom" still say "Pow", "Yaay" and "Kawoom"? The German design duo Pixelgarten played with this question when they set up their typographic installation "Um was es nicht geht" ("What it's not about") in the "Haus der Photographie" in Hamburg. About half a year later, they used similar elements for a poster representing the fashion department store "Laforet" in Tokyo. And only recently, they illustrated an article about noisy technical devices in our everyday surroundings by means of giant cardboard mobile phones, boomboxes and sound bubbles mounted on signposts.

In an 1981 issue of the "Typgraphische Monatsblätter", Swiss typographer Helmut Schmidt stated that "Typography needs to be audible. Typography needs to be felt. Typography needs to be experienced." In view of the recent boom of graphic installations and tactile letterings, Schmidt's words seem more relevant than ever. Typographic language, today, seems exceed the formula "content + form = information" (as Johanna Drucker once put it), but rather on something like "content + form + performance = information".

It is the tendency towards authenticity and imperfection, towards the integration of type into real life, that made me aware of similarities to the mindset and approach of certain Avantgarde art movements, to key ideas pursued by the Dadaists, Marcel Duchamp, or John Cage, or by those associated with Fluxus and Neo-Dada. The title "The New Non-Type" picks up on their "Non-Art" and anticipates the core concept of my study. (...)"