After reading Laws of Letter & Language of Vision I began to see typography in a whole new light. It is not only about whether type is serif or san-serif. The idea that language exists to represent ideas is challenged. Saussure argued that both thought and sound are shapeless masses before the acquisition of speech. I think this means that without language sound is merely nothing but noise. So in relation to the relationship of sounds; letters they are nothing as separate letters but together form words that are meaningful.
One of the points made in this essay that I found to be the most revaluating of ideas was the use of type families founded in the early twentieth century. These are still used today and were created to keep consistent variations of single types to use genetically associated characters instead of mixing the fonts. This also reflects the structuralist view of typeface as a set that can be translated across a series.
My favorite of type periods is modernism and the Avant-garde designers. Of these designers that worked in the early twentieth century, A.M. Cassandre is one of the most influential designers I have ever studied. He designed typefaces such as Bifur, Piegnot, and Cassandres. These typefaces I find to be influential because he went out of the box and designed these to be mostly for posters and headlines. Designers of this early time period made their own type by hand, Cassandre painted his own text by hand. I enjoy seeing these styles and the older original fonts rather than the post-structuralism work.
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