It is interesting to see the evolution of typography. It first started as seeing typography as “reflections of handwritten marks or classical proportions.” Nowadays, it is seen as a “endless manipulation of abstract elements” (53). Letterforms are more geometric and not quite organic as they were before. A quote that stood out for was “modern typography replaced idealism with relativism” (55). I think it means that typography is less of making to look pretty and perfect, but that “no ideas or beliefs are universally true but that all are, instead, “relative” — that is, their validity depends on the circumstances in which they are applied.” Thank you dictionary.com. Moreover, everyone now sees the alphabet in a new way or in different variations. There is no one true way to see the typefaces. I think that makes sense. Additionally, modern typefaces manipulated the alphabet it “defamiliarized” the experience of reading. Now, typefaces created internal meaning that can understood from the time period it was created. For example, from the book, it mentioned how typefaces were merging biology and technology in the 20th century.
The modern design theory focuses on perception versus interpretation, in which sensation is favored over intellect, seeing over reading, universality over cultural difference. Interpretation is understanding something by its time/place, its format, style, symbolism, and its relationship with other images or text. They want to separate vision from language. I will be honest and say I was quite confused reading this, but I think everyone interprets meaning in different ways, but many typefaces like the one imaged above is understood universally as depicting technology or computers.
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