The essay Laws of Letters reflects ideas regarding typography in relation to structuralist theory. Furthermore shows the understanding of printed letters as reflections of handwritten marks or classical proportions in regards to the modernist view of typography. According to the reading, “In Modern typography, systematic relations across the body of the alphabet took precedence over the “character” of the individual letterforms.
Saussure believes that both thought and sound are shapeless masses before the acquisition of speech and without language the realm of potential human sounds is just a field of noise. The essay also discusses the semiotic system of typography and how the alphabet is designed to signify speech. “Writing is thus a language depicting another language, a set of signs for representing signs.”
Bodoni and Didot created the idea of structuralist typography and later was continued by the designers of advertising display faces. The essay states “by shifting the emphasis from the individual letter to the overall series of characters, structuralist typography exchanged the fixed identity of the letter for the relational system of the font.” Victor Shklovsky a Russian formalist critic believed that until we are forced to see the world differently it is invisible and that art helps for “making strange” the already-seen and already-known.
Another subject brought up in the essay is how basic design courses turn meaningful images into abstract shapes. Additionally, the importance of abstraction for many design students and usually is the first thing they learn. “It remains a primary assumption behind later work, a staple design idea.”
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