ANTI READER FRIENDLY

Legibility is the ease with which a reader can decode symbols. Readability is the ease with which a reader can follow and understand words, sentences, and paragraphs. While legibility refers to the visual clarity of individual symbols, readability is more about their arrangement (or even the choice of individual words in a sentence). So the theory goes …

But who tells what is legible? Who sets the standard for what is readable? Presumably, legibility is a question of time. With a little luck one might find someone who can still read Sütterlin (the historical form of German handwriting that evolved alongside German blackletter—most notably Fraktur— typefaces).

There is a magic in transforming letters to an illegible degree—to cause them to lose function in the sense of readability. It is a liberating process. Thereby, the function of “letters” is redefined. Much like Marcel Duchamp, who created “Readymades” (bicycle wheel 1913; Bottle Rack, 1914; Fountain, 1917), redefined the meaning of art. He looked for something that was neither art nor anti-art, something that was characterized by indifference to all aesthetic categories. “Anti-Reader-Friendly typography” becomes the “readymade” of the type world—and by this “… a form of denying the possibility of defining art.”

066——Dafi Kühne——CHE——KUNSTSTIPENDIEN DER STADT ZÜRICH

Poster for Kunststipendien der Stadt Zürich. How do you fit 36 names on a poster and make them big? You got to overlap them. Letterpress printed in a total of 23(!) print runs with many helpers. Mainly laser-cut MDF and a bit of metal type.

084—Simon Péter Bence—HUN——TYPE RASTER WAVE