Letterpress Language: Typography as a Medium for the Visual Representation of Language

Abstract

This examination of three works by Johanna Drucker. 26 '76 (1976). from A to Z (1977) and Against Fiction (1983), all printed letterpress, focuses on the formal properties of typography and its capacity to extend the meaning of a written text. Handsetting metal type necessarily focuses one's attention on the specificity of written language as a sequence of discrete letters. Each has properties of size, weight and shape; and placement and type styles can be widely varied. The technical constraints of letterpress tend to conserve the norm in the representation of language: line after straight line of a single typeface. The author's intention in deviating from these norms has been to extend, rather than negate or deny, the possibilities of meaning by encouraging plural readings at the levels of the word, the line and the page. Other issues such as the relation of language to experience, to literary tradition or to the social context in which it is produced are investigated.

We are thrilled to be celebrating 40 years of the Leonardo journal!

As part of Leonardo's 40th Anniversary celebrations, we are reprinting during 2007 and 2008 seminal texts from the journal's rich 40-year archive. In this issue, we are delighted to present Johanna Drucker's "Letterpress Language: Typography As a Medium for the Visual Representation of Language," originally published in Vol. 17, No. 1 (1984).

The reader is invited to re-visit the groundbreaking work of artists who documented their unique contributions to the field of art-science-technology in Leonardo during the journal's first 20 years.

The relation between the formal, visual aspects of typography and the production of meaning in a printed text has been one of my main concerns in my work as a book artist. Writing produces a visual image: the shapes, sizes and placement of letters on a page contribute to the message produced, creating statements which cannot always be rendered in spoken language. Handsetting type quickly brings into focus the physical, tangible aspects of language-the size and weight of the letters in a literal sense-emphasizing the material specificity of the printing medium. The single, conservative constant of my work is that I always intend for the language to have meaning. My interest is in extending the communicative potential of writing, not in eliminating or negating it. While my work tends to go against established conventions of appearance of type on a page, this deviation is intended to call attention to the structure of those norms, as much as to subvert them. Setting type also emphasizes the importance of the letteras the basic unit of written forms, as an element in its own right with particular characteristics, and not only as the representation of the patterns of spoken language. There are many historical precedents for this approach, including the work of nineteenth-century poet Stephen Mallarmé and twentieth century Dadaists and Futurists [1-3]. I will discuss three of my books here: 26 '76 . printed in 1976, from A to Z, printed in 1977, and Against Fiction, printed in 1983. I produced all three by letterpress using handset type on a Vandercook proofing press, a flat-bed cylinder press which prints one hand-fed sheet at a time.

Rather than feeling hampered by the physical constraints of letterpress. I have used its characteristics to structure works, to extend the investigation of language in printed form, and to discover how the substitution or elimination of letters or other visual elements can alter the conventional use and meaning of words. Essentially, the norm of language representation is completely reinforced by the techniques of letterpress. Its mechanical design is intended to maintain even lines in a single typeface. But the very rigidity of these norms also permits the use of that technology as a language itself, as a system of possibilities and constraints.

26 '76: The Structure of the Page

Although I had been printing since 1972. 26 '76 was the first work in which I used letterpress as something more than a means of printing an already...