The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly: Pushing Illegibility in Typographic Trends

In today’s styles of illegible and abstract lettering, how are typographic conventions challenged by the next generation of graphic designers and typographers? Graphic design students are often taught to design with typography using Swiss standards and modernist constraints, yet social media is proliferated by young creatives producing ornamental letterings, psychedelic maximalist layouts—completely throwing away adherence to structure and legibility. Amy Fang analyzes typography’s function as both a communication device and as an art form, and how contemporary movements have led some youth to champion experimentation over meaning. Using case studies from designers and studios produced within the last decade, she categorizes modern-day typography through three overlapping contexts and classifications: typography as image, as protest/rebellion, and as identity.