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Samuel Andalon
Dr. Serviss
English 16
5 December 2016
Typography Final Paper
Based on Servisss PowerPoint on the history of writing studies, until the 19th
century, the main focus of writing studies centered on rhetoric, creating and delivering
a message. By the mid-1940s, the attention moved away from rhetoric and towards
composition, a movement dedicated towards academic writing pedagogy. Following
this transition, there was a similar change in the early 1980s, which moved from teaching
academic writing, research, and rhetoric to a new emphasis on composition and the
basic mechanics of writing, such as grammar and syntax. This shift gave rise to the
writing process, a step-by-step practice of brainstorming, outlining, drafting, peer editing,
revising, and proofing, and to the popular high school essay format of an introduction
paragraph, three supporting paragraphs, and a closing paragraph. From the 1980s to the
1990s, the writing process is reemphasized and begins to bring back rhetoric. From the
1990s to now, writing studies has expanded its scope to include new aspects to prepare
students for a 21st century curriculum, such as translingualism, multimodality, writing
spaces, and most pertinent to this essay, design.
In his 2009 essay, Embracing Wicked Problems: The Turn to Design in
Composition, Richard Marback, an English professor at Wayne State University with
several published articles on composition studies, the history of rhetoric, and rhetorical
theory, highlights the benefits and cautions of design and leads the reader to a better
understanding of designs placement in composition studies. In regards to the wicked
side of design, Marback explains that design can be thought of as wicked because

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every genuine design task is unique and irreducible (P. 400). In design, there is much to
consider including, kairos, audience, and subject to name a few. Additionally, as Marback
states the wicked problem of design is the problem of being accountable for
responses to artifacts such as buildings and Web pages, even though the full range of
divergent and potentially confliction responses to any design can never be exhaustively
predicted (P. 401). Simply put, we never truly know the response we are going to receive
based on our design choices.
Additionally, Marback argues that design carries persuasive features. Since each
aspect can influence the audience in some way, each aspect must be taken into account.
As Marback states, design studies is the rhetoric, the rhetoric of productsthe study of
how products come to be vehicles of argument and persuasion about the desirable
qualities of private and public life (P. 402). Each stylistic choice we make towards our
final product contributes to either confirming or contradicting our arguments that we
make. Building upon this, Marback affirms that design is intended to be more than a
stylistic choice, [e]very designers sketch, blueprint, flow chart, graph, threedimensional model, or other product proposal is an example of such argumentation. The
design process and artifacts of design are more than mere stylings (P. 402). With the
introduction of topics intended to produce cutting-edge, 21st century students like
multimodality, our arguments have become more complex. Our arguments are no longer
solely echoed through the message of our written text. In multimodality and our other
product proposal, now we must consider the images, colors, sizes, and especially the
fonts that we use, as these all contribute and reemphasize our intended argument or
message.

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While all components are important, for this essay, the element to consider that
contributes to the overall argument of a written piece is the typographic styling. While
current research is endorsing typography as a rhetorical technology, this research is still
being developed. However, the research behind typography has not always validated it as
a rhetorical technology or tool. As Eva R. Brumberger, an assistant professor at Virginia
Tech with research interests in visual rhetoric, document design, visual community
pedagogy, and technical communication pedagogy, states in her 2003 essay, The
Rhetoric of Typography: The Persona of Typeface and Text, visual communication has
slowly made its way into the field of writing studies and as a result, more emphasis
should be placed on research to learn more about this new movement (P. 206). With
writing studies attempting to produce well-tailored students, visual communication has
become a high priority in teaching as well as a more prevalent research topic. Prior to this
transition of thought, [t]he existing research on typography has focused primarily on
readability and legibility issues; only a handful of studies have attempted to investigate
the personas of typefaces perhaps because typography has generally ben considered
transparent (P. 206). As a result, the research backing typography as a rhetorical
technology is still in its infancy.
With the invention of the personal computers, accessibility to publishing was
increased. As Brumberger states in the same essay, publishing moved from print shop to
the desktop, from massive and unwieldy mechanical machines to compact (though still
sometimes unwieldy) personal computers (P. 206). Regardless of technical proficiency,
anyone can now open Microsoft Word and begin to draft a written piece and include

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artifacts. With the increased availability, typography has become an accessible
technology to everyone with a computer.
Before this essay goes more in-depth regarding typography and typeface, it is
necessary to distinguish between the two terms. In their 2008 essay, All Dressed Up
With Something to Say: Effects of Typeface Semantic Associations on Brand Perceptions
and Consumer Memory Terry L. Childers, a professor at the Gatton College of Business
and Economics at the University of Kentucky, and Jeffrey Jass, a researcher at QRC
Marketing, define typography as the design of letterforms |fonts| and their organization
in space (P. 94). Childers and Jass state that typeface can be understood as the costume
or physical appearance of a voice used to convey the content of the verbal message (P.
93). Essentially, typography can be thought of as the style and appearance of fonts,
whereas typeface can be understood as a particular style of type, such as Times New
Roman and Arial.
As mentioned earlier, research on typography has centered on readability and
legibility. It was only recently that focus has been placed on visual rhetorical, specifically
typography. Although it takes a psychological standpoint, this 1991 essay represents the
previous research that was focused on legibility and readability. In their essay, What
Children See Affects How They Read, Piers Cornelissen, Chair in Cognitive
Neuroscience at the Department of Psychology, Lynette Bradley, a Senior Research
Officer in the Department of Psychology at the University of Oxford, Sue Fowler, Senior
Research Orthoptist and Co-Founder of the Dyslexia Research Trust, and John Stein, a
professor of physiology at the University of Oxford with research interest in dyslexia,
collectively examine readability based on a difference in the sizing of texts. In a similar

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1997 essay, Readability Of Websites With Various Foreground/Background Color
Combinations, Font Types and Word Styles, Alyson L. Hill, a professor in the
Department of Psychology at Stephen F. Austin State University, studies how
foreground/background combinations, font, and word style work in conjunction. She
found that while no specific combination of the three leads to an objectively better
readability, a designer should pay special attention to each individual aspect as each
variable affects each other. These two essays, although from the perspective of
psychology, reaffirm that research on typography mostly revolved around its readability.
By the early 2000s, the research on typography still focused on readability and
legibility but at the same time, it broadened its scope towards explaining the visual
rhetoric that is associated with typography. All published in 2001, these essays reinforced
the previous focus on legibility and readability: Michael Bernard, Chia Hui Liao and
Melissa Mills The effects of font type and size on the legibility and reading time of
online text by older adults, Michael Bernand, Corrina Liao, and Melissa Mills
Determining the best online font for older adults, and Michael Bernard, Melissa Mills,
Talissa Frank and Jan McKowns Which Fonts Do Children Prefer to Read Online? As
research progressed and developed, eventually, essays like Eva R. Brumbergers 2003
The rhetoric of typography: The persona of typeface and text, John Thangarajs 2004
Fascinating fonts; is the power of typography a marketing myth, and Samuel Juni and
Julie S. Grosss 2008 essay Emotional and persuasive perception of fonts surfaced and
emphasized the new transition towards design but more specifically, visual rhetoric and
typography.

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Now, the current discussion behind typography revolves around whether
typography can contribute to a written pieces argument. Psychologists, technical writers,
and communication scholars are debating if typography is important or just a mundane
design choice. Although the research validating typography as a rhetorical technology is
relatively small compared to the research underlining readability and legibility,
typography is, indeed, a rhetorical technology and should not be disregarded.
In typography, there are many aspects to consider. As John Thangaraj, the
Executive Planning Director at FCB Ulka, a full service advertising agency, explains
font is an overlooked or briefly mentioned element in branding design (P.1). Thangaraj
explains how brands can utilize specific fonts to communicate their product. For instance,
Thangaraj details the company, Johnson & Johnson, as employing its distinct typeface,
characterized by curved lines and light weighting, to emphasize a sense of gentleness,
delicacy, and elegance (P. 5). These precise typographic attributes of the font accentuate
the argument of Johnson & Johnson products, such as baby oil and baby shampoo being
gentle and delicate enough for a consumers child.
Although Thangaraj mentions font in regards to branding design, the argument of
typography as a rhetorical technology goes beyond just advertising and is prevalent in all
types of writing, regardless of academic field. Each individual element, such as cap
height, x-height, baseline, ascender, descender, letter width, serif, angle of stress, level of
contrast, line, weight, orientation, and size, of a specific typeface can in some way
influence an audience and their intake of a message. While a change in these elements
may seem insignificant, current research is explaining different typefaces or fonts carry
different connotations and can have differing influences on the readability, assimilation,

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interpretation, and impact of the words and concepts they represent (Childers and Jass,
P. 2). To build upon this, as Childers and Jass explain one may view words as being
dressed up in the costume of type styles. Those costumes portray meaning
independently of the words they clothe (P. 6). With the current research, we are now
realizing that typefaces have distinct personalities. These personalities may or may
not align with the argument of our written text, and as a result, we must be careful with
our selection of certain fonts as they can deter or aid our argument.
In his essay, Typography: Macro- +Microaestics, Willi Kunz, an international
graphic designer and typographer, maintains the current argument on typography as a
rhetorical technology. According to Kunz, typography is both functional and expressive,
serving purposes of utility and beauty (P. 1). While it is aesthetically pleasing to read
attractive fonts, they serve a deeper purpose in that they can alter the readers emotional
and persuasive perceptions. Conversely, Kunz states poorly designed visual
communication assaults our sensibilities, creating a kind of visual pollution (P. 1).
Although not to a drastic degree, looking at an unattractive font can often make us
withdraw and can muddle our perception of the written text.
Looking forward, typography has generated discussion about its relevance based
on the current research on it. Brumberger makes a note of the lack of research regarding
typography as a rhetorical technology and hopes that research like hers can offer potential
directions for new research (P. 222). While more research is needed, it is also important
to implement current typography research into the classroom, as limited as it may be.
This necessity for typography as a rhetorical technology in the classroom is
echoed in Jane Holst-Larkins Personality and Type (But Not A Psychological Theory!).

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This professor at the School of Communication Studies at the Manukau Institute of
Technology realizes that in order to prepare students for the 21st century, teaching them
visual rhetoric is especially important. With the current discussion of design, it is now
acknowledged that all writers are designers. As a result, Holst-Larkin states good design
has been shown to play a positive role in influencing the way readers think and feel about
products and services (P. 1). In order to highlight this key idea, Holst-Larkin has her
students review business cards, resumes, and annual reports with different fonts and
express the emotions that are evoked from each specific text. Her students are then
instructed to design a new brochure based on an unformatted, 12-point Times New
Roman brochure. This illustrates to the students that every stylistic choice they make in
the process contributes to the overall feel of the text. Stephan A. Bernhardt, Chair in
Writing and an English professor at the University of Delaware, takes a similar stance on
the need for this transition to the new research in writing studies in the classroom in his
essay Seeing the Text. As he stress, [c]lassroom practice which ignores the
increasingly visual, localized qualities of information exchange can only become
increasingly irrelevant (P. 77). If a school does not realize the need for the shift towards
design, then the institution will not be able to produce the cutting-edge, 21st century
curriculum that has become so attractive.

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Works Cited
Bernhardt, Stephen A. "Seeing the text." ACM SIGDOC Asterisk Journal of Computer Documentation 16.3
(1992): 3-16.
Bernard, Michael, Chia Hui Liao, and Melissa Mills. "The effects of font type and size on the legibility and
reading time of online text by older adults." CHI'01 extended abstracts on Human factors in
computing systems. ACM, 2001.
Bernard, Michael, Corrina Liao, and Melissa Mills. "Determining the best online font for older adults."
Usability News 3.1 (2001): 1-4.
Bernard, Michael, et al. "Which fonts do children prefer to read online." Usability News 3.1 (2001): 2001.
Brumberger, Eva R. "The rhetoric of typography: The persona of typeface and text." Technical
communication 50.2 (2003): 206-223.
Childers, Terry L., and Jeffrey Jass. "All dressed up with something to say: Effects of typeface semantic
associations on brand perceptions and consumer memory." Journal of Consumer Psychology 12.2
(2002): 93-106.
Cornelissen, P., Bradley, L., Fowler, S. and Stein, J. (1991), WHAT CHILDREN SEE AFFECTS HOW
THEY READ. Developmental Medicine & Child Neurology, 33: 755762. doi:10.1111/j.14698749.1991.tb14959.x
Hill, Alyson, and L. V. Scharff. "Readability of websites with various foreground/background color
combinations, font types and word styles." Proceedings of 11th National Conference in
Undergraduate Research. Vol. 2. 1997.
Holst-Larkin, Jane. "Personality and Type (but." Business Communication Quarterly 69.4 (2006): 417-421.
Juni, Samuel, and Julie S. Gross. "Emotional and persuasive perception of fonts." Perceptual and motor
skills 106.1 (2008): 35-42.
Kunz, Willi. Typography: macro-and microaesthetics. Arthur Niggli, 2000.
Marback, Richard. "Embracing wicked problems: The turn to design in composition studies." College
Composition and Communication 61.2 (2009): W397.
Serviss, Tricia (2016). Timeline of Sorts: How did we get here? [PowerPoint slides]. Retrieved from
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1hqdngQQ4z5vdbiiRIuZRMF3E6h9wGST63MnJbYSXT4/edit#slide=id.p
Thangaraj, John. "Fascinating fonts; is the power of typography a marketing myth." Style DeKalb IL 2.1
(2004): 1-7.