TYPOGRAPHY'S ROLE WITHIN COMMUNICATION AND DECONSTRUCTION - The essay

David Carson

'Ray Gun' Issue 57 Magazine cover

Typography's role within communication and deconstruction 

The concept of deconstruction was introduced was Derrida in his book 'of grammatology'.  Deconstruction; an approach to texts which analyses systems of representation and the systems which frame their communication, ('Of grammatology' 1966). Katherine McCoy argues that people know little about deconstruction; that it is not simply about form. That it is much more; the disassembling of visual language stating this is part of the process. According to Katherine McCoy Deconstruction or Post - structuralism is an attitude not a style.

Deconstruction specifies and 'deconstructs' binary oppositions, such as speech and writing. Deridda focuses on, and argues that oppositions are flawed as we privilege one over the other, one being more fundamental, the other being the latter in regard to written text and speech itself. In that, we must remember, without speech, there would be no writing, neither exists independently; deconstruction as a whole attack such oppositions.  This theory follow's typography's role in deconstruction closely, that speech is visible, Walter Ong has shown that typography made text into a 'thing', a material object. That 'printing converted the word into a visual object precisely located in space.'

Lupton, E (2008) 'Thinking with type' explores the use of typography and it's role within deconstruction. Stating, that traditional typography began as the main role in which to communicate a piece of literacy, an original piece of work, each individual in it's own distinct errors, glitches and gaps. If to be copied, it wouldn't quite be the same, each with it's own mistakes. Laborious in its attempt to correct these.

      The letterpress soon replaced the traditional hand written approach; with it's use of moveable type, it was the first step in a system of mass production. Typography now found a new role within works, the restrictions within handwritten documents now differed with this new found technology, with the use of physical objects to divide and 'design' text. Typography was now given a form and aesthetic in standardisation, saving much time (no longer a need to laboriously hand write each document), the mechanics in production also doing so. The way in which writing could be placed and documented was a revelation. We now read and interpreted type in a new way. Our own way.

Designers have taken such new techniques to make us read in a way which avoids reading, providing a structure and spacing arrangement to do so. 

' ..one begins also to reread past writing according to a different organisation of space.'


David Carson's 'Ray Gun' issue 57 magazine cover shows such an example of this. The typography is deconstructed within this design; the text is open to interpretation. Kerning between each letter is equal throughout, giving the impression of a long word, not that of several within a sentence. Some of the letters given a bold outline, deconstructing the text again; the bold letters give no reference to how the text should be read. There is a underlying element high culture, as enjambement has been used in the sense, word's run over the line. The purpose of this piece isn't entirely to be read, it's aesthetics, made up of both text and image, text seen as an materialistic object, is to be 'looked' rather than to be seen as a document.