• 15 Dec, 2025 *

In a conversation with one of my students I quoted the line, “Type is the raw material of culture,” attempting to inspire a deeper engagement with his research into bi-scriptural typography. I was pushing him to look more closely at the formal qualities of the scripts, Arabic and Latin, and connect them with their cultural histories. I later discovered that this was a rephrasing of a statement made by type designer Jonathan Hoefler (who, with hindsight, I am now loathe to quote), and it echoes Ellen Lupton’s famous definition, “Typography is what language looks like.” These admittedly overblown, over simplified, and disciplinary self-congratulatory claims are rooted in the classic philosophical tension in design between form and content, or in the terms of the Bauhaus, form and function.

I return often to Theodor Adorno’s concept of form as sedimented content;

If art opposes the empirical through the element of form, (…) the mediation is to be sought in the recognition of aesthetic form as sedimented content. What are taken to be the purest forms can be traced back even in the smallest idiomatic detail to content.

For Adorno, “artworks are something made.” Form is the result of the processes through which an artwork is made, and that making carries with it the social, technological, and economic relations (the antagonisms of reality) of its particular historical and cultural juncture, its sedimented content. This thinking posits the essential thingness of the (art) object, reading its meaning in, and not through, its form. Form doesn’t follow content, it is content, though perhaps not the content we are expecting. The metaphor of sedimentation is potent, as recursive layers of form and material/matter accrue, hardly visible to the eye and only felt through the unevenness of the surface.

Graphic designers either revere typefaces as aesthetic objects in their own right or select them as functional creative tools, as fonts. When bundled into subscription-based design software, type is no longer seen as an object, just another menu option. In the shift from pieces of cast metal to pieces of/within software, type’s material quality is lost, but its sedimented content remains in the strokes, curves, counters, and rhythm of its design. How does the claim of type as raw material, recalling paper and ink, metal and wood, stone and brick, fabric and thread, complicate our thinking about design?

Within the colophon, the short note inscribed at the end of a book that details its physical creation, typeface and paper and printer often share space. The traditional colophon in early printed books contained information such as the title of the work, name of the author and printer, illustration credits, date, location, and the method of printing, editioning information, etc. The term has its origin in the Greek, meaning ‘summit’ or ‘finishing stroke’. It can be thought of as a book’s signature, or equivalent to the end credits of a film, but also to the ingredients list on a jar of jam. Though often written in a factual, historical, and informational tone, some colophons were expressive and exhibited flourishes of poetry, and some were pictorial, consisting of the printing house’s mark.

The colophon was once the only area where bibliographic information appeared, serving an essential role for referencing and cataloguing books in libraries and archives. With the introduction of the title page, standardized in the early 16th century, and later the typographic design of covers, the author’s name, book title, and publisher’s mark moved to the front of the book. And with the advent of commercial trade publishing, other indexical information moved forward and overleaf onto what we now term the imprint or copyright page, listing all the legal information necessary to protect the work as a piece of intellectual property. This shift also marked the functional separation of the publisher from the printer.

With the book’s title and author, attributing the “creative” work within, and its publishing information, claiming the ownership of intangible reproduction rights, moved to the front matter, this left the humble colophon to finally address the material aspects of the book; the paper and ink of it, the metal pressed onto its surface, the means by which the pages are bound together. It credits the designers and printers who worked with said materials and inscribes the time and place of the book’s production. The colophon thus makes explicit the implicit fact of the book as a material object, existing within the world and through the passage of time. It humbly acknowledges the collaborative labour and material origins of the book in counterpoint to individual authorial genius or claims to rights of exploitation and ownership. It expresses an ethics of craft.

The names, characteristics, and origin stories of the typefaces used hold a central place in the tradition of the colophon, at times complementing or replacing it entirely with a more specific “Note on the Type.” A typical note might read:

This book was set on the Linotype in Janson, a recutting made direct from type cast in matrices made by Anton Janson some time between 1660 and 1687. This type is an excellent example of the influential and singularly sturdy Dutch types that prevailed in England prior to Caslon. It was from the Dutch types that Caslon developed his own incomparable designs.

As a young graphic designer learning how to make books, these notes were invaluable, if mysterious, to me. What was a Linotype, and how did it work? What does “singularly sturdy” type mean? And how is that a characteristic of the Dutch? Who is this Caslon?

This book was set in a modern adaptation of a type designed by the first William Caslon (1692–1766). The Caslon face, an artistic, easily read type, has enjoyed more than two centuries of popularity in the United States. It is of interest to note that the first copies of the Declaration of Independence and the first paper currency distributed to the citizens of the newborn nation were printed in this typeface.

Typographic histories, tracing lineages and influences through countless ‘revivals’ across several centuries, run alongside technological, cultural, and political histories. Colophons are a way to reference and remember.

This book is set in a digitized version of Electra, designed by W.A. Dwiggins. This face cannot be classified as either modern or old-style. It is not based on any historical model, nor does it echo any particular period or style. It avoids the extreme contrasts between thick and thin elements that mark modern faces and attempts to give a feeling of fluidity, power, and speed.

Here Dwiggins, the American type designer, illustrator, and book designer, who is credited with popularizing the terrm “graphic design,” breaks with historical tradition and attempts to imbue his Electra typeface, released in 1935, with the feeling of “fluidity, power, and speed.”

Some colophons also note the point size of the type used and even the amount of leading, training the aspiring typographer’s eye. Others mention the origin of the paper used and the mill in which it was made, softening our sense of touch. The references to the location and means of printing, binding, and production, the type of presses used and the names of those doing the work, further the notion that the meaning of a book is informed not only by the textual content, but by the specifics of the labour involved in its making.

Whenever I pick up a book I’m drawn to, I’ll flip to the back of the book first, hoping to find a colophon. There’s certainly a designer’s ego at play, “Did I correctly identify the typeface? Do I know its history? Do I think it is an appropriate choice?” But there is also a deeper desire to find within it a form of kindred recognition, a small validation of the craft I’ve chosen.

In 1757, the scribe Shem’on included this note to the reader in the colophon of a Syriac manuscript:

In this year, people and cargo crossed over the Tigris River upon ice as if it were dry land for the duration of one month.

The documentation of this singular weather phenomenon in the modest space of the colophon expands its role to archiving a specific time and place in the world. In this particular case, it is the sole remaining record of the Tigris freezing over, a remarkable event that should hold our attention.

The colophon of my own book, Design Against Design reads:

The text of this book is set in Gramatika, a typeface designed by Roman Gornitsky, published by Typefaces of the Temporary State, and Stanley, designed by Ludovic Balland, published by Optimo. Where Gramatika paradoxically reinterprets Helvetica, Stanley draws inspiration from the classic Times New Roman. Under Balland’s hand, it is imbued with a subtle iconoclasm through its sharp, angular, and at times, irregular forms. As Balland states, “a font is there not only to be read, but to keep a visual memory of things.” Folios are set in Youth Grotesque by Feedtype and image captions are set in Syne Tactile by Bonjour Monde and Lucas Descroix.

This book was printed and bound by Printon AS in Talinn, Estonia, using Olin Design Nordic White and Cordenons Bohème papers, in an edition of 2000 copies. The book was designed in Montréal/Tiohtià:ke in so-called Canada by LOKI and published by Set Margins’ in Eindhoven, the Netherlands.

The work was completed under the snowy skies of the last days of 2023, while bombs rained down on Gaza, and the people of the world mobilised and resisted in solidarity.

The colophon points us back to Adorno’s theory of sedimented content, reminding us that books are something made. They are the last words we read as we contemplate the end of a story that might leave us wanting more. A bridge taking us back from the imagined landscape of the text to the material reality of our own lives, the temperature of the room around us, the news on the radio, the list of tasks yet to be done.