“Rebuilding the Typographic Society”, 2012-10-12 (; backlinks; similar):
What’s humanity’s most consequential invention? I contend it’s the written word. And typography is an inseparable part of the written word. But what does typography really do? The lazy answer is that typography is about ‘making things pretty’.
But that’s incomplete. Understanding how typography works means stepping back and considering the role of the written word in our culture. As we do that, we notice that typography doesn’t merely frame meaning. It binds with the written word to add meaning.
But our newest reading technologies—the Kindle, the iPad—are leaving typography behind. This is a mistake. Those who care about the written word should be invested in preserving typography, because as we lose typography, we’ll also start to lose some of the possibilities of the written word.