Public Foundry: (Towards A) Manifesto for a (New) Typography Without Typographers (v. 01)

A catalog based on the work of HMCT 2020 Typographers-in-Residence: Joshua Trees, Yvan Martinez, and Krister Olsson.

In 2019, Google’s Artists and Machine Intelligence program granted Trees, Martinez and Olsson a Focused Research Award to build Public Foundry, the first type foundry powered by the public using artificial intelligence.

Although the digital revolution is commonly thought to have democratized the field of typography by making computer fonts publicly available, digital typeface design remains an esoteric practice. At the same time, public lettering and signage are being erased and homogenized through gentrification and globalization.

Public Foundry aims to address this paradox by serving as a tool and resource for collecting, archiving and constructing letterforms that express and embody the human voice — socially, culturally and politically: letterforms that reflect our collective and personal identities, ideologies and memories; letterforms that revive and reinvent endangered typographies to perform alternative pasts and speculative futures.

This catalogue includes contributions by Clara Balaguer, Dante Carlos, Kristian Henson, Czar Kristoff, and Nat Pyper.

Edited by Bella Romain
Catalog design by Typography Fellow Ann Suerto

Published by the Hoffmitz Milken Center for Typography at ArtCenter College of Design, 2021

146 pages, b&w, 5.5 x 8.5 inches

ISBN: 978-1-73-341370-1