Plain Text is a publication for contemporary type design, created by type foundry Plain Form. Each issue features diverse content — essays, interviews, portfolios, re-publications, fiction as well as visual works — to satiate both type design experts, with contributions from or about recognized practitioners just as well as recent students, and the generally curious, with insights valuable to anyone interested in language and communication.
We defend a poetic vision of type design and aim for Plain Text to be a space where letters are free from utilitarian expectations, allowing designers, writers, and typography enthusiasts to share trials, doubts, successes, and failures, contributing to a theory of type design that is poetic, eclectic and federated.
Family Business
Lucas Descroix views type families through parables.
Trust the Process
A dive into Anne-Dauphine Borione’s energetic letters.
Legend of the Printer’s Devil
Printing might be pure evil, according to William Skeen.
Shape of a Thousand Universes
Eager Zhang’s poetic outlook on type and languages.
Asemic What?
A conversation with Stefan Ellmer about (non-)sense.
Emomania
Ayasha Khan explores the border between text and images.
Type as a Labyrinth
What Benjamin Dumond means when he says “experimental”.
Atlas
Non-verbal links in a well-arranged array of images.
Weavings
Zuzana Licko brings type design mechanisms into other fields.
One Last Request
Fonts destroy the world, by Verso Wurm, illustrated by Arman Mohtadji.
Ancient Mysteries of Writing
Archeologist Kirsten D. Dzwiza on letters and ancient magic.
Express Exegesis
Reading intentions and building bridges between typefaces.
96p
EN / FR
210 × 295mm