"Language is a deadly weapon" - Paula Scher.
At first thought, this quote is hard to explain. My mind first wanders to the angle of literary writing, not to the area of Graphic Design. Though on second thought, my mind wanders back a step, and I think, perhaps the quote can work both ways. Like in many areas, Art/Design/Literature, there is often a point when these particular sectors of the creative world
can intertwine. Actually, it’s becoming more and more common to do so.
With that in mind, I take this quote to mean that, within the area of Typography - the manipulation of text, language (and use of the text visually) can be used to get a point across just as well as an image itself could. And this, can be considered a “deadly weapon” - an effective device for execution of a point.
Like in an artwork, or a photo, a point can be put across easily, without a large amount of engineering. Though with text, a point can be shown, in a complex yet understanding way. Rather than just focusing on the aesthetics (which is the main point of an artwork), it focuses more on the imagery of the mind, not only the eye. A quote to back this thought up, would be from the Un Mundo Feliz website, is “Sometimes, there’s no time to create singular images... so using typefaces in the right way is enough. The idea is that a word is an image, a word is a world”.
I can’t say what this quote means exactly, because clearly I am not the one from which the quote came, but I can in fact give my interpretation of what it can mean and what I have learnt from my research.
Anyone know if this is what we were meant to do?
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