“Topography of Typography” / “Typographical Facts” by El Lissitzky, ISIA Urbino student project

In his two essays “Topography of Typography” (1921) and “Typographical Facts” (1925), Russian artist and designer El Lissitzky argues that the continuing advance of technology requires a radical rethinking of the way we approach printed material.

The Russian designer is also known for his epistolary exchanges with his colleagues, even sometimes extolling concepts in a peremptory tone.

In order to give continuity to his work therefore, the project brings back in an integral way the early typewriters’ way of writing, which can be summarized as a single x-height and a single weight, excluding any typeface alteration, such as italics and bold, in addition to the deprivation of images.

This series of rigorous choices leads to the need to replace the iconographic power of images (which in this case is replaced by the text itself) with ASCII art, which allows typography to be defined (through recursive action) through typography, increasing its expressiveness.

Made as student project at ISIA Urbino in the course Layout Techniques supervised by Jonathan Pierini and Silvia Sfligiotti.