Thoughts on "This is Auto-tune typography

August 14, 2020

This is auto-tune typography

3 minute read

A few uppercase words, centred or ranged at the top-left corner of a page, set in the regular weight of any grotesque font. More often than not, it's black type on white, or the reverse, but colours may appear. Be it an international design exhibition, a show for the Venice Biennale, a new artist-run space or the output of a design school, in recent years our western “art-design” bubble is flooded with similar solutions. While I was vainly waiting for this trend to slowly fade out, like any other tag on Trend List (which doesn't list this one), I realised I needed a name to define it and to explain the annoyance I felt about it.

Over time I recognised a similar annoyance when randomly listening to music on the radio, and realised there is an audio equivalent to this typographic sameness: it's Auto-Tune. Auto-Tune was originally developed as a tool to automatically correct vocal tracks in order to make them sound perfectly in tune, by removing accidental deviations from the melody; as we all know by now, it has turned into the standard voice treatment for a great amount of contemporary pop music productions, and is widespread to the point of being almost impossible to avoid.

This is auto-

Silvia Sfligiotti

tune

typography

tune

Silvia Sfligiotti

This is auto-

In 1995, on Emigre#34, Mr Keedy wrote a piece titled Zombie Modernism. It Lives!, claiming that “modernism is no longer a style, it's an ideology, and that ideology is conservatism.” What I'm observing in recent years is not a new personification of that conservative take on modernism: this one is apparently devoid of any ideology, and goes even further in renouncing to visually and typographically articulate a thought.

To articulate refers to the ability to express a thought while preserving its nuances and complexity. The verb is also etymologically connected to our articulations, the joints in our body which allow us to move with elasticity and to adapt our range of action to the needs of each situation. If this sensation relates to your experience, imagine then your knees and elbows are blocked: the range of your movements is reduced, the ease of action disappears, your possibility to react is limited. This all-caps, no-contrast typography has a similar limiting effect on communication: it moves inflexibly in the world, it evens its contents out and ends up only communicating itself. But what does it exactly stand for?

My thoughts on

This is auto-tune typography

Like many trends come and go, so did practices in graphic design. However, with the on-set of the internet and the advances in technology, people have come to rely heavily on the digital world for both creating as well as exchanging design. Sharing designs can lead to imitation of a particular style several times which can make the design style trending, that is eventually followed by many designers. The author points out how the majority of designs use a caps lock headline on the left.

A big trend in contemporary design practice throughout the world is template based designs. If one needs a website, they can go onto a platform like Squarespace or Wix and get a website live in a matter of minutes. These platforms help amateur designers or even lay-men create designs that can customized in a limited manner (unless one knows coding), but since they do the job extremely fast and are way cheaper (when compared to a designer who would work on the same project for weeks), these are the popular choice for the majority.

A first-hand side effect of this for me was needing template websites in the first place. Alongside this, time, money and quality are all factors that need to be considered when working for a client. If one is working under another designer or a company, they could also push you to finish the job and so one mostly ends up using templates. If one gets lucky, they could work for a designer who will push them to create from scratch. But many-a-times, I have experienced that design is so subjective that I had to work to please the senior designer on the team. And many-a-times, the timelines could be so tight that there is no time to build something from scratch. At such times, I preferred using “auto-tune typography”.

However, the author states another side to using auto-tune typography, which is a lack of intervention with each design. I do agree that with the onset of “auto-tune typography”, a designer's range is limited and so is the possibility to react to the piece. It becomes a lot less about the project and it's content and a lot more about using the new trend or a norm. This can be unjust for the project, since using something completely pre-made defeats the point of us being designers and solving problems.

Looking to the future, just like the author, I also don't think one can or should try to be devoid of any kind of auto-tune. It is essential to one's professional practice just like how some distinction in what a designer creates is also essential. There is always another solution. If not in terms of visual design, it could be in terms of content or vice-versa. Designers need to adapt to new technology while finding their style. Otherwise, one cannot sustain living in the real world. In my journey today, I think being experimental while meeting the needs of the project is an important factor that helps me navigate my design priorities. Sometimes I use a template while other times I go with a developer to make a completely custom website but no matter what the process, knowing why I am doing something and taking responsibility for my design is crucial. Like the author also explains, “When using and re-using graphic formulae, we could at least try to be aware of their origin and meaning (if any), and of the reasons why we're using them.”