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.

At Plain Form, we have a passion for bizarre typographic ideas. We love, collect and study typefaces that are non-standard, in their form as well as in the stories that they tell. For us, these experimental practices have the potential to redefine the way we think and work in the field of type design.

By publishing Plain Text twice a year, we aim to reflect what the world of writing systems is, or could be, all about: a dynamic, ever-changing and constantly redefining research.

Plain Text is an independent magazine, edited, designed and published by Lucas Descroix and Benjamin Dumond. By relying on direct online sales and deposits in a few specialized bookshops, without going through a distributor, we can offer an affordable price, especially for a student audience. If you buy the magazine, make a donation or tell others about it, you're directly supporting the project! Don't miss any release or type-related news by following us on social media and subscribing to our newsletter.