Plain Text 1

a printed publication for exploratory type design
published by Plain Form

From fiction to theory, from mystical analyses to visual works, Plain Text aims at exploring typographic imaginaries, moving beyond a strictly historical and technical framework, with a taste for the unknown and the dormant potential of writing.

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. The first issue of Plain Text features voices from various backgrounds and generations, many offering a personal, even intimate or spiritual, approach to letters.

• Family Business
  Lucas Descroix (Plain Form) views type families through parables.
• Trust the Process
  A dive into Anne-Dauphine Borione (Daytona Mess)’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 (The Pyte Foundry) about (non-)sense.
• Emomania
  Ayasha Khan explores the border between text and images.
• Type as a Labyrinth
  What Benjamin Dumond (Grifi) means when he says “experimental”.
• Atlas
  Non-verbal links in a well-arranged array of images.
• Weavings
  Zuzana Licko (Emigre) 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 (Antike Magie) on letters and ancient magic.
• Express Exegesis
  Reading intentions and building bridges between typefaces.

• Bilingual publication (English / French)
• 210 × 297mm, 96 pages
• Inside: black offset printing on Munken Print White 80g
• Cover: black + Pantone offset printing on Munken Print White 115g
• Selling price: 14€
• Printed by Chirat (Lyon, Fr)

Plain Text is edited and designed by Lucas Descroix and Benjamin Dumond, and published by the type foundry Plain Form.