The future, as we used to envision it, was hard—copy free. In the Captain’s lounge of the Enterprise, books were displayed, like artifacts, in glass cases; Elroy Jetson carried around a clipboard—sized personal computer that told him what his homework was; and on the Forbidden Planet, knowledge was stored in endless racks of tapes. So much for the future as it used to be—right now, tomorrow looks to be as buried in books and paper as today.
Still, the Internet is doing its part to make our wood—pulp culture a memory. On the Web, there may be no paper, but words are everywhere, and type, cut loose from its old constraints, issues in an apparently endless stream of fonts and typefaces that turn alphabets into eye candy. This month, we’ll look at sites where textual substance meets typographical style.
Mark Van de Walle writes regularly for Artforum.