The rhetoric of neutrality. Again. Revisiting Kinross in an era of typographic homogenisation globalisation.

Themed section on Visual rhetoric and rhetorics of the visual

Abstract

Over the past forty years, studies concerning visual rhetoric have become increasingly prevalent, seeping into multiple areas of research, from visual studies to architecture and design. Robin Kinross’s The rhetoric of neutrality is arguably one of the most influential pieces on visual rhetoric in design. The article was published in 1985, alongside Richard Buchanan’s Declaration by design: Rhetoric, and demonstration in design practice and marks an important moment in design and particularly typographic design. The article mirrors sentiments from postmodern typographic design, where stiff modernist grids, formulaic layouts and neutral letterforms were fervently outcast.

Central to this paper is Kinross’s rejection that any visual medium can be described as neutral. From the mid-2010s, there seems to have been a renewed interest in “neutral” typographic application. In pursuit of “accessibility”, designers and design agencies working in the spheres of branding, motion, advertising and user-experience steadily strip letterforms of their distinctive characteristics; purging them of cultural symbolism to satisfy a kind of “global palate”. In this paper, I revisit Kinross’s treatise on neutrality and explore possible reasons for a renewed interest within “neutral” letterforms within a global context.