Events
Type and the Future: Visions of Utopia and Apocalypse
with Angela Riechers
Typography, as a basic component of visual culture, plays a vital role in helping us imagine what lies ahead.
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The future is an invisible reality—imagined, malleable, and fantastic. From the social idealism of the Bauhaus movement to mid-century consumer society, from the age of space exploration to today’s increasingly immersive and AI-influenced visual culture, typography and typeface design play a crucial role in creating new graphic languages that reflect the spirit of the times. This lecture adopts a historical perspective on how typography shapes and reflects our perception of what the future may look like.
Letterform Lectures are a public aspect of the Type West postgraduate program. The series is co-presented by the San Francisco Public Library, where events are free and open to all.
Angela Riechers
Angela Riechers, Education Director at Letterform Archive in San Francisco, is an award-winning writer, art director, and educator. Her first book, The Elements of Visual Grammar, was published in February 2024 by Princeton University Press. A native New Yorker, she served as Program Director of Graphic Design at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia from 2018–2024. She has taught at City College of New York, Fashion Institute of Technology, New York University, Queens College, and the School of Visual Arts, where she developed and launched a four-week summer intensive residency in type design as well as an online learning program, The Complete Typographer. Angela writes primarily about typography for numerous design-related publications including the AIGA blog Eye on Design, Wallpaper, Metropolis, Print, and Design Observer. As an editorial art director, she created concepts and page layouts for everything from Harper’s Magazine to iPad apps for O, the Oprah Magazine. Angela received her BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and her MFA from the School of Visual Art.
