You have created a piece of distressed lettering, an enduring and deathless visual trope. It is a manifestation of distressing—the general term for the effect created by the recipe—a broader phenomenon, straddling fashion, furniture and more. Its deep design deserves a look not just because of its ubiquity and vigour, but because design reflects culture—and life.

In the grammar of design, distressing is technique, style and a source of meaning all at once.  But like many approaches to lettering, (stencil letters and brush drawn ones) it amplifies the value of words without having a fixed meaning of its own. It demands, and gets, attention again and again; we seem to not tire of it.    

In the grammar of design, distressing is technique, style and a source of meaning all at once.  But like many approaches to lettering, (stencil letters and brush drawn ones) it amplifies the value of words without having a fixed meaning of its own.

In the materialist view, distressing’s power originates in its purely optical properties. Cultural associations necessarily lie downstream. Distressing belongs to a category of visual artefacts that we have labelled biomotive: we are hardwired to react. We helplessly perceive rounded shapes as soft, and pointy cusps as sharp. We ‘feel’ them as sensations, rather than read them like words or pictures. As with colour, odour or sound, the process of interpretation follows later. 

Over time, interpretations crystallise into tropes or conventions, stored in the well of culture. Subsequent observers learn them, so that distressed means “grungy” in this context and “suffering” in another. But the durability of the sign’s signifying power across eras and continents is underwritten by what we have termed as its physique.

But culture is more than a passive reservoir of memory. Culture sustains the distressed surface like a sugar solution sustains bacteria in a dish (as in a type of blood test known as a culture). It is the theatre of action, and a patron, recruiting distressing for a wealth of roles. 

Given its broad sweep across space, time and material, distressing might deserve a larger title than technique or style. Yet the term movement seems an overreach. Movements seem to need champions, and to be theorised as resisting or proposing a great cultural, political or economic shift. But being versatile and promiscuous, distressing has been pressed—or rubbed— into service for several causes, more like a mercenary soldier than a serving nationalist.

Distressed surfaces, whether in buildings, jeans or lettering can be read as opposing a sterile modernist aesthetic and a fatigue with its neutrality and avoidance of surface ornament. Distressing allows a way of perturbing the continuity of the surface without resorting to ornament. 

By eroding the exterior of things, distressing can reveal structure. Wood is made of grains, and fabric of fibres. Paradoxically, this is an agenda of modernism, like exposed brick or buildings with exposed services, also cliches in the interior design of casual dining restaurants. 

But each of these practices are not mere visual strategies with aesthetic agendas, reacting to an excess of one attribute with another, or ways to relieve the fatigue of plainness. Brickwork and exposed ducts also signal a modest, non-monumental stance towards architecture’s relation with the citizen. 

Several themes explore the same emotional or ideological spaces as the distressed surface. Grunge fashion is one, and grunge typography too. The mega phenomenon of denim is another which is a century old. The tradition of lovingly faded, worn jeans one wore as a teenager has been recast in industrial form, precisely damaged and built to last. Gritty industrial interiors are yet another.  

Underlying these visual trends is the idea-canvas on which they appear. They are global moods or themes that are an amalgam of political and economic shifts, with their attendant social and cultural anxieties. They provoke and support the visible movements. 

Distressing is supported by the idea of underplaying one’s wealth, underlining a lower social status, or stating one’s protest against the economic order. It can be an act of ironic identification. It can be read as an attack on cool, studied rationality. It’s also a cry, a shout of emotional insistence with a suggestion of pain: notice me, and feel what I feel. It’s a neurotic gesture that’s positioned as a survival mechanism. 

Distressing is supported by the idea of underplaying one’s wealth, underlining a lower social status, or stating one’s protest against the economic order. It can be an act of ironic identification. 

The gestures of an underclass are often tamed and co-opted by an overclass. Inside a tony restaurant, we can sit aside a chic distressed wall with plaster scraped off the brickwork, and signal not an identification with poverty but its opposite. Rebels and rulers are both welcome. 

Inside a tony restaurant, we can sit aside a chic distressed wall with plaster scraped off the brickwork, and signal not an identification with poverty but its opposite. Rebels and rulers are both welcome. 

Alongside the co-opting of underclass gestures by the rich sits guilt, best characterised by growth of  anti-corporate sentiment around the world. Guilt can be worn to signal virtue, creating a sort of market for ethical positions. When a flagrantly rich white woman wears a badge that reads “White privilege is real” you know that society’s genius and madness have collided and merged. 

Ironically, the western tradition of the distressed surface has its roots in England’s stately homes of  the 9th century, in ‘antiquing’, a treatment of furniture to create an artificial image of age. Once considered cosy, elegant and feminine,  It has jumped out of its container and cloned itself multiply: gone viral in the truest sense. Given the social and upheavals that are in play around the world, distressed surfaces and their ilke seem set for a very long stay.

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In the logo and fashion design commentariat, much press has been devoted to the recent and clear trend of established, iconic fashion companies rebranding themselves with plain, sans-serif lettering, moving away from the classic forms of Roman, serif letters. A defection to an enemy country!

At first glance this hardly matters to our lives, and can be dismissed as designerly passion. But it may tell us something about how we relate to visual branding, among the most defining features of the landscape of modernity—just look around you. The Deep Design of the issue requires us to interpret and appreciate the hype, consider some explanations, and calm some fevers. And stir a sprig of speculation in to the pot.

The littlest of these little things is the serif—those little feet at the ends of letters in some typefaces of Latin alphabets like English. Even the smallest serif effectively alters the appearance of the letter. These typefaces, also called serifs, have dominated printed communication for 400 years. You are reading one such typeface (on the paper, not on the website).

the serif—those little feet at the ends of letters in some typefaces of Latin alphabets like English

Typefaces without these serifs, or ‘sans-serifs’, or just ‘sans, tend to dominate screens. I wrote this on a computer, viewing my words in Arial, a typeface typophilic snobocrats love to hate. They first appeared in the 1700s, but only really found their stride in the 20th century.

Apart from the serif itself, serif typefaces are also distinguished by an obvious thick-to-thin variation in their strokes, known by the trade term ‘contrast’. Sans-serifs have very little contrast, as if the letter were drawn with a single line, giving it the name ‘lineal’ in the trade.

With this primer, let’s look at these examples.

These great fashion brands originated in the Old World of Europe. They were led by individual creators who lent it their vision and name, which bore connections to aristocracy. Those identities, and the lettering they wore, came from a high-ceilinged world of pedigree, tradition and antiquity, the kind of place where a butler announced your presence upon placing, on his salver, a calling-card (the ancestor of the business card ritual).

These great fashion brands originated in the Old World of Europe. They were led by individual creators who lent it their vision and name, which bore connections to aristocracy. 

That’s why the arrival of Calvin Klein on the scene marked a distinctly American, or New World gatecrashing. In 1979, its logo represented a distinctly New York flavour, with its geometric sans serif typeface breaking away from the modern fashion lettering code, influenced by Harper’s Bazaar and Vogue mastheads. So perhaps these new logos also acknowledge the end of an European reign and bow to a new internationalism.

The new brands also convey the end of a lineage: As Jean-Noel Kapferer puts it, a true brand is born when its creator dies. A new label also satisfies the obsessive need to be in the conversation, to signal the arrival of a new creative boss, and a break from the past. In this sense, the new sans-serif lettering washes away the brand’s past, leaving a clean canvas for its future. Neutrality is in play, to open new doors to the mind.

It wasn’t a sudden realisation of age that drove the change, a quality many modern brands wear proudly. For one, not all the lettering has aged. Burberry’s could be quite serviceable today. Balenciaga’s was already a sans-serif, but morphed into a serif typeface that’s unexceptional to the point of anonymity. YSL retired its quirky lettering, already a sort of modern design classic, for another bog-standard sans in a black square: more Silicon Valley startup than to Parisian couture.

A functionalist explanation is their superior rendering in digital media. But their suitability for lower (though rapidly increasing) resolution screens makes more sense when one considers how the modern fashion brand makes money.

For these brands, the large volume sales of ready to wear, T shirts, shoes, and accessories offsets the low-volume and high cost business of couture, ramp shows and new collections: design, R&D and publicity cost a lot. Lineal lettering reproduces well on canvas, plastic, and leather things, where the logo’s presence earns a clear premium (20%, according to one brand)

A neutral brandmark allows for greater range: the old Balmain logo may not sit well on a T-shirt. The neutrality of these letterforms, stripped away of their distinguishing detail, is an advantage.

Further, these spin-offs are less crucial to the brand’s expression, and accordingly can bend more to popular trends and wearability. A neutral brandmark allows for greater range: the old Balmain logo may not sit well on a T-shirt. The neutrality of these letterforms, stripped away of their distinguishing detail, is an advantage.

Indeed this neutrality is also at the root of the philosophy that underlies modernism in design. This is the notion of modern design as a container rather than a design in itself, able to host any stylistic variation.

More generally, the modernism that these logos wear may also be part of a democratising process for brands. With the internet ensuring the death of authority as a marketing position, more brands attempt to invoke the regular-guy archetype and don’t talk down to us. Brands need to engage with contemporary ethical issues in the way shown by Benetton (yes, in a sans). In like vein, the distaste for overblown consumerism has moved from the trendy sidelines to a more mainstream thing.

These new logos also signal the declining importance of a single, unitary mark to brands that rely so much on controlling the spaces where they sell. Products must make a mark on their own, and the logo adorns it, rather than carry the burden of encapsulating all the brand’s meaning. Homogeneity is a risk. Finally, decoupling the logo from the brand’s heritage also disengages it from continuity, and more rapid reinvention will be the order of the day. Not such a little thing.

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First published in a slightly modified form ‘Little Typefaces Matter Much’ in Business Standard, 18 February in Deep Design, a fortnightly column by Itu Chaudhuri.

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You see it everywhere, absolutely everywhere: rough-and-ready brush lettering or something like it. It’s proudly imperfect and knowingly naive.

Brush lettering has long existed as a contrast to the mechanical perfection of type, of manufactured letters. But these new roughly wrought creations are distinct from the skilfully writtten, neo-calligraphic styles that commercial sign makers introduced us to.

The durability of this phenomenon is somewhere between that of a major historical shift like Modernism and a trending hashtag, A movement? Not in the sense that future histories of design will recognise. Major arts movements were new ideas, championed by charismatic leaders, underpinned by a philosophy that responded to political, technological or economic shifts that were the air.

Modern movements are media-fed, and so faster to peak, ebb, die and be reborn after a time. They start life as styles, arising from anonymous mavens in urban sub-cultures, who may achieve glamour and fame once in a while, like Banksy who now justifies that name in a rather different way. For a phenomenon to survive, is not enough being visually new. Nor will its intellectual underpinnings suffice—such as protest, or the acknowledgement of new technologies. It must have universality, and claim that it can be applied to any situation, medium and art. Modernism is one such style, movement and phenomenon.

To explain why the shaggy lettering phenomenon thrives, we need to understand the emotional realm it occupies. Like great stories, ideas that satisfy emotions can be infinitely repeated without losing appeal.

To explain why the shaggy lettering phenomenon thrives, we need to understand the emotional realm it occupies.

Shaggy lettering’s thriving, as a look into its deep design might lead us to speculate, is because It encodes an ethos. It is associated with the expression of certain categories of ideas that are in the air; you might call it a global mood. It cannot be called a pure style, for it cannot be blindly applied like paint without an eye to the message it is helping to propel.

Expressing certain sentiments slakes a particular thirst. It satisfies an emotional requirement for a global community linked by shared notions, call it a mood. Here’s a speculation of what that mood is, and thus, what its deep design is built on.

Consider its deliberate imperfection; its texture and materiality (inky, splashy and brushy), which can be seen as a fact of life for the sender of the message, or carefully preserved to manipulate the emotions of the receiver. At an elementary level these attributes signal speed of execution and extreme economy of means—improvising to quickly make do with what is around.

Consider its deliberate imperfection; its texture and materiality (inky, splashy and brushy), which can be seen as a fact of life for the sender of the message, or carefully preserved to manipulate the emotions of the receiver.

This economy also signals vulnerability, and instantly destroys distance; it appeals to our instinct to defend the weak. In the new democracy, be an old school authority at your own peril. Status has lost its status, these brushed glyphs seem to say. Better to ask, what do you think?

Economy, vulnerability and immediacy are properties are most true of, and thus most valuable to groups such as makers of organic or local foods, who use this economy of means to signal authenticity (why else deliberately signal roughness?) and difference from the establishment. When there’s a good vulnerability going, can brands be far behind?

Protest is another; we only need to see these awkward letters to know that what they say is urgent and deeply felt.

I believe local tradesmen and protest banners were the progenitors of this lettering, refreshed by graffiti, and the thick marker. It is an irony that in many countries protestors now carry mass made, laser-printed banners. What a betrayal.

Such authenticity and immediacy are transferable outside these domains. Protest comes with a certain strength and a strong sense of personal agency: we can make a difference, but I can too. I need few resources to do so. Join a challenge, do something, try a hack: the fix is in, and it’s cheap and simple, in Steven Levitt’s words. Sincerity trumps nuance and careful consideration. Nuance is the sophistry of elites anyway; like complexity, a smokescreen erected by the Very Impotent Persons. Victory to the Visceral!

This personal agency is best supported on social media, where I can tap out easy outrage or make common cause with a band almost costlessly, where accusation is simple and refutation complex. Political correctness is now pop-correctness. I stand opposite experts or authorities, ready to tear them down if I have the social clout.

Not that social clout and expertise are necessarily mutually exclusive, but I’ll take the expert with the higher twitter engagement. I’ll go with this doctor’s views over another because his twitter feed is eagerly cheered and his skin looks great; ok, he has an MD too. Peer-viewed beats peer-reviewed. Whose peers? Mine!

Don’t think I’m right? Well, I’ll just pick up a really fat brush, dip it in a bucket of paint, and…then let’s see.

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First published in a slightly modified form ‘By My Own Hand’ in Business Standard, 4 August, in Deep Design, a fortnightly column by Itu Chaudhuri.

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