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His typeface Hard Times (1991) revises and reassembles the elements of a modern classic--Times Roman. Manusans (1990) quotes elementary school penmanship. Although several of Keedy's own typefaces are based on historical sources, his fonts are ironic commentaries, not scholarly revivals. Keedy has argued that designers should search for the future rather than excavate the past. In his model of an ever-improving design language, new typefaces are fuel for engines of perpetual progress.
Pronouncing that "You can't do new typography with old typefaces," Keedy has countered the modernist principle that graphic design is an art of manipulating an exisiting lexicon of visual material. El Lissitzky, John Heartfield, and other avant-gardists of the 1920s used cameras, scissors, glue, and the ready-made equipment of the commercial print shop to record and reorganize cultural signs. For the Constructivist photomonteur, "newness" resulted from surprising uses of the everyday, defamiliarized through technological means.
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Keedy Sans |