From a statement by Nick Bell, a graphic designer and teacher at the London College of Printing, in Emigre No. 22. Bell is the designer of a typeface called "Psycho," which is "printed" by stabbing and slashing paper with knives and forks.

Illegibility is redefining typography. As Michelle-Anne Dauppe, the English design historian, has written, "Challenging Functionalism in typography has led to experimentation with the message rather than the words; with type as image, with recognition rather than reading."

As these preoccupations redefine typography, they also inevitably redefine what we call a typeface. If legibility is no longer seen as the primary characteristic of a typeface, then why restrict yourself to the use of letter forms? If the boundaries of legibility are so out of focus, then a typeface can be said to have a vocabulary of marks of any sort, made with any medium on any surface, even in the absence of the formal structure that an alphabet provides. "Psycho" illustrates that a typeface can be seen as a vocabulary of stab marks, fork indentations, and slicing, tearing, slashing, and gouging scars.

There is a definite parallel between musical and typographic composition: if for John Cage the sound of a passing car was music, then a car engine was a musical instrument. Likewise, if the definition of typography can encompass abstract marks that no longer need to be legible (in the scientific sense) but merely recognizable, then the instrument of these marks need not be a letter form. For example, if the typographic composition is made up of an "alphabet" of stabs and cuts, the instrument of these marks can be knives and forks, from a "font" called "cutlery drawer."

Nearly forty years after Cage's ideas radically changed music, typography is going through a similarly dramatic change. As experimentation continues, typography will become more and more detached from its oppressively traditional textual, literary base.

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