Can a typeface be kind? For Steven Heller, who writes the foreword to Visual Voices for Change, the new volume by Typecampus published by The Printing Office, the answer is never obvious. From Adolf Loos’s j’accuse against ornament to the floral revival of digital fonts, the history of graphic design is marked by an unresolved tension between function and aesthetics, between rigour and visual pleasure.
March 9, 2026
Typography designed with kindness as its goal is not only interesting, but also a vexing proposition. Is not type design, at its core, always guided by human values? The very purpose of typography is to support and encourage literacy; and is not literacy a kindness in its own right? To be literate is to be freed from the darkness of ignorance. In fact, this is much more than kindness: it is a human right.
In the universe of letterforms, there are, however, some designs that fail to meet this responsibility. These can be considered unkind. Typefaces that are difficult to read and unpleasant to behold fall into this category. Yet it is hard to argue that type designers take on such demanding work with the intent of harming others.
There should be no victims of typography… and yet there are typefaces used to convey — and interpreted as — exclusion and cruelty. In the end, judgement is always a matter of context. Blackletter typefaces, for instance, embody a menacing air, while most script faces exude a celebratory sensibility.
I find that the kindest forms — ornamental typefaces — are pleasing to the eye: they bring a sense of play to a typographic message. But this is not always the case. Typographic kindness is in the eye of the beholder and depends not simply on the intent of the designer, but on the capacity of the receiver to navigate the meaning of what is typeset.
Ornament and Crime: is beauty a crime?
Although specifically referring to architecture and products, Austrian architect Adolf Loos mounted the barricades in 1908 with his essay “Ornament and Crime.” When he proclaimed that “the evolution of culture marches with the elimination of ornament from useful objects,” design was mired in ornamentalism. Eleven years after the advent of Art Nouveau, which began in 1896 and was popularly considered a welcome change from the status quo, forests of twisted vines and tendrils — what critics have called floriated madness — covered everything from posters and typography to furniture and buildings.
Was this kindness or cruelty? Loos’s preference for “smooth and precious surfaces” derived from his fervent belief that functional objects swathed in ornament were guaranteed almost instantaneous obsolescence. This concept is essentially unkind. Loos believed that superfluous design was not merely a waste of a designer’s time — it was downright mean. Obsolescence was a venal sin.
Loos’s critique, published in Europe when Art Nouveau was at its most eccentric, made a certain amount of sense. The time was right to throw off the shackles of egregious style and move forward to a purer stage of cultural evolution. Yet, no matter how excessive the ornamentation, labelling it sinful was unwarranted hyperbole. Not all decorative impulses are unkind.
Visual austerity can itself be seen as the denial of aesthetic pleasure. After all, who could argue that a Persian miniature, with its complex graphic layering, or the Book of Kells, with its interlocking patterns and serpentine filigree filling its pages, are not among the most beautiful — and in a sense, most functional — of graphic artefacts? How could Baroque and Rococo motifs in print or on edifices be condemned for crimes against the eye or society in general, despite what they have come to symbolise?
William Morris — artist, designer, printer, author, social critic, and founder of the late nineteenth-century Arts and Crafts movement — immersed himself in ornamentation as a high form of expression. The Kelmscott Chaucer, the pinnacle of his career as a designer, reintroduced the medieval or gothic approach, from its lavish ornamental borders to its decorative capitals and frames.
When first published, it was a joy to read. But the Kelmscott Chaucer did more than simply revive an antique style: it was the realisation of Morris’s belief that a combination of modern printing techniques and traditional arts and crafts could counteract the corrosive impact of industrialisation, which had contributed to a culture of social abuse. Ornament was not merely a veil to hide ugly industrial machines and wares; it was an antidote to the perceived poisons spewing from factory chimneys. Expediency had trumped kindness.
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From Bauhaus minimalism to the new ornamentation
Ornament is not ostensibly evil, nor does it signify the baser nature of man or woman. Like any graphic manner or style, symbolic or literal meanings derive from the reality of the thing or idea being represented. On the contrary, ornamental and even convoluted typographic expressions enrich the reading and viewing experience in kind ways.
The Bauhaus adamantly rejected unnecessary and excessive typeplay. The progressive German design school promoted and maintained an overriding ethic that can be construed as a form of kindness. Bauhauslers replaced unnecessary flourish with minimal functional ornament — black and red rules and bars — which, by any other name, was still decoration, albeit with a structural underpinning. Followers of the Bauhaus and adherents of Modernism, even today, have maintained the belief that minimalism enables the clearest communication. Yet there has always been a desire to inject graphic complexity into design languages.
Playful ornament has made a spectacular comeback since the late 1990s and is widespread today. Kindness in typography can be reduced to the concept of aesthetic delight. During the mid to late 1960s, for instance, responding to the dominance of the Swiss International School’s severe minimalism, eclectic designers — notably Push Pin Studios, Seymour Chwast, and Milton Glaser — reclaimed once-outmoded ornamental approaches..
Kind letters
With the advent of the computer in the late 1980s and early 1990s, graphic designers initially leaned toward austerity — which was precisely what the computer could provide. Yet that preference quickly evolved into more cluttered, anarchic, flaw-inspired typographic designs, such as those of David Carson and kindred graphic grunge-mongers. Carson brought joy through complexity, which was a form of kindness insofar as his work resonated with a generation seeking new forms of expression. Sometime in the early 2000s, well over a decade after the computer had become the primary design tool, Neo–Art Nouveau, serpentine, floral ornamentation returned with a vengeance.
No less significant was the fact that the traditional boundaries between design and illustration were once again blurring, as they had at the turn of the century with the Sachplakat (Object Poster). The introduction in the 1990s of font creation software enabled illustrators to become more engaged in letterform and type design. The grunge and DIY movements of the mid-1990s contributed to the growth of digital foundries offering scores of novelty faces made from countless non-traditional type materials. A new kind of floriated madness blossomed.
As a groundswell of typographic kindness took hold, the concept of kindness in advertising, editorial, and packaging design grew more common. Typography became the primary vehicle for ornamentation. Illustrated letterforms — not calligraphy in the classical sense, nor illumination in the biblical context — became the most appreciated as a gift from designer to receiver. Kindness is in short supply in the world in which we live. Graphic design is a small art form that plays a large role in people’s lives. Injecting kindness into visual communications is in itself a great act of kindness.
Steven Heller is the author, co-author, and editor of over 200 books on design and visual culture. He served as art director at the New York Times for 33 years and is co-founder of the MFA Designer as Author program at the School of Visual Arts in New York. He is the recipient of the Smithsonian National Design Award and the AIGA Medal for Lifetime Achievement.