What is queer typography? (2021)

20-page zine
Risograph printing
Saddle-stitched
5.5 in. x 8.5 in.
Editions of 100 and 50

What is queer typography? was a talk that I delivered at the Type Drives Communities Conference, hosted by the Type Directors Club. I researched and wrote the talk to look into illegibility, agitation, and failure in typography, with the title’s alluring question guiding an inquiry into larger practices of “unlearning” in art and design education. I later published the text in a zine that I designed and printed at Queer.Archive.Work, in Providence, RI. I distributed the edition through the mail during the COVID-19 pandemic, and made scans of the zine available online.

This piece of writing and the ideas explored here have become one of my most referenced works. The entire zine was translated into Korean and re-published by In-ah Shin. The essay was also re-published by GenderFail Press and also appears in Amalgam 4, edited by Pouya Ahmadi. I was also invited to deliver the talk to the Queer Design Club in June 2021 [watch it here].

An interview with me about the zine was published in PRINT Magazine in August 2021. Shown above is an installation of the entire zine (along with Tiny Digest #1) at Hard Copy Soft Touch—Experiences on Queer & Transfeminist Archives, an exhibition organized by Sprint Milano at Spazio Miocchi in Milan, Italy in November 2021. I reprinted the zine and distributed a new edition of 50 copies at Printed Matter’s Sunday Zine Fair at The Brooklyn Museum in November 2023.

Now, the project is evolving into a book that I am currently researching and writing; Queer Typographies will be published by Bikini Books in fall 2026.

Download a PDF scan of the zine [13MB] →

Read the essay (2024 version, Provoking Type) →