Alphabet city: orthographic differentiation and branding in late capitalist cities

Abstract

This article examines the emergence and design of letter-based city logos in order to discuss what they reveal about writing and cities, and the dynamics between them. Developing a political economic and social semiotic analysis, I suggest that these letter-based logos respond to an increased competition for attention in society-strongly linked to new media technology and patterns of mobility in late capitalist economies. I further argue that they illustrate globalizing linguistic processes such as the truncation, commodification and adaptation of language to global audiences and technologies, and thereby contribute to mask the social and material reality of the branded cities. The article contributes to the broader examination of the ways in which cities and writing interact by drawing attention to the continued spread of abstract and standardized register forms for representing institutional power and distinction within globalized markets, and by discussing their local socioeconomic embedding.

Staging a tomatoscape

“…I myself have previously written about place branding: for example, in Thurlow ( 2021) I examined top-down and bottom-up orthographic tactics used for projecting a particular image of my home city, Bern. In a similar typographic landscape study, Järlehed (2021) considers how lettering can be used as another semiotic (or meta-semiotic) resource for city branding. Taking a somewhat broader, multimodal approach, Aiello & Thurlow (2006) have documented a range of visual tactics which cities use in bidding for the European Capital of Culture scheme.…”

The politics of typographic placemaking: the cases of TilburgsAns and Dubai Font

“…The promotional discourses of the fonts play with the idea of cultural (and other) distinctiveness, but these two fonts are rather part of a consistent capitalist discourse and practice of place branding that has spread globally. Like city logos, they are building blocks of a globalized and standardized semiotic register for making symbolic and economic profit out of ‘place’ (Järlehed, 2021). As we have shown with our analysis of graphic ideology, this globalized discourse of placemaking and branding necessarily contains a tension in the sense that it builds its authority and efficiency on an elaborate balancing of particularistic and universalistic claims.…”

Bologna "città à la carte": prassi e teoria di un place branding (de)generativo nella "quarta fase del capitalismo"

“…Qui nessun limite si pone all'azione di un logo che si genera sulla base di percezioni potenzialmente illimitate, imprevedibili e accumulabili -è dunque di natura intensiva il territorio emotivo/esperienziale che una simile 'psicogeografia' dispiega ed estrae. Sul piano ideologico, invece, la versione è quella di una scrittura presentata come collettiva e individuale, aperta e generativa del processo di branding -eterodiretto però dalla scala privatissima degli investimenti e dall'ovvio implicito che si tratta di strategica competizione globale che per lo più si gioca sui digital/social media e secondo i modelli del capitalismo informazionale (Järlehed, 2021). Si deve poi rilevare come il rapporto tra scrittura del logo e città passi, come di consueto, attraverso il richiamo all'autenticità e a un'idea di località riattualizzata mediante caratteri semplificati, de-materializzati e stilizzati.…”