Unlike the flowing, balletic movements of hand-rendered letterforms, there is nothing swift in typographic forms. Intentionally arranging typeforms is slow, staged, expensive, and always deliberate. Typeface-making invites reflection, discussion, and review. Typefaces will stretch the limits of their encoding technologies to maximise the potential to act as agents of design discourse, cultural commentary, innovation and experimentation. This observation applies across typemaking and typesetting technologies -- any variations we perceive are a factor of the number of people working on making typefaces, and the ease with which people can make one more typeface.
(This is a self-contained lecture, but part of a longer narrative; therefore the “Part 1” in the title here.)