The Decline of the Ligature in Typography, Leads to Its Rise in Art

The ligature in the world of typography refers to two letters that by the way they lie together on the page, can be crafted into a single letter (the most common ligatures often involve the letter ‘f,’ such as fi, and ff).

When metal movable type was invented in the 1400s, ligatures were extremely popular in typography. They saved the printer a tremendous amount of time. Rather than having to set an individual ‘f’ and ‘i,’ the printer could just use the single ligature block ‘fi.’ See the image below.

These days, with the advent of digital printing technology and ubiquitous desktop publishing, ligatures have gone the way of the 8-track tape.

However, there are a number of modern artists who use ligatures to create unusual prints and art works. One of the best known in this art is David Schwen. Schwen has recently created some unusual artworks with simple ligatures. See below.

Schwen uses a paper clip to connect the ‘Th’ ligature in a rather innovative way.

 

It is pretty interesting here how he uses a piece of gum to create a very odd ligature.

 

Here, Schwen appears to use tape or a band-aid to bring more focus to the ligature of the ‘fj’ combination.

 

Here it looks as if the artist is trying to make the connection between the typographical and medical meanings of ‘ligature.’ In medicine, ligature refers to the use of a thread to tie off something to prevent bleeding, such as a vein.

 

I’d say Schwen is definitely connecting the dual meanings of ligature here, using a piece of thread to tie the ‘fl’ into one.

The use of thumb tacks, complete with shadow effects, makes this ligature work really well. I’ll never look at an ‘ff’ combination in quite the same light again!

Related articles

• Collecting Rare Books for Beginners (bestforbeginners.com)
• T4G: Type and Fonts (seagenes.wordpress.com)
• Chartwell (typographica.org)

Tags: desktop publishing digital printing technology ligature ligatures modern artists movable type schwen typography