Post-Colonial/Ethnography of type??

cldcvrgrl9 November 2007 · 17:27

Hello,
I am looking for Latin typefaces that incorporate appropriated forms initially found in ethnic/indigenous contexts (er, pardon that clumsy terminology?).
An example I was recently introduced to is the Churchward “Maori” face (thanks to David Bennewith at the Jan van Eyck Academie). Someone also mentioned a face based on Basque carvings.
Essentially I am looking to start a project that explores the ways type designers employ these sorts of forms (consciously or intuitively?) and what the implications of this could be in a larger context? Any literature on the subject or leads on specific faces or designers would be much appreciated.
Thanks v much

Reed Reibstein9 November 2007 · 23:04

Jeremy Tankard’s Arjowiggins Inuit is a good example of this. There are also a number of faux-Arabic, Hebrew, Chinese/Japanese, Sanskrit, etc. types that have been mentioned on Typophile. Try searching Typophile on Google (limit the search to just Typophile.com in Advanced Search) for these topics; they shouldn’t be too hard to find.

Aside from these typefaces that incorporate “appropriated forms,” there are a number of types that are sympathetic to non-Western scripts. A number of the typefaces coming out of the University of Reading start with the idea of mating a Roman type with another alphabet/script. See the newest ones here; see Skolar and Vesper of the new ones, and look at some past PDFs for other examples.

Finally, an interesting article that may be appl