Mastodawn

When designing multilingual systems, what becomes the default? Whose language serves as the sample? Whose history shapes the narrative?

“Erasure by Default” describes cases where one dominant example stands in for the whole.
The MyFonts post on Cyrillic is a clear example: a script used by over 50 languages is framed solely through a russian lens. A shared typographic ecology is reduced to an imperial norm, even though Cyrillic also lives in Ukrainian, Bulgarian, or many Central Asian languages (which were forced into it under russification policies).

Power operates through defaults, metadata, and taxonomy. It’s not merely exclusion but deciding who gets to represent the many.
#Typography #Cyrillic #DecolonizeDesign #ErasureByDefault #TypeDesign #DesignPolitics

Chema Hernández Gil May 15, 2025

A new site logo. An anti-Chinese pogrom. A deeply racist rag. A California sea lion returns as a symbol of reclamation.

https://sanfranciscan.org/2025/05/14/the-sea-lion-the-bridge-and-the-pogrom/

#SanFrancisco #History #AntiRacism #DesignPolitics #StarTrek

The Sea Lion, the Bridge, and the Pogrom

A California sea lion returns as a symbol of reclamation, reborn from an 1884 masthead that once called for ethnic cleansing in San Francisco.

Chema Hernández Gil, A San Franciscan

Gabriele Ferri Mar 18, 2020

During Covid-19, it's important that we don't stop being critical researchers. Have a look & contribute to this syllabus (still in-becoming) called "Flatten the curve, grow the care: What are we learning from Covid-19"
http://syllabus.pirate.care/topic/coronanotes/
#designresearch #designpolitics #socialcriticism

Flatten the curve, grow the care: What are we learning from Covid-19

A collective note-taking effort to learn from the urgency of care amidst the Coronavirus pandemic, focusing on issues of care, labour, ecology and technology.