In his editorial, Paolo Belardi reflects on the role of typefaces and symbolic icons in contemporary visual culture. Beginning with Steve Jobs’s experience with calligraphy at Reed College and the revolution introduced by the Macintosh, the text explores how fonts and graphic interfaces have transformed the everyday relationship between design, image and communication.
The spread of the WYSIWYG principle – What You See Is What You Get – made tools once reserved for typographers, graphic designers, and editorial teams accessible to a much wider public, contributing to the democratisation of creativity. Yet the editorial also questions the visual quality of today’s graphic landscape, often distant from Italy’s great graphic tradition. “XY” therefore opens a reflection on the cultural value of typography, the relationship between technology and compositional sensitivity, and the role of typefaces in the construction of identity, between tradition, innovation, and design.
