Ellen Lupton & Abbott Miller are design professors at Maryland Institute College of Art (the school I went to). Abbot is also a partner at Pentagram. At DesignWritingResearch.org you can find some pretty amazing advice, teaching resources, and essays.

Typography is the Interface of Writing is a really interesting essay about typography, language, deconstructivism… I especially like the idea that ” as an intellectual technology, alphabetic writing can be compared to photography: it is an automatic record of the surface of language.” It is interesting to consider that typography is the something more than just the aesthetic representation of text. That its existence gives text a life beyond transcription or copy. Speech /Writing > Natual/Artificial > Original/Copy > Intuitive/Learned > Mind/Body. Instead of one being in opposition they are integral to eachother.

If “style” is a grammar of form-making associated with a particular historical and cultural situation, then perhaps “attitude” is the unarticulated, just out-of-focus background for the specificities of style.