A dodgy typeface can ruin a holiday. Sneaky grammar can dodge a commitment. A roast dinner can divide a room.
On a sunny September evening at Bristol Beacon, Union brought writers, designers and curious minds together to explore the power of language in a fractured world. From typographic crimes to cults, the conversation explored how words shape trust, identity and belonging, and how they can bring us together.
Opening the evening, Kendra put that challenge to the room: as people who work with language and design, we have a part to play. How can we use what we make to help people feel seen and not sold to?
First up was Elliot Jay Stocks, designer, musician and type enthusiast, who quickly established that everyone in the room with a smartphone was a typesetter. Every day, we make decisions about how words appear, even if we don’t give them much thought. Turns out, Elliot gives them quite a lot. Taking us through the details of spacing, sizing and emphasis, he showed how one small change can affect everything around it. Funny and unapologetically type-obsessed, Elliot made a persuasive case for caring about the details. Because while type exists to be read, our job is to clear the path so it can be read in the best way possible. He closed by reminding the room that ‘type matters, because words matter”.
Next up was Sabrina Shim from Reed Words, whose career picking words for a living has taken her around the world, including a spell in Bristol. This time she returned to our creative community wearing a leg cast following an ambitious move on the dance floor. Broken legs aside, she took us through the ways language can communicate, evade, divide and unite. She showed examples of passive sentences that obscure responsibility, political language that distances us from the reality it describes and overused brand favourites like “authentic”, “artisanal” and “sustainable”, which have been used so often they’ve lost all meaning. Sabrina also explored who gets to understand and participate in language. She spoke about jargon’s ability to put power in the hands of those who know the vocabulary, leaving everyone else outside the conversation. Her final reminder was to choose your words carefully and own what you say.
Rounding off the evening was Sam Howard and Tom Hoare from Koto London. They kicked off by testing the room’s unity with Trevor McDonald, roast dinners and that famously divisive, internet-breaking dress. The reminder? Finding common ground isn’t always as easy as we think. They explored our need for shared ideas and symbols, and how brands give people something to gather around. But they also warned about the pursuit of unity and its pitfalls. Consistency can slide into sameness. Trying to appeal to everyone can leave us with a world of beige. And the brief excursion into cults made the dangers of ‘groupthink’ especially clear. Through Instagram and a humorously redacted city branding project, Sam and Tom showed why difference matters. They reminded us that great work needs debate, friction and perspectives that challenge our own.
We finished the evening with a busy Q&A. We explored breaking into the industry, getting words and visuals working together and figuring out what AI means for the work we do. We left with plenty to think about, from paying attention to the details, taking responsibility for our words or making room for different points of view. And, through another brilliant event we were reminded that comm(unity) has never been more important.
A huge thank you to Elliot, Sabrina, Sam and Tom, to our brilliant volunteers, to our partners (Bristol Beacon, WithPrint, Milsted Langdon and Artist Residence), Pizzucci for feeding us and to everyone who came along.
Keep your eyes peeled for our next event.