Plain Text is the experimental typography publication for seasoned designers and curious beginners

""We defend a poetic vision of type design," says Lucas Descroix, founder of Plain Form, the boundary-pushing type foundry behind Plain Text, type design publication full of contributions from recognised practitioners as well as curious beginners. "We aim for Plain Text to be a space where letters are free from utilitarian expectations." As an independent magazine without a distributor, they aim to make an inclusive space for designers to share doubts, successes and failures through bizarre typographies and alternative shapeforms."

""Often, the market encourages self-censorship, inventive projects get clipped because they might confuse potential customers," says Lucas. Through collecting and studying type faces that are non-traditional, Plain Text opens up new avenues for stories to be told through design. Featuring essays, interviews, portfolios, re-publications, fiction and visual works, Plain Text doesn't just attempt to please experts in their field but students too, by offering valuable insights to language and communication."

"Plain Text's first issue features calligraphic cursives and bold fonts blown to bits with distortive elements, turning otherwise ordinary typeface into barrages of spikes and assaults of waveform. Quite literally, the typographic norms that have laid the bed for typeface design is decimated and glued back together. "Typography works because of norms-but those norms are neither natural nor fixed," says Lucas."

Plain Text is an independent type design magazine and platform that defends a poetic, non-utilitarian vision of letterforms. The magazine creates an inclusive space for designers to share doubts, successes, and failures through experimental, bizarre typographies and alternative shapeforms. Market pressures often encourage self-censorship, causing inventive projects to be clipped for commercial clarity. Plain Text collects and studies non-traditional typefaces to open new storytelling avenues through design. The first issue features calligraphic cursives and bold fonts distorted into spikes and waveforms, challenging and recombining established typographic norms to explore new relationships between form and meaning.

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