31 David Casacuberta The Web as Utopia Digital signage Digital publishing Road signage Sensoriality Neuromarketing Cultural analytics Remediation Graphic design Critical design Interaction Visual impact Paper Internet Domus Information design Interaction design Multidisciplinarity Narrative artifact Intangible support Driver assistance systems Strategic vision Global positioning system Curricular revision Information visualisation Big data (In)visible design Innovation Creative process Visual catalogue Digital revolution Editorial design Perception Architecture journals Multiculturalism Typography Type design Multilingualism Multi-script Andreu Balius is a typographic designer who obtained his BA (Hons) from the University of Southampton. He runs his own studio in Barcelona where he set up the TypeRepublic digital type foundry. On several occasions he has received a Certiicate of Excellence in Type Design, and other distinctions include the ADOBE Power of Design Award. He lectures at Barcelona’s Universitat Pompeu Fabra and has been invited to take part in a range of design events, both in Spain and abroad. “Designing multi-script type families is the task type designers will face in the future” etc., an extremely rich and complex reality that eludes all globalising visions. We live halfway between a real and a represented world, a world based on a simpli ied approximation to reality. Our vision of the world depends to a great extent on the tools we have designed to measure, represent and govern it, and it is therefore a distort- ed vision, or at least a tailor-made vision. In recent centuries the Western vision of the world has subordinated other possible gazes and cul- tures. Yet the world can’t be summed up in a single vision. Ours isn’t a unitary culture—multicultural- ism is a fact that creates a melting pot of expressions in which languages play a key role, not only because they are a way of articulating thought but because they are a powerful tool forsocial cohesion and rela- tions within a given community. As stated by Di- rector General of UNESCO, Koïchiro Matsuura, in 2003 ‘[L]anguages constitute an irreducible expres- sion of human creativity in all its diversity. Tools of communication, perception and relection, they also shape the way we view the world and provide a link between past, present and future.’ 1 A Culturally Diverse Contemplation of the World One of the challenges faced by society today is mul- ticulturalism, particularly as it is expressed in writ- ten communication, i.e. multilingualism, by which we refer to the ability that societies, organisations, groups and individuals have to ordinarily use or come into contact with more than one language in their everyday lives. hrough graphic interfaces that are represented as an accessible space, our increasingly global world is smaller and more domestic. From a comfortable settee we can travel through satellite images ofered by applications such as Google Earth and visit the different countries that configure our diversified planet. The globalism that is visually explained through such programs doesn’t contemplate the so- cial and cultural reality present in the real world: the variety of languages, cultures, customs, faiths, The Value of Typography in a Global Multilingual World In her well known essay The Crystal Goblet, Beatrice Warde defended the need for printing to be invisible to ensure absolute transparency of text and comprehension of message. As a tool in the service of visual communication, however, typography transcends this utilitarian vision and furnishes the values and attributes that result in the personality or character of a brand, a product or service. 1 A. Ouane, ‘Towards a Multilingual Culture of Education’ [online]. Unesco Institute for Education. 2003. [Accessed: 15 June 2010]. Available at: http://www.unesco.org/ education/uie/pdf/uiestud41.pdf. Andreu Balius