Thirteenth International Conference on Design Principles & Practices

Abstract

This paper considers Ireland’s ongoing strange relationship with the printed word. Once at the forefront of the production of hand illustrated manuscripts that were so intricate to produce that a single page would take months to complete. A Gaelic typeface would have seemed the natural choice to represent a newly independent republic, but it was intended that in this modern republic to treasure the past but to draw on the future aesthetic that would sever this new modern republic as the Irish Theatre Revival had done in their sets, costumes, and playbills. Yeats later contributed to the formation of the new sense of national identity and would go on to Chair the Coinage Design Committee (1926-1928) and with it formalise Irelands National Visual Identity, again rejecting the Christian, Celtic in favour of a representation of modern rural Ireland again drawing on history but looking to the future.