Catherine Dixon
Title
Stage 1 Leader BA Graphic Design
College
Central Saint Martins
Email address
Tags
Researcher Research

Biography
Catherine Dixon is a designer, writer and teacher. As a designer she works mostly with text-based projects, including typographic covers for the award-winning ‘Great Ideas’ series for Penguin Books. As a writer she has a particular interest in type design and letterform, and her doctoral thesis, ‘A description framework for typeforms; an applied study’, focused on the problems of describing typefaces and went on to inform the CSM ‘Typeform dialogues’ project.Catherine writes regularly on letterforms in environmental contexts, contributing to the website www.publiclettering.org.uk, and co-authored the book Signs: lettering in the environment with CSM Professor of Typography Phil Baines. She contributes to online design blogs and magazines including Eye, Random Spectacular, Matrix and Imprint on general typographic and education issues. She is a frequent speaker at international conferences, most recently presenting at TypoBerlin (2016), London Transport Museum (2016), Tipoteca Italiana (2015), and ATypI in São Paulo (2015), as well as organising design-related events, mostly in support of St Bride Library, London. Catherine has taught typography at Central Saint Martins since 1999, and in Spring 2011 took up a one-year post as a Visiting Professor at the University of São Paulo, Brazil. With Phil Baines she co-curates the Central Lettering Record, part of the college’s Museum & Contemporary Collections.
The pragmatic concern with typeface description, which informed my doctoral research, now underpins the transformation of the more conceptual outcomes of my PhD into practical tools for helping students, especially to make sense of the formal diversity of typefaces currently available. Using analytical frameworks developed within information design I am looking at the use of graphic representation in the communication of classificatory strategy. Here research and teaching interests fuse through an engagement with the consideration of those not only making, but using and being shaped by typeface classifications.
Following publication of our co-authored book, my work with Phil Baines continues towards a critical documentation of public lettering, addressing the paucity of qualitative tools to critically evaluate the contribution public lettering makes to our sense of place.
More recent research has explored letterpress and articulations around its value as a teaching and learning tool, as well as the value of an emergent letterpress vernacular. This has since broadened into a consideration of the value of typographic workmanship within contemporary graphic communication design contexts.
Research Outputs
Art/Design item
- Baines P, Dixon C. Pozza Palace (2009)
- Dixon C. Cover Designs for Penguin Books' 'Great Ideas' series. (2004)
- Dixon C. Typographic design for 'Technologies of Romance Part II' by Paul O’Kane.
Article
- Dixon C, Baines P. Back to the classroom: the Central Saint Martins Museum & Study Collection & Central Lettering Record (CLR) (2018)
- Dixon C. Strategy is never enough (2017)
- Dixon C. Classification legacies: past perspectives and their shaping of current practice views (2014)
- Dixon C. Printing a way to a better future: Stories from Xiloceasa, São Paulo (2012)
- Dixon C, Nardi H. Letterpress from the street: Gráfica Fidalga, São Paulo (2010)
- Dixon C. São Paulo: a lesson in letterpress (2009)
- Dixon C. Describing typeforms: a designer's response (2008)
- Dixon C. Technologies of Romance: On the choice of typeface for a book and the possibilities for technological Romance
Book
- Baines P, Dixon C. Signs: Lettering in the Environment (2003)
Book Section
- Dixon C. Systematizing the platypus, A perspective on type design classification (2018)
- Farias P, Hanns DK, Aragão I, Dixon C. Designing the early history of typography in Brazil (2018)
- Dixon C, Baines P. 100 Years of Johnston (2017)
- Farias P, Hanns DK, Dixon C. Spatializing design history: Considerations on the use of maps for studies on print culture (2016)
- Dixon C. ‘A moment in time...’ and ‘And to the Earth be peace...’ (2016)
- Dixon C. Classification legacies: past perspectives and their shaping of current practice views (2014)
- Dixon C, Baines P. ‘Changing perspectives’ (2014)
- Dixon C. Understanding the bigger picture: the graphic representation of overviews of typeform (2013)
- Dixon C. ‘To touch: beyond nostalgia’ (2013)
- Farias P, Gouveia A, Dixon C. ‘Epígrafes Arquitetônicas: pequenos detalhes de uma grande história’ [Architectonic epigraphs: small details from a bigger history] (2013)
- Dixon C. Classification legacies: past perspectives and their shaping of current practice views (2012)
- Heathcote E, Croarke C, Baines P, Dixon C. Letters for London (2009)
- Dixon C. Showing Type (2004)
Conference, Symposium or Workshop item
- Dixon C. Revisiting the problem of the platypus: how to find a common language of form for type in an era of descriptive individualism (2019)
- Dixon C. Technologies of printing types and fonts of Romanticism (2018)
- Dixon C. The Making (2018)
- Dixon C. Lettering: some hidden stories of making (and why they matter) (2018)
- Dixon C. Using historic collections in current teaching (2018)
- Dixon C. Vernacular values: legacies of the typographic scholarship of Nicolete Gray (2018)
- Dixon C. On ‘thinking–through–making’ and the quietly remarkable value of ‘knowing what we’re doing’ in an age of disruption (2018)
- Dixon C. Letterpress and design: educational pioneers in the trade territories of typography (2018)
- Dixon C. D.I.Y design: negotiating a space between agency and redundancy (2018)
- Dixon C. Some letters and their hidden stories of making (& why it matters) (2018)
- Dixon C. Nicolete Gray, A story in letters (2016)
- Dixon C. ‘The platypus in the system: an approach to describing typefaces’ (2016)
- Dixon C. To hell with mediocrity – adventure beckons (2016)
- Baines P, Dixon C. Underground lettering before 1933 (2016)
- Dixon C. Mas tudo bem! In search of typographic optimism (2015)
- Baines P, Dixon C. Back to the classroom: the Central Saint Martins Museum & Study Collection and Central Lettering Record (CLR) (2015)
- Dixon C, Baines P. Underground lettering before Johnston (2015)
- Dixon C. Life. Death. Letterpress (2015)
- Dixon C. Typeform dialogues: archeologies of practice (2015)
- Dixon C. Public lettering: why it matters (2015)
- Dixon C. Hands-on: typography as social activism (2014)
- Dixon C. The future of text (2014)
- Dixon C. Something to say: letterpress and community (2013)
- Dixon C. Something to say: voices from XiloCEASA, São Paulo (2013)
- Dixon C. Fleeing the boxes: the systematic description of the fused languages of form in the context of typeface design (2013)
- Dixon C. Typeface classification (2002)
Other
- Dixon C. Letterpress: contemporary cultural resonances (2009)
Teaching
Current research students
- Isabella Ribeiro Aragão, Fundição de tipos no Brasil: estudos comparativos entre a Funtimod e a fundadoras européias [PhD sandwich student from University of Saõ Paulo, Brazil]. (Lead supervisor)
- Julie Chauffier, "Expressivity of letter shapes On the correlation between fonts and subjective perceptions." (Lead supervisor)
- Robert Green, The influence of the Doves Press and its Roman on type design & typography, 1899 to 1939. (Lead supervisor)
- Mike Harkins, Contemporary processes of text typeface design. (Lead supervisor)
- Julie Janet, Expressivity of letter shapes On the correlation between fonts and subjective perceptions (Lead supervisor)
- Annegrete Mølhave, The information design of ecological cycle network diagrams in science textbooks. (Lead supervisor)