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Abstract

Published in 1989, Emigre magazine’s eleventh issue, Ambition/Fear: Graphic Designers and the Macintosh Computer, contains vivid artifacts of a discipline’s first encounter with digital tools. From the aesthetics of bitmaps to the expressive interventions made possible by new access to typesetting controls, not to mention the self-publishing venture of the magazine itself, this issue combines modernist and postmodern agendas in a model construction of text-based community. Looking closely at Emigre #11 and more passingly at later issues, this article analyses the technical, critical, and cultural production that would shape Emigre as a medium for typographic demonstration and discussion among peers.

Keywords: Emigre, Macintosh, digital typography, design criticism, experimental publishing