Home / ATypI 2026 Stanford
Date Thursday, May 28th 2026
Venue Stanford University / Alumni Left

Designing from the Margins: What the Blank Screen Feels Like

Chisaokwu Joboson Chisaokwu Joboson

In today’s digital type landscape, the “blank screen” is rarely blank—it is preloaded with assumptions shaped by Western scripts, infrastructures, and economies of design. For many language communities, especially in Africa, entering this space feels like stepping into a room not built for them. This talk examines what it means to design typefaces from the margins of global type culture: the gaps in tools, representation, and accessibility; the silent erasure of indigenous scripts and expressive letterforms; and the daily workarounds designers must invent.

Drawing on lived experience as a type designer based in Nigeria and case studies from contemporary African type projects, this presentation questions the blank screen and seeks to reframe marginality not as absence, but as a generative space—where new design languages, collaborative practices, and technological interventions emerge. It asks: What could global typography become if we treated the margins as sites of possibility rather than exclusion?

Chisaokwu Joboson
Speaker

Chisaokwu Joboson

Chisaokwu Joboson is a brand and type designer based in Lagos, Nigeria. He is the founder of Ụdị Foundry, an independent type foundry focused on creating culturally resonant, expressive African typefaces for global use. With a background in engineering and over seven years of experience designing for brands across Africa and beyond, Joboson brings a deep understanding of how type, language, and identity intersect.

His type work centers on reclaiming and reimagining African visual narratives through type, often drawing inspiration from indigenous tools, sounds, forms, and systems. Fonts like Ojuju, Gidigbo, and Oja Display reflect this ethos: merging modern usability with cultural memory. Through these designs, he seeks not only to diversify the global type landscape but also to normalize African visual voices in contemporary communication.