When is typography conceptual?

A conceptual artwork is not necessarily constituted
by exceptional practical skill, sublime execution or
whatever might otherwise regularly characterize
“fine art”. Instead, the effort is seated in the
preparatory process of thought – or as Sol Lewitt
once put it: “The idea becomes a machine that
makes art” (LeWitt 1967). The conceptual work of
art typically speaks primarily to the intellect and not
necessarily to an aesthetic/sensual experience.
But what about the notion of “conceptual
type”? Could this be, in a way that is analogous to
“conceptual art”, typefaces that do not necessarily
function by virtue of their aesthetic or functional
qualities but are interesting alone owing to the
foregoing idea-development process? Or is a
typeface which, in its essential idiom, conveys a
message or an idea, conceptually? In what follows, I
will try to examine these issues by invoking a series
of crucial moments in the history of typeface, from
antiquity up to the twenty-first century.