04. What else can letters do?

Introduction

In the interest of moving toward the final and thinking about how we can also re-think the ephemera for class, I want to show some work in order to reframe how we think about type and showing it off. While you will be asked to create a specimen book that literally shows your type off, you will also be asked to create ephemera related, in some way to the concept of your work.

The point of this is not to make you copy this work, but to begin to think about other ways that type can function and be displayed that are not 11in x 17in posters, and to think of those as helping ground and explain the work.

That being said, if any of the below pieces relate to a technical thing you are not sure how to achieve (animation, arduino, MIDI, javaScript, etc.). If I cannot help you, I probably know who to ask.

Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries

I first encountered this work as flash animations, though they are preserved in video form on their website. While not a type design example, specifically, the interesting component of the work is the timing and elegance of using very limited typography, and really focusing on the timing of their work.

Digit by Julian Maire

This is again, not a type design example, but a performance that uses technology and writing in an arresting way. I also think about this piece all the time.

ZXX by Sang Mun

ZXX is a typeface meant to, at least meaningfully deter the effectiveness of OCR (Optical Character Recognition) technologies, as a way of reclaiming privacy or autonomy for messaging that is, at least visually, transmitted with it. Here's a pretty nice website that showcases it, which might be another avenue to think about. Here is Sang Mun's Specimen video where the features of the various versions are discussed.

"Pain" font by Anthony Warnick

This is something that, technically we have already looked at with contextual alternates, but uses it for a more conceptual end. This font converts what it interprets as words into the word pain You can see a video of it here.

Lexend by Bonnie Shaver-Troup, Thomas Jockin, Santiago Orozco, Héctor Gómez, Superunion

Lexend is a font designed for eductaional purposes with the intention of demonstrably increasing the efficacy of how it is read. You can read more about it on the website specifically for Lexend as well as download it on Google Fonts.

Segmentor by Mălin Neamțu

Segmentor is a family of variable typefaces meant to reflect various genres of music. It is also the system use the type in a performative context.

TDC has a write-up here with some other examples

"That S Thing" font by Tom Goulet

"That S Thing" is something that I think about with the same frequency and intensity as I've mentioned with the Nazca lines. It's origins are unclear, and various people have made typefaces based on it.

Chartwell by Vectro

This is more of a technical achievement, but through very specific sequences of characters you can create simple graphs. You can view the font on their website