Typeface as program : applied research and development in typography = Le caractère typographique comme programme : recherche appliquée et développement en typographie
The project began with a simple question: is there such thing as a computer program capable of taking over the routine tasks of letter design? This issue, both artistic and digital, led the professors and the students of the Masters in Art Direction of the ECAL to imagine exchanges back and forth between digital type specifications and the actual shape of letters. They went into more general questions about the groups of shapes that make up our letters--stems, curves, and serifs--asking themselves how they could possibly simplify and further amalgamate these groups of shapes that monopolize the energy of schoolchildren, illustrators, and type designers alike. In the workshop, besides using traditional tools, students were encouraged to create their own (programable) tools. Several programming scripts were developed and tested by the students, one of them, created by David Keshavjee and Julien Tavelli resulted in a text typeface that is featured in this book and displays the characteristics of the tool that generated it. The books presents some basic idea of automated type design, breaking down the design of letters to series of parameters. Jürg Lehni interviewed Dimitri Bruni (of NORM), Peter Bilak, and Erik Spiekermann; François Rappo wrote the introduction of the book. In his essay "Nature of type design in the digital age," Lehni scrutinises the concept of understanding fonts as software and reflects of possibilities of fonts in digital environment. He pays particular attention to early parametric systems such as MetaFont
Print Book, French, [2010]
ECAL/University of art and design ; Distributed by JRP/Ringier ; Distribution partner, USA, Canada, Asia and Australia, D.A.P., Lausanne, Switzerland, Zurich, New York, NY, [2010]