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| March 01, 2007
The personal computer changed typography in the 1980s and we continue to adjust even today. Emblematic of this change, I think, were several experimenters who, rather than replicate the old, sought to embrace the digital much like designers in the Bauhaus era embraced new materials and mechanical techniques.
Foremost in my mind is Zuzana Licko at Emigre who challenged conventions and upset the basic "morality" of type design.
Erik van Blokland and Just van Rossum at Letterror, brought coding to typography creating faces like the randomly-influenced Beowolf.
Zenith of this experimental period was the early to mid-1990s with type distributors like Fuse (produced by Neville Brody) and T26 (run by Carlos Segura) entering the scene.
These efforts continue. The designers at House Industries have introduced a customizable face Ed Interlock which reconfigures itself depending on the relationships of the letters within the word. Here is a discussion by the programmer involved.
Here is an interesting article from AIGA Voice which catalogs many other examples of technology impacting typography.
Tags: bauhaus, emigre, house industries, letterror, licko, segura, t26, typography
Creative Dialogue
2 Comments |[ Add Comment ]
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Andrea Cardenas
on March 16, 2007 “i wish type was as rebellious today and caused such a reaction as it did when emigre popped onto the scene.” |
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Brian Slawson
on March 16, 2007 “Technological change sparks much of the creative innovation, I think. It reminds me of the industrial revolution when mechanization replaced hand work. Looking at antique type foundry specimen books you can really see the change in about the mid-1800s. Some of the jazz of the 1980s was likely also due to "post-modern" thinking (French literary theory, for example) that was just then filtering to the design disciplines.” |
