The Digital Type: In The Minds Eye

Irvin J. Engle
Professor Sullivan
Art 620
27 November 07

The Digital Type Revolution: In The Minds Eye

Computerized digitization of type design has created advanced technological tools to help meet the ever growing graphic needs of the typographer. The major applications of digitized type in electronic and print design have given rise to the development of more advanced software technology. Although creative ingenuity is still in the minds eye of the beholder digitization has revolutionized the process. Along with the new ingenuity come new standards and guidelines for the designer to keep up with.
Digitized print design has been going through many changes to help enable the real time solutions on the fly for rasterizing bitmap images of font. According to Wikipedia postscript is a page description and programming language used for electronic and desktop publishing developed that interprets images for print.(7) Rather than using bitmap PostScript draws and fills in Bezier curves to achieve better print imaging. Most printers in production today are dependent on internal computer postscript software programming interpretation by software called Ghostscript as opposed to the older postscript programming inside the printers. Wikipedia states that, “Ghostscript can also be used to preview PostScript documents on a computer monitor and to convert PostScript pages into raster graphics such as TIFF and PNG, and vector formats such as PDF.”(3) An on screen display system called Display PostScript uses PostScript (PS) imaging model and language to generate on-screen graphics as defined by Wikipedia.(2)
This evolutionary development has had software development companies reproducing the wheel so to speak of how postscript is utilized since the 1980’s. Most recently in the late 1990’s Adobe joined Microsoft in developing a technology called OpenType that is a scalable format for computer fonts. By 2005 Adobe had converted about one third of around 10,000 fonts to Open Type formatting available to the public. Wikipedia says, “As of 2006 every major font foundry and many minor ones were developing fonts in OpenType format.”(6)

The Journal of Typography: Octavo (8vo) marked a retaining spirit of the modernist dedicated to arguing the case for higher quality in typography. The 8vo design studio used traditional, craft-based working methods but an experimental approach to design in order to anticipate the computer-aided aesthetic of the 90s. This eight issue publication is compiled in a book called 8vo On the Outside by Lars Muller Publishers.(1 p.140)

This two-color, blue and orange poster utilizing both solid and outline versions of 8vo's interact font that was first developed for on-screen use and later a version was created for print.(4)(5)

This photo from the cover of Rassegna Grafica, 1955 by Franco Grignani demonstrated the impact that photographic manipulation was beginning to have on typography. (1 p.90)

The technology of the grid has gone beyond the 2 dimensional page layout mapping to involve a 3rd dimension that is very much utilized in desktop publishing for print, web graphics and electronic game development today.
Jeffery Shaw's developed virtual reality simulation gives the visitor a ride on a stationary bicycle through a simulated representation of a city that is constituted by computer generated 3D letters forming words and sentences along the sides of streets in his interactive work called, The Legible City 1989-91. Traveling through these cities of words is consequently a journey of reading; choosing the path one takes is a choice of texts as well as their spontaneous juxtapositions and conjunctions of meaning. (9)
(10)(8p. 236)
Using the ground plans of actual cities - Manhattan, Amsterdam and Karlsruhe - the existing architecture of these cities is completely replaced by textual formations written and compiled by Dirk Groeneveld. Designs like these encourage viewers to create their own narratives or associations.(8 p. 222-224)
Accordingly 20th Century Type mentions that, “It is in the advances made in the “typographic engine” and in probing three-dimensional typography or even four-dimensional typographic forms, that we see paths opening towards a strange new landscape of typographic form.” And that, “Crucially, programmers and the software company patrons need to be working alongside the type designers.”(1 p.158)
These technologies have certainly brought on some critically acclaimed solutions for processing text images for computerized electronic display and print. But the beauty of it all is still in the minds eye of the beholder and the need of the designer and the audience utilization of these technologies for expression. Good creative font costs money and good typographers are bound to get it. HTML has limited the boundaries of what creative font can be used in its language but other computer programming languages bring new means of expressing typography. Designers can create their own fonts today that can be displayed and printed in various new programming languages and editing software application formats. The creative possibilities are as endless and infinite as the depths of the minds eye of the beholder.

Works Cited:
1. Blackwell, Lewis.20th Century Type remix Revised.p.90,140,158(1998) Ginko Press, Incorporated 5768 Paradise Drive, Suite J Corte Madera, CA 94925, USA.
2. “Display PostScript.” Wikipedia the free encyclopedia. Wikipedia Foundation Inc. U.S. 25 November 2007.GNU Free Documentation License. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Display_PostScript, 26 November 2007.
3. “Ghost Script.” Wikipedia the free encyclopedia. Wikipedia Foundation Inc. U.S. 25 November 2007.GNU Free Documentation License. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghostscript, 25 November 2007.
4. Holt, Mark. Muir, Hamish. 8vo ON the Outside. July 2005 532 pp Lars Muller Publishers Stadtturmstrasse 19 5400 Baden Switzerland
5. Holt, Mark. figure Poster: Fortuny graphic, Palazzo Fortuny, Venice, (1995). Eye 37, vol.10, Autumn 2000, pp.66-75. International Typography Almanac 2, Robundo, pp.288-293. http://www.markholtdesign.com/, 26 November 2007.
6. “OpenType.” Wikipedia the free encyclopedia. Wikipedia Foundation Inc. U.S. 25 November 2007.GNU Free Documentation License. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opentype, 26 November 2007.
7. “PostScript.” Wikipedia the free encyclopedia. Wikipedia Foundation Inc. U.S. 25 November 2007.GNU Free Documentation License. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PostScript, 26 November 2007.
8. Rush, Michael New Media in Art second Edition 222-224, 236(2005). Thames & Hudson Inc., 500 fifth Ave., New york, New York 10110.
9. “The Legible City Manhattan version.” (1989), Amsterdam version (1990), Karlsruhe version (1991) Computergraphic installation with Dirk Groeneveld Collection of ZKM-Medienmuseum, Karlsruhe, Germany.
http://www.jeffrey-shaw.net/html_main/show_work.php3?record_id=83, 26 November 2007.
10. “The Legible City Manhattan version.” (1989), Amsterdam version (1990), Karlsruhe version (1991) Computergraphic installation with Dirk Groeneveld Collection of ZKM-Medienmuseum, Karlsruhe, Germany.
http://www.jeffrey-shaw.net/images/083_004.jpg, 26 November 2007.