Output development
I went looking for other projects to see what had been done with type for MA projects and came across this one from Daniel Stuhlpfarrer. He created a variable font with masters that mixed to create a unique font based on your personality after you answered a series of questions. His aim was to find “the effect that a cooperation between man and machine has on the design of type and what a future of type design could look like as a result”. I think it’s effective because the user gets a unique font for themselves informed by their own input, and it is like the user, machine, and Stuhlpfarrer create together.
Daniel Stuhlpfarrer’s work isn’t local and seeks to examine a speculative question; mine is very local and has a set question. Does type inform the personality, or personality the type? This is the case of one personality informing one typeface, so what happens when thousands of typefaces are combined to create a culture?
Thinking about online outputs though could be a neat way to present my project.
Online Tools
So with people’s contributions, I could create an online where people can see their letters. It could work with simple glyphs …or the big filled-in letters. It can give details about the letter and contributor.
It could be a neat online way to show people’s contributions rather than printing them all, and the gallery can make a piece of art, like above. I can do this easily using a CMS based gallery and worksheet. I haven’t asked people to design glyphs like this, but if I took the project forward and ran talks about typography, I could launch a new phase of the project.
Anna Robinette 