From Movable Type to Moving Type - Evolution in
Transcription
From Movable Type to Moving Type - Evolution in
From Movable Type to Moving Type - Evolution in technological mediated Typography Gerhard Bachfischer and Toni Robertson Interaction Design and Work Practice Laboratory, Faculty of Information Technology, University of Technology, Sydney Broadway Campus, Building 10, Level 4, 235-253 Jones Street Ultimo e-mail: [email protected] and [email protected] Abstract. Written texts are more and more consumed in a multitude of different environments and media: on screens or device displays, at home, in offices or in public spaces, in quiet, private places or in noisy surroundings; mediated by new technologies such as mobile phones or personal digital assistants. This paper traces the development of typography from Gutenberg’s invention of movable type to today’s dynamic moving texts. It proposes and explores the argument that the typographic landscape we engage with is experienced rather than read. From the Crystal Goblet approach in typography to the often playful interactions with type in new media, a ‘new reader’ emerges, who is at the same time reader in a classic sense but also viewer of a typographic performance and and finally user or even creator (see Apple’s ‘LiveType’ for instance) of technological mediated typography. Introduction In April 2003, Apple introduced LiveType, a software add-on for generating moving type for broadcast digital media. The purpose of LiveType was to ease the creation of moving type for title sequences in Apple’s Final Cut, a non linear editing software package. It is much more sophisticated than any previously developed piece of software for this market segment. With LiveType came LiveFonts, the first ever typefaces, with characters that were animated entities rather than static glyphs. Here movement presents itself as intrinsic feature of a typeface for the first time. But what are the implications of a development which makes enhanced typographic possibilities available for a semi-professional market? This paper tries to answer this question by tracing the development of moving type and deepening our understanding of typographically enhanced texts. Such an understanding is critical in times where more and more written texts are consumed in a multitude of different environments and media: on screens or device displays; at home, in offices or in public spaces; in quiet, private places or in noisy surroundings; mediated by new technologies such as mobile phones or personal digital assistants. How type works in technologically mediated environments is integral to designing optimised communication processes with the user. __________________________________________________________________________________ 1/13 From Reading to Viewing Type Typography has developed since the 15th century when Johannes Gutenberg invented movable type and opened the possibility of reproducing texts efficiently for the western culture. The mobility of type refers to the individual letters of varying sizes, which were cast with a device Gutenberg had invented. These metal letters could be reused and recombined to infinite arrays of sequences for the reproduction of texts. The implications were manifold, impressively showcased in Elisabeth Eisenstein’s ‘The Printing Press as an Agent of Change’ [9]. Printed texts were a means for preserving speech - consequently literacy increased as the reading or deciphering of alphabetic signs was imperative to gaining knowledge. The treatment of text over the next few centuries amounts into what Beatrice Warde describes in her essay ‘The Crystal Goblet’ [37] as transparent or invisible typography. She argues for typography as the pure container for textual content. Legibility is emphasized, the gap between the reader and the author has to be bridged with the help of effortless reading. Type setting became the invisible craft. Type is seen as a non-intrusive servant. Warde’s essay can be seen as reaction to a more experimental approach to typography taking place at the beginning of the 20th century. Dadaists and Futurists in the 1920s and 1930s later Concrete Poetry during the 1950s and 1960s - freed type from the mechanical grid of reproduction [5], resulting in floating typographic compositions, figurative use of letters and fragmented typographic treatment. This development was nurtured by the Bauhaus school and the proclamation of a New Typography, a typography devoted to the modern age [29, 36]. Figure 1. Dadaists, Futurists and later Concrete Poetry stressed the visual dimension of a text in the production of poetic meaning: F. T. Marinetti’s ‘Les Mots en liberté Futuristes - Lettre d’une jolie femme à un Monsieur Passeiste’, Poem, 1912 In contrast to Beatrice Warde’s view on textual form as invisible interface between reader and author, this new, expressive form of typography takes up the role of an interpreter of content. Although still bridging the gap between reader and author, typography now predigests content according to beliefs and tastes of its individual designer, interpreting the content in a specific, semantically relevant way. Where legibility was key to please the reader of consecutive texts in the Crystal Goblet approach, the reader in Dada or later in Concrete __________________________________________________________________________________ 2/13 Poetry is viewing a text, engaging with its positioning on the page and the formal relations constituted within the text and expressed through diversity in typographic treatment (weight, size, colour, etc...). The groundwork for literally moving type was laid when cinema started to explore the possibility of flying titles and expressive, animated type. Although early works of Saul Bass e.g. title sequences for Alfred Hitchcock’s ‘Vertigo’ (1958) or ‘Psycho’ (1961) - were designed using traditional production methods for cinema (e.g. multiple exposure, cel animation, etc...) [23] the shift to computational devices broadened the way for moving type, further nurturing expressive typography. Kyle Cooper with his visually groundbreaking work for the intro sequence in the film ‘Seven’ (1995) not only made type move in unpredictable ways, anticipating the tension of this thriller in its title, he also created a trend amongst visual designers to engage with the expressive possibilities of type in motion. Education in typography and movement proliferated, showcased and primarily framed in books like Woolman and Bellantoni’s ‘Moving Type: Designing for Time and Space’ [41]. Figure 2. The animated movie titles of Kyle Cooper revived the view on type as an expressive means of communication far from typography seen as an invisible art. The significance of expressive moving type was brought to public attention through the means of popular culture, primarily television and cinema, music videos and commercials. The use of moving type fitted the broadcast media. Messages were short; slogans or punchlines for penetration of audiences in new ways, constantly begging for attention. In his essay ‘Entranced by Motion, Seduced by Stillness’ [42] Michael Worthington describes expressive typography in general as broadcast type, and states that by using moving type in broadcast media “the story is read to us in a particular voice” [42 p39] - the reader attends to a visual narrative, he or she becomes a viewer. A story is told and this stresses the relation to oral history rather than writing [25]. __________________________________________________________________________________ 3/13 Typography and Computing The representation of text has always been a concern of language processing in computer science, although researchers in the area have primarily focused on a computer mediated optimisation of the reading process. In the mid 1980’s a technique called Rapid Serial Visual Presentation (RSVP) was introduced [28, 29], which is very effective in presenting text in limited spaces and small screens. Movement occurs mainly along the time axis and it leads to 3-4 fold increases in reading speed, from an average reading speed of 300 to 400 words per minute up to 2,000 words per minute [1]. One of the prototypes developed using RSVP and typographic movement is the Speeder Reader. It allows people to navigate a text space using the driving wheel metaphor [1]. The steering wheel acts as navigational tool to switch from one lane - one stream of text - to the next. An accelerator pedal controls display speed; subchapter navigation is mapped onto the gear stick. The user is in control of both spatial and temporal movement. Since moving type was increasingly produced and viewed on computational devices, it seemed a clear progression to shift attention to the additional expressive possibilities of type in a digital computerised environment. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology began research in kinetic typography in the mid 1980’s. Muriel Cooper’s Visible Language Workshop produced prototypes of multi-dimensional information displays incorporating type. The Information Landscape project made its first appearance in 1994 [33] and created a stir among the graphic design community. Using a Silicon Graphics workstation, the presentation was a continuous flight through three dimensional, dynamic data space, visualising hierarchical, financial and geographic information [33]. This project gave birth to several investigations into Typographic Space [30, 34], all of which were concerned with typographic expression in a multidimensional space as well as the expressive possibilities of movement in those spaces. John Maeda followed in Cooper’s footsteps, after her death in 1994, with the work done in his Aesthetics and Computation Group at MIT [33]. Maeda represents a new breed of technologist with computer science and design/typography educational background. The computational mastering of motion and the resulting interaction possibilities with users were design goals for Maeda’s Aesthetics and Computation Group. Not only did he develop his own prototypes, e.g. Flying Letters or 12 o’clocks both part of his Reactive Books series [20], he encouraged his students to expand typography as a system into the computational realm. Active and Interactive Type When considering the interactive possibilities in a computer mediated text, one form that immediately springs to mind is hypertext. Hypertext provides a structure for non-linearity in texts, where in-text links connect a consecutive, linear piece of writing with a conceptually connected text or image structure somewhere else in the information space of the internet (e.g. a bibliographic reference, an email address or anything of possible related interest). Initially conceptualised by Vannevar Bush through his Memex idea [7], hypertext has been __________________________________________________________________________________ 4/13 widely recognised and advocated as the interactive possibility in computer mediated texts [6, 13, 15]. Although important, hypertext is only one text focused interaction possibility within a digital environment [16]. When the visual display possibilities of screen environments developed to the point where they could compete with the richness of print, the expressive and furthermore interactive possibilities of typography itself increased. Figure 3. Muriel Cooper and Lisa Straussfeld’s ‘Information Landscape’ project (left) and John Meada’s work ‘12 o’clocks’ (right) represents the transgression from reading to viewing and finally using text actively in multi-dimensional computer mediated environments. When in 1991 Multiple Master fonts were introduced by Adobe Systems [8], the aim was to ‘empower’ the users by giving them control over various parameters of a typeface. This control was executed via a sliderbar. Users of a font were encouraged to generate their own version of it on the fly. The slider could be used to manipulate a Multiple Master font within predefined boundaries, for instance make it slimmer/fatter (weight) or wider/narrower (width) without distorting the form. No one could anticipate that the Multiple Master technology was put to use to animate a font. Lucas de Groot, a typographer from the Netherlands used the Multiple Master font sliders to generate movement with his typeface ‘Move Me MM’ [22] published in Fuse 11 [10], a CD-ROM magazine devoted to experimental typography. By moving the sliders back and forth de Groot’s font morphed between character and graphic icon, creating short animations. In a way this unintended use of a software technology anticipated the enhancement in typographic expression using movement and interactivity. __________________________________________________________________________________ 5/13 Figure 4. Lucas de Groot’s typeface ‘Move Me MM’ morphed between character and graphic icon, creating short animations controlled by the user. This interaction between the user and the typeface was not intended by the Multiple Master font technology at all. At the same time, John Maeda and his Aesthetics and Computation Group followed the path from the expressive approach of typographic movement to computational kinetic typography, furthering interaction with type. The development from reader to viewer to user is displayed in the thesis work of David Small [31], Peter Sungil Cho [8] and Yin Yin Wong [40]. Several projects developed at MIT during the 1990s make this slightly revised view on enhanced type on screen graspable. Referring to claims made earlier in a proposal by MIT [24], David Small worked out a project called Virtual Shakespeare [31]. In Virtual Shakespeare, Small wanted to address a question asked in the proposal: Why should text move or change over time at all? At least five reasons were considered in the paper: “to convey information that itself is changing, to pace the observer, to save [screen or display] real estate, to amplify and to get attention.” [24, p12]. Instead of an expressive piece of typographic work, Small wanted to create an interactive piece. He wanted the user to be able to navigate a large body of text - in this case the works of William Shakespeare - in a space without confined borders. The sheer amount of text seemed to emphasise interaction with users and diminish the expressive possibilities implied. Small created a prototype of truly interactive type [42], where the transition from reader (attending a consecutive text) to user (navigating a structured typographic space) takes place. It has to be stressed here, that this typographic space is neither a book space, where typography acts as the invisible servant, nor film space where one attends an expressive typographic performance; it is something different, a truly enhanced typographic space, enriched by the possibility of user interaction. __________________________________________________________________________________ 6/13 Further on in Small’s work, the interaction component of typographic treatment became even more apparent. In the Stream of Consciousness project, later developed into an art installation called Interactive Poetic Garden [39], David Small and Tom White combined the possibilities of computer mediated type with a garden environment including stones, water and plants. Figure 5. David Smalls Interactive Poetic Garden: “The computer is used to drive a video projector, creating the illusion of text floating on the surface of the water as it flows through the garden. [The user] can control the flow of words, blocking or stirring them up, causing them to grow and divide into new words that are eventually pulled into the drain, then pumped back to the head of the stream, only to tumble down again.” [31, pp74-75] Seeing people interacting with text, which has been treated typographically to suit the display circumstances (most importantly evoking ‘floating’ behaviour and being open for interaction), one can see the potential of enhanced textual display possibilities. David Small describes the responses of audiences as warm and enthusiastic, emphasising the experiential dimension of his installation. “Some people were content to passively watch the words, others would repeatedly damn up the words into chumps and then release them, and others would attack the words so that they divided out of control and filled the water with hundreds of words. Even very young children were able to explore the water and stones and the “lights” which shone on the water.” [31, p77] The true beauty of this project lies in the rich and open ended interaction with type in an unusual form, which goes far beyond the passive reception of expressive typographic performance. If text in expressive typography is interpreted by the designer, text in an __________________________________________________________________________________ 7/13 interactive environment is interpreted by audiences in new, non-content related ways within a set of possibilities constructed by the designer. Another extension of the interactive possibility of text is displayed in Peter Sungil Cho’s gestural interface to perform Letterspace, a tool for manipulating type within a three dimensional screen environment [8]. In Letterspace the user can morph individual letters into different ones or move letters in a three dimensional space, rotate them around or make them disappear into the background. Again, the gestural interface and the interaction with type overpowers the content component of the text, but shows the possibility of engagements and enhancements in experience people will gain from typographic interaction with textual entities. Progressing from the interaction with individual letters or words was key for a different group of researchers and their Active Text project [16, 17]. Active Text follows the tradition of the 1950s and 1960s Concrete Poets, where the visual appearance of text is seen as influential in producing meaning from a text. Active Text empowers the user to treat and interact with the visual appearance of text in dramatic ways, set glyphs, words or paragraphs in motion, separate them, manipulate size or inflict them with dynamic motion behaviours or even deconstruct them completely [16, 17]. Experiencing Type As shown throughout this paper, typography functions in a range of ways, from non-intrusive invisible servant of content to an active, performing agent of it. Reading, as in deciphering glyphs is not the only way to derive meaning from texts, because as we have seen the formal aspects of a typeface (e.g. shape, size, colour, etc...) as well as the combination and placement of it in a given space can create or change literal meaning. Dadaists and Futurists played freely with formal and spatial aspects of texts. The new formal grammar they introduced constituted a layer on top of the literal, contextual meaning which we have learned to ‘read’ in our western culture. The italian Futurist F. T. Marinetti explaind his work during the 1920s as follows: “I am against what is known as the harmony of [type]setting. When necessary, we shall use three or four columns to a page and twenty different type faces. We shall represent hasty perceptions in italic and express scream in bold type [...] a new, painterly, typographic representation will be born on the printed page.” [32, p47] In todays typographic landscape three or four columns of text on a page are quite common, cueing of texts (italic, bold, SMALL CAPS, etc...) to emphasize words or text passages is a standard means of typographic design. It is also reflected in our daily use of emails and SMS (Short Messaging Services) to create emphasis or raise one’s (typographic) voice - e.g. SCREAM. Michael Worthington’s broadcast type [42], where the reader attends to a visual narrative, is part of our daily textual environment and we have learned to read the visual qualities in typographically enhanced messages. __________________________________________________________________________________ 8/13 Readers, who have become viewers through the means of expressive typography, now are presented with movement as an additional quality in texts. This new quality of movement enhances the expressive, broadcast nature of a message. Typographic design and movement together reveal the playfulness of visible language in our new media, shown for example in projects from the Visible Language Workshop or the the Aesthetics and Computation Group at MIT. Typographic design and movement provoke interaction with type - for the creators of typographic messages (changing typefaces, styles and spatial arrangements) and for the readers/viewers who engage with texts in a more physical, playful or interactive way. In both cases we become users of texts, modern readers who engage with texts in all their literal and formal aspects. A Change in Research Focus During the last century research has focused on reading text in a consecutive linear fashion and has therefore mainly concerned itself with legibility [4, 12, 19, 26, 35, 38]. When a shift towards viewing type, not necessarily reading it in a traditional sense, happened with the introduction of moving type to popular culture, research has scarcely recognised this change. Although cultural and media studies use the term ‘reading’ to describe the process of making meaning out of film [23], art [11], photographs [2, 3] or advertising [14], understanding text as a viewer has never fully been explored. When we read a consecutive text, immersed in its content, truly living in book space, we are scarcely aware of the connotative dimension of type, as long as it does not interfere with our immersive state of reading. Beatrice Warde’s Crystal Goblet approach [37] calls for exactly that: a non-intrusive textual treatment, typography as a servant for the reader. On the other extreme, immersion in a typographic performance never happens in book space, it is in fact a different sort of reading experience - the most drastic example might be an English-speaker’s engagement with text in China [21]: “[it] is purely associative. His or her cognitive attention is freed from its capacity to apprehend and register meaning.” Those two examples occupy opposite sites of the reading spectrum: on one side non-intrusive typography, the invisible art of designing for legibility; on the other side the experience of typographic form, presented in different layers of meaning creating expressions (movement as one of them). When finally the user of a text enters the field, those two sides have to be unified in a holistic approach to reading, in a view that approaches reading as an embedded phenomenon of life, in all its different manifestations. Because of the shift in how we consume texts today, that is described in this paper, it is suggested here, that technological mediated texts have to be researched using a wider range of methodologies informed by user centred methods, based on a model of the ‘new reader’. In order to explore the notion of this ‘new reader’ our future work will be directed towards observing the effect of enhanced textual display on readers, viewers or users of text. The possibility to research an immersive environment in a museum context provides a valuable context for a qualitative study using this new focus on human experience in typographic space. The project in question is the ‘Bystander Field Prototype’, an immersive ‘feedback’ __________________________________________________________________________________ 9/13 environment for exhibiting and dramatically interacting with semiotic, aesthetic and emotional patterns in archived imagery [18] currently in its final stages of development at the University of Technology in Sydney. Part of the display environment will be textual information in several levels (e.g. poetic and narrative), using expressive and kinetic typography. The effect on the user will feed into further development of immersive environments that include moving type. Figure 6. The ’Bystander Field Prototype’ is an opportunity to research the subjective experiential component of text in an immersive environment. These studies will further increase our understanding of the ‘new reader’ who is on the one hand engaged with the interpreting of technologically mediated and typographically enhanced texts in all its manifestations, and on the other hand involved in the production of these texts as a user of applications such as Apple’s LiveType. Moving Type can be of advanced semantic relevance when it comes to bridging the gap between technologically mediated text and this ‘new reader’. References [1] Back M., Cohen J., Gold R., Harrison S., Minneman S. [2002], “Speeder Reader: An Experiment in the Future of Reading”, Computers and Graphics 26(3), June 2002 [2] Barthes R. [1957], Mythologies, Frogmore, St Albans/USA, Paladin [ed. 1973] [3] Barthes R. [1964], Elements of Semiology, New York/USA, Hill & Wang [ed. 1968] [4] Bergfeld Mills C. & Weldon L.J. [1988], “Reading Text from Computer Screens”, ACM Computing Surveys 19(4), pp329-358 [5] Blackwell L. [2004 rev. ed.], 20th-Century Type, London/UK, Laurence King Publishing __________________________________________________________________________________ 10/13 [6] Bolter J. D. [1999], Writing Space: Computers, Hypertext, and the Remediation of Print, Mahwah/NJ/USA, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates [7] Bush V. [1945], “As We May Think”, Atlantic Monthly, July 1945, pp101-108 [8] Cho P. S. [1999], Computational Models for Expressive Dimensional Typography, PhD Thesis, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge/MA [9] Eisenstein E. [1979] The Printing Press as an Agent of Change: Communications and Cultural Transformations in Early-Modern Europe, Vol. 1. & 2., New York/USA, Cambridge University Press [10] Fuse 11 (CD-Rom Magazine), 1994, Berlin/GER, FontShop International [11] Gombrich, Sir E.H. [1960], Art and Illustion: A Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation, London/UK, Phaidon [2002 6.ed.] [12] Hvistendahl J. K. [1961], “Headline readability measured in context”, Journalism Quarterly 38 [Spring, 1961], pp226-228 [13] Joyce M. [1995], Of two Minds - Hypertext Pedagogy and Poetics, Ann Arbor/MA/ USA, The University of Michigan Press [14] Kress G. & van Leeuwen T. [1996], Reading Images : The Grammar of Visual Design, London/UK, Routledge [15] Landow G. P. [1992], Hypertext: The convergence of Contemporary Critical Theory and Technology, Baltimore/USA, The John Hopkins University Press [16] Lewis J. E. & Weyers A. [1999], “Active Text: A Method for Creating Dynamic and Interactive Texts”, CHI Letters 1, pp131-140 [17] Lewis J. E. [1996], Dynamic Poetry - introductory Remarks to a Digital Medium, M.D. Thesis, Royal College of Art, London/UK [18] Life After Wartime, Project website http://www.lifeafterwartime.com/ [19] Luckiesh M. & Moss F.K. [1938], Visibility and Readability of Print on white and Tinted Papers, in Tinker M.A. [1963], Legibility of Print, Ames/Iowa/USA, Iowa State University Press [20] Maeda J. [2000], Maeda@Media, London/UK, Thames & Hudson Ltd [21] Mau B., Maclear K. & Bart T. (ed.) [2000], Life Style, London/UK, Phaidon Press Ltd [22] Middendorp J. [2004], Dutch Type, Rotterdam/NL, 010 Publishers [23] Monaco J. [2000 3.ed], How to Read a Film: Movies, Media, Multimedia, New York/ USA, Oxford University Press __________________________________________________________________________________ 11/13 [24] Negroponte N., Bold R. & Cooper M., [1978], “Books without Pages, Proposal from the Architecture Machine Group”, MIT to the Office of Information, Science and Technology, NSF, in Small D. L. [1999], Rethinking the Book, PhD Thesis Program in Media Arts and Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge/MA [25] Ong W. J. [1982], Orality & Literacy - The Technologizing of the Word, London/UK, Routledge [1995 ed.] [26] Paterson D.G. & Tinker M.A. [1940], How to make Type readable, New York/USA, Harper & Brothers Publishers [27] Polano S. & Vetta P. [2003], ABC of 20th-century graphics , Milano/ITA, Electa Architecture Mandadori Electa spa [28] Potter M. C. [1984], “Rapid Serial Visual Presentation (RSVP): A Method for Studying Language Processing”. in Kieras D. E. & Just M. A. (eds.) [1984], New Methods in Reading comprehension Research, Hillsdale/NJ/USA, Lawrence Erlbaum, pp91-118. [29] Russell M. C. & Chaparro B. S. [2002], “Reading from a Palm Pilot: Using RSVP”, Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomic Society, 46th Annual Meeting, pp685-689 [30] Small D., Ishizaki S. & Cooper M. [1994], “Typographic Space, Human Factors in Computing Systems”, CHI’94 Conference Companion, ACM, pp437-438 [31] Small D. L. [1999], Rethinking the Book, PhD Thesis Program in Media Arts and Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge/MA [32] Spencer H. [1969], Pioneers of Modern Typography, New York/USA, Hastings House [33] Staples L. [2000], “Typography and the Screen: A Technical Chronology of Digital Typography 1984-1997”, Design Issues 16(3), pp19-34 [34] Straussfeld L. [1995], “Financial Viewpoints: Using Point-of-view to Enable Understanding of Information”, CHI’95 Conference Companion, Denver/CO, May 1995, pp208-209 [35] Tinker M.A. [1963], Legibility of Print, Ames/IUSA, Iowa State University Press. [36] Tschichold J. [1928], The New Typography: A Handbook for Modern Designers, Berkeley/CA, University of California Press [1998] [37] Warde B. [1955], The Crystal Goblet, Sixteen Essays on Typography, London/UK, Sylvan Press [38] Wendt D. [1971], “Lesen und Lesbarkeit in Abhängigkeit von der Textanordnung” (G), in Druckformenherstellung 22 (June 1971), pp90-92 __________________________________________________________________________________ 12/13 [39] White T. & Small D. [1998], “An Interactive Poetic Garden”, CHI’98 Conference Companion, ACM, pp335-336 [40] Wong Y. Y. [1995], Temporal Typography: Characterization of time-varying Typographic Forms, M.S. Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge/ MA [41] Woolman M & Bellantoni J. [1999], Moving Type: Designing for Time and Space, London/UK, RotoVision SA [42] Worthington M. [1999], “Entranced by Motion, Seduced by Stillness”, Eye Magazine 33(9), pp28-39 __________________________________________________________________________________ 13/13