Maybe you had better explain what you mean a bit more - This first post is a bit hard to grasp. Do you have athesis position already?

> basically, i think it’s impossible to remove the linguistic implications from a letterform and see it as a random shape.

Hi Alex,
yup... you need to explain what direction you are taking as Eben suggested. And yes, you can remove liguistic implications (by this do you actually mean phonetic associations?) from letterforms, but it takes training both eye and mind.

BTW — your “fixing up BRB” on your web site is refreshing.

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Yes, I’m old, but I’ll be right back!

apologies if i glaze over some thoughts, ive been going over this for a while.

ok so when you look at a letter A, you will only see it as a letter A, whether it’s being used in text or as a design elements. you’ll still understand that what you’re looking at is a letterform. the only kink in that is adding dimension, texture, etc. to the shape. like for example, looking at a 3-dimensional A from the top.

also, i guess i should add the relevance ie. why i’m even asking.

our capacity to read letterforms has flourished through the inundation of messages we receive and the proliferation of typefaces that challenge traditional letterform shapes. im not saying they all look good or anything, but our understanding of these shapes has been enriched. even with things like “wheel of fortune” we seek out letterforms. seeing a bunch of sticks on the ground and thinking “that looks like a K.” we’re just raised to search for messages.

this all leads to a broader range within which we can deliver meaning and distress type and still create clear messages.

at what point do these letterforms cease to retain their linguistic value? i believe this only occurs when elements are added to the basic shape of what defines letterforms.

> i believe this only occurs when elements are added to the basic shape of what defines letterforms.

A thesis! Excellent. Let me re-phrase what you have written & see if I get you here. You are saying that - there is a degree to which all ’a’s are ’a’s and that may be more or less (& maybe more or less depending on the reader?) You are also saying that in general we are expanding our willingness to see an ’a’ over time due to exposure to increasingly less ’a’-like ’a’ shapes. You are also saying that there is a point at which the ’a’ stops being recognized as such. It ceases to be a recognized as a letter.

> i believe this only occurs when elements are added to the basic shape of what defines letterforms.

You are saying this happens when too many features of ’a’ ness are lost. This might be degenration, fading, etc - or it might be an extreme design which has failed.

This is your example of ’looking at a letter “A” and thinking “i dont get it.” ’. As in ’I don’t see a letter there’.

If this is what you are talking about it is a sort opposite end of what has been a topic around here recently - readability. You are talking about the moment when type becomes unreadable.

Alex, read Douglas Hofstadter’s “Meta-Font,Metamathematics,and Metaphysics: Comments on Donald Knuth ’s “The Concept of a Meta-Font,” in Visible Language,,Volume XVI,Number 4 Autumn 1982. See also his “Letter Spirit: Esthetic Perception and Creative Play in the Rich Microcosm of the Roman Alphabet ” in Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies: Computer Models and the Fundamental Mechanisms of Thought. Basic Books,1996

In psychological terms, seeing an ’a’ as an ’a’ is matter of ’categorical perception’.

METAFONT! i’ve been researching knuth and metafont in a related/unrelated venture to create a typeface that morphs throughout a document. i was trying to see if a reader could still decipher shapes if say helvetica was morphed into a rather unreadable shape. if the reader was part of the transition, is understanding of the forms enhanced?

i was hoping to figure out a way to make a typeface generator (like metafont) that i could input a beginning face and ending face and have it create the steps in between. i’m not a programmer and i’m not familiar if font lab or other programs are capable of helping generate this sort of typeface. fontlab’s lack of a helpfile and 700 page pdf manual dont help either, ha.

eben -

yes, the degree of A-ness changes, but stays within the “threshold of semiosis” which i’m citing from an article in zed issue 4. on one end there is no doubt at what is presented and the other shows extreme doubt. our abilities to read letterforms that may lean toward the extreme end are improving with the way we presented messages, or even in some cases our need to seek out messages where they appear to be leacking.

i’m working on being more articulate with my thoughts (thankfully i have an editor and topic consultant to help with much of that) but youve got it. any references or other thoughts would great. i’ve been reading alot on semiotics and other theory-related texts, and also looking for designers whose typefaces fit within the realm of this thesis. ji lee and his “univers revolved” and faces by fere-jones are getting alot of talk in my paper. even some of the work over at typeworkshops.com is worth mentioning, anton beeke, dainippon, some of the stuff fuse did, are all references on current examples running along that threshold.

oh and also, i’m basing the notion of what makes a letterform on frutiger’s “skeleton” of a letter, but expanding it to reference the white space around a letter as also defining it’s shape. so i’m calling it a “soul.”

additionally, a letter is defined semiotically not just by its shape or the spoken letter it represents, but the other letters it is NOT. so an A is an A because it is not a B or a Z etc. even further, the A may not exist if there is no B or Z etc. the latter notion is really taken into consideration when looking at typefaces that are pretty hard to discern, but when you see them in context, the forms make more sense.

I would like to see examples of what you are doing if you feel like that’s okay either privately or on Typophile. I am interested. I do keep wondering why you are interested in this avenue when it seems pretty abandoned at this point in typographic history. Everybody is into orthodox forms & subtle shifts - not extremes. I am not saying it isn’t valid (far from it) - just that you are outside the mainstream at this moment and I am wondering about why. Would you comment on your motivation?

Enneson, Thanks for the references and your thoughful text!

great project!

i think it’s impossible to remove the linguistic implications from a letterform

funny...this is sort of the exact opposite of my thesis project, yet they are very much connected...

Are you focusing only on perceptions of the Latin alphabet (i suppose anything more would be a huge undertaking) ? Are you also looking at perceptions of the symbols/ characters of unfamiliar languages? There are some type designers who will not design type for a language they do not read/write. Perhaps this is because of that relationship which you are exploring, connecting even further the relationship between the form/content of type and written language...

I think you’ll enjoy David Sacks’ “Language Visible: Unraveling the Mystery of the Alphabet from A to Z”. it’s not very academic, but it gives an interesting historical perspective on the alphabet.

I’d also be interesting in reading/seeing your thesis if you want some more feedback...i have some [recent] experience in that...

good luck!

eben and amy p,

i’m still pretty early in the thesis process, but this topic came about from a discussion with a faculty member here at SCAD. i dont recall the whole conversation, but at one point we argued over seeing a letterform as a shape and not as a letter. i’m not arguing against type being used as design elements, but even then, a reader will see it as a letterform being used as a design element. i just dont see it as possible to look at a letterform and not recognize it as such. yes, i plan to only deal with the latin alphabet, as much of this defined culturally. i wouldnt recognize japanese characters if i saw them. i may recognize it as some form of language, but i could be fooled pretty easily on that.

i realize this has been discussed in varying degrees, but discussing type semiotically is so interesting to me. but its also the hard part since so much has been said already. please let me know if you have suggestions in thinking i should take the thesis in another direction, based on that conversation i had.

i would love to keep you all up to date on the progress including visuals once their developed, and also would apreciate any feedback along the way.

thanks for all the reference suggestions, i’ve made notes on them all and am checking them out.

If you turn a large letter you know 90 degrees, 180, etc., you will find you can see it as a set of curves, and it stops ’reading’ a, b, c. Some type designers use this as an aid in the design process. Also with a word written big, you can teach yourself to see the counters and inter-letter spaces—the white shapes instead of the black. Again, an aid to the design process.

i may be overstating the average ability to recognize letterforms using designers as the reference point, where as i may still see the letterform rotated, an average reader may not. so i need to take that into consideration, though i think depending on context, this may not be so bad. i could be wrong though, so any other thoughts or examples would be great.

i dont think scaling up a letter beyond the bounds of the page or screen or whatever the presentation falls within the criteria, because if you cut off a letterform to just counters, etc, youre not really viewing the letter. and i do agree whitespace aids in defining the shape of letterforms. but youre not really keeping the letterform intact by scaling so large as to hide portions. did that make sense? the whole point is to keep the letterform intact. now if youre saying the letter is painted on a wall or something that could be something different all together. i guess it becomes a matter of how close to the letterform you are when trying to read it. sort of like trying to figure out whats happening in a movie while sitting the front row. i hate that.

On the other hand, one of my own most memorable movie-going experiences was watching “Jason and the Argonauts” with a bunch of my elementary school friends seated in the very front row (and the theater wasn’t at all full).

hhp

I’m talking about letters 2-6” high on the screen. For me at least, the rotation especially at 90 degrees is enough. I now have one of those wide-aspect monitors that rotates. And at some point drawing a letter I just rotate it 90 degrees and all the ’bad’ curves that need correcting just jump out, they don’t so much for me when horizontal.

Basically, I’m saying your thesis is wrong. Rotation and looking at white is enough to abstract the form and not read the letter. Looking at the white takes practice—I am training myself to do it now, but it can be done.

“Rotation and looking at white is enough to abstract the form and not read the letter”

that’s something totally different, looking at the white i mean. i agree that the surrounding space influences perception of a shape, but i ’m not speaking at directly looking at that space. but you do have a valid point when you mentioned training yourself. the notion of purposely trying to avoid seeing the letterform is something i had not considered before. but essentially, i think we’re talking about two different, albeit related, ideas.

i loved that skeleton battle scene.

A-ness

be very careful when using this term as well as P-ness.

This has turned into an interesting exchange... Willian and SA are getting to some things. Gestalt? I don’t know. It’s an old horse, but it took us this far...