Computers Don’t Speak, Type Does
Michael Worthington
In his 1974 book, Compendium for Literates,1 Karl Gerstner recorded the possible variations of how words may exist in the printed medium. His approach was clinical, his observations were ordered logically and delivered scientifically. Gerstner’s writing made me wonder how these rules, or set of possibilities, for printed typography would be different for the screen and for motion-based typography—how they might be explored and exploded, surpassed or confirmed, and how teaching screen-based typography differs from teaching traditional print-oriented typography. Most graphic designers understand how printed type conveys its message to an audience, what its form signifies, but few understand how that differs in the environment of the screen. In the screen-based world of typography, what was stable in the print world becomes movable, alterable, and temporal. Some of Gerstner’s possibilities for static typography seem irrelevant, restrictive, or untranslatable in this new world. If his rules have been made anachronistic by current technology, I found myself questioning whether the written word should still be such a major part of our communication process. Should there be a new system of communication for new media? Why use type at all when you will be able to have live video, computer animation, constant audio, icons, and digital imagery that merge into a mass of navigable online space—and maybe even thinking, talking computers?
The prospect that typography and the written word might evolve into something more—i.e., with motion and sound becoming an integral part of the alphabetic system—is extremely seductive; a new “alphabet” that combines its audio and visual representations. A “magical” form of communication. Consider how writing has evolved through various technological advances (carving in stone, painting on paper, mechanized printing, etc.). It has always been a magical tool and has always had the ability to reconstruct images, meaning, and events from an abstract platform across space and time, between best friends or total strangers. Even though the letterforms themselves—and their means of production and dissemination—have altered wildly, the magic of the written word as communication has remained. This alphabetic magic differs from the communicative magic of the image. Chris Crawford succinctly sums up the difference between pictorial and textual elements in reference to game design.2 He defines depiction as “being intrinsically direct” (i.e., pictorial elements) and representation as “being intrinsically indirect,” needing interpretation to reach the entity represented (i.e., text). Traditionally, depiction lends itself to visually dense or obscure problems (a picture paints a thousand words); information that might be gathered by reading page upon page of descriptive text can be conveyed instantly in a pictorial screen. The problem of depicting complex concepts—such as, for example, society, respect, or even new media—may be solvable by a series of images or icons, but they have nowhere near the specificity, or speed of understanding, that text has in conveying these constructs (a word paints a single picture). There are situations when type is the logical choice (for example, when you have a list of four hundred similar items from which to choose) because it functions in ways that other media cannot and at times when nontypographic media is more suitable (for example, in relation to speed of access, the two-hour movie versus the book that takes two days to read).
Language has poetic qualities—the ability to create different images within the minds of different readers—which may be impossible to represent visually. Crawford gives us the example of Bob Dylan’s “Mr. Tambourine Man”: “And take me disappearing through the smoke rings of my mind, down the foggy ruins of time, far past the frozen leaves, the haunted frightened trees, far past the twisted reach of crazy sorrow.” Crawford writes, “Consider the futility of trying to communicate these phrases with depiction. What would ‘the twisted reach of crazy sorrow’ look like?” And to whom? The poetics of language can act as a gateway to a myriad of meanings (a word paints a thousand pictures), yet can be specific enough to feel personal to an individual (a word paints your very own picture).
The functionality and poetic possibilities of the alphabetic system mean that the written word will not disappear in the environment of new media—though when to use which means of representation should be a considered decision—the future won’t be devoid of the written word and dominated by talking computers. Yet, type does speak. Typography’s “voice” is apparent in the forms of the letters themselves. The variations allowed within the limits of legibility give room for some emotive form, some “reading” of the font itself: a secondary signifier (the primary signifier being the representation of a mental image conjured up by the sound of the word). This is apparent when watching children draw letters that enforce the word’s primary signified by use of the secondary: making words look “short” or “tall,” “thin” or “fat.” Set in a certain typeface, the word can be more specific in its communication. A “dog,” for example, can be a happy tail-wagging dog in Keedy Sans, a vicious dog in Crackhouse, a mongrel in Dead History, or a thoroughbred in Univers. Suddenly, the words have character; they are read visually as well as literally.
This reading of the expressive qualities of type spans beyond the choice of typeface. In print, we read the composition, the format, and the context before we even get to the content. We hear the tone of voice before we understand what it is saying. These elements come into play on the screen too, though in screen-based typography we are given ancillary information through the relationship the text has with time and motion. By virtue of its existence in a time-based medium, type has further expressive possibilities, further layers of signification. Words are given life, characters are given character: motion gives more information. The onscreen typographer is armed with additional communicative ammunition; but haven’t time and motion always been present in print design? Well-designed print typography uses hierarchy and composition to create a rhythm that leads the eyes: headlines to pull you in, bodies of text to slow you down, pictures and type to skip over or return to. The difference is that on the screen both the reader’s eyes and the media’s surface (the screen) are in motion. Our preconceptions of reading can be challenged: left to right, top to bottom, no longer has to be the norm. Motion can become a tool of hierarchy. Like color, our eye is drawn to it, even when it is applied to a small area. Motion can be used as a structural device. Words can appear from any direction, prompting the reader through a text.
The screen introduces possibilities for a three-dimensional typographic environment, fully navigable and interactive. At present, creating these “hyper-typographic” environments is time consuming, and often the end result seems to be hackneyed cinematic flying type. A structural rethinking of the way typographic information works, along the lines of Muriel Cooper’s work at MIT,3 is needed, but with the inclusion of typography’s connotative aspects, rather than using typography only as a means to structure information.
Within the two-dimensional flat-screen space, depth is offered by the representation of three-dimensional worlds, but there is also another depth: the fourth dimension, time. Time can be used to create multiple layers of meaning (without adding formal confusion) through devices such as hidden text and multiple readings. Wordplay can be layered over time; critical or supportive subtexts can be hidden in one moment and apparent in the next; different voices can be housed around the same core content. An intrinsic part of onscreen typography is that the designer becomes more involved with the text (both editing and creating): perhaps this is because the text feels fluid and unfinished in the digital realm, hence it has less authority, is less threatening, and designers are more willing to become involved not only with the form of the words, but with the words themselves.
Because there are few models or standards for interactive work, it should still be viewed as a platform in flux. It provides an opportunity for form and content (typography and writing) to merge into something specific to the realm of the screen, a place where the collapse of the idea that a designer is merely an addition to the writing/meaning of others might seem natural.
Critical analysis of motion typography for computer screens is difficult because, even now, few people have seen a substantial body of interactive work. Every critique is a virgin critique—comments naïve and uninformed—because comparisons are difficult to make, there is no scale to form a system of judgment, and there is little discourse beyond asking what program the work was made with. The increased capabilities of the Web have made it easier to view the work of others, but, unlike in the print world, there is no canon of work, no “good reference” section, no historical genres into which work can be categorized. In one respect, this is liberating; there are no limits to what can be done, no creative restrictions, no formal preconceptions of the end result. In other respects, it is less wonderful. Seeing what already exists is vitally important—to gain a perspective on the plethora of motion-based typography as a whole and try to make sense of it on a global rather than on a local scale, or even to rebel against and to reinvent it.
New media develop in an exponential manner. They build on the previous at a furious rate. Each interactive creative experience is not just a lesson for the individual maker, but also a work that is assimilated into a broader understanding of screen-based digital work. Rather than a total loss of authorship, there is a sense of sharing. You have to make this stuff and put it out there—let it have a life of its own, be altered by others (particularly on the Net), be toyed with and abused. Like a typeface, it only really comes to life when it is used by someone or, rather, in this case, experienced by someone. There is a liberalism that is essential to this production, leaving both design and text open to alteration and multiple interpretation is intrinsic to new media: the idea of creating a “readable” experience rather than a scripted space. The thinking and conceptualizing of these new spaces is more appealing than constructing well-styled possibilities with the available tools. Until the discipline of onscreen design stabilizes, you can always wish for it to be easier, for the technology to be ahead of what is currently possible. However, advances in technology will not substantially alter the fundamental energy of a piece. How the graphic form communicates the idea—including notions of function, appropriateness, and style— is still paramount, though new media designers also have to work on developing the concepts of experience and interaction. At the moment, “the future of new media design is in the hands of game designers making worlds rather than graphic designers making interfaces.”4
Karl Gerstner’s Compendium for Literates provides an excellent catalog of typographic possibility for the time when it was written, but times, typography, and the nature of graphic design have changed since then. As new media move away from mimicking print into its own unique territory, it becomes clear that the rules, metaphors, and processes of print cannot be imported wholesale into the interactive realm, nor can they be taught in the same way. Typography that exists for print and typography that exists for the screen are different: after all, they are functioning in different contexts. That is not to say that all the typographic knowledge that has been acquired by graphic designers should be abandoned. The process is selective. Some information is relevant. Some is not. Typography in new media need not look like a book page, but ignoring all typographic convention is premature too. The fundamentals of expression and hierarchy, which often seem at odds with the medium, will be necessary until text and new media reach a stable point where new conventions will be born. Meanwhile, creators of new media will have to learn to write differently, to design differently, and to use the technology to expand typography’s expressive voice. To stay ahead of commerce and avoid becoming redundant, design students must become versed in a more varied set of skills than previously required. To cope with this, design education must incorporate subjects traditionally seen as the property of other disciplines: the techniques of animation, timing, and sequencing for motion; the fundamentals of narrative structure; a creative attitude toward working with audio and video; and an openness to experimenting in order to design the future. These skills should not be tacked onto the end of conventional typographic training. They should be informed by and mixed with traditional knowledge at all levels of design education and thereby made an intrinsic part of typographic education.
Notes
1. Karl Gerstner, Compendium for Literates, trans. D. Q. Stephenson (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1974). [Kompendium für Alphabeten: Systematik der Schrift Arthur Niggli (Teufen, 1972).]
2. Chris Crawford, Representation versus Depiction: Interactive Entertainment Design. Chris Crawford’s writings can also be found at www.erasmatazz.com/Library.html
3. William Owen, “Design in the Age of Digital Reproduction,” Eye 4, no. 14 (Autumn 1994).
4. In conversation with Brett Wickens, a graphic designer and contributing editor for Eye magazine, Los Angeles, 1997.