The design of typefaces is founded upon principles from the days of metal type, when creating individual fonts was a laborious process and constrained by physical requirements. Most digital type design follows those same conventions, but technology gives us opportunities to make type design more spontaneous and personal.
In TYPEFACE, letters are constructed from mathematically generated curves controlled by distinct variables that determine such parameters as x-height, slant, bowl curvature, and pen stroke. This design approach allows for a more natural, handwriting-like rendering. Not only does this contrast with the geometric qualities generative type experiments tend to take, but also challenges the conventions of typing versus writing. Since the type generation runs live, typing a note in the software accumulates a range of natural variation.
TYPEFACE was built in Processing using the OPENCV library for face recognition and blob detection. Individual typefaces can be saved and exported by pdf.
This is a project by Mary Huang. It was initiated during the Computational Design course at CIID.
