Module 2 - Field Journal

Does Culture Influence Alphabet Design and Function?

After reading Megg’s History of Graphic Design, chapters one through four, I decided to explore more thoroughly the influence of culture on alphabet character design, and whether these cultural influences effect how we use the alphabet.

Alphabet Design

I’m completely amazed by all we have learned about the development of writing and the alphabet; how we’ve gone from pictographs and ideographs to phonograms, and the alphabet we know today.  In Megg’s History of Graphic Design, the chart on page 18 helped me see how the original Phoenician alphabet characters were refined by successive cultures.

One example of cultural influence on design is the Classical Greek alphabet. Classical Greek philosophy influenced the graphic quality of the alphabet.  Classical Greek philosophy emphasized harmony in all aspect of human life:  

“Humans (sic) formed the center of the universe as an independent human being…were able to contribute and take active part in the success of their life. To achieve this it was important to pursue (sic) harmony in their lives instead of chaos. 

Balance, harmony, was a very important concept during the Classic Period. Optimally harmony was believed to be a sign of divinity.” 

This philosophy carried over into Greek alphabet characters, as described by the textbook on page 23, “From a graphic design standpoint, the Greeks applied geometric structure and order to the uneven Phoenician characters, converting them into art forms of great harmony and beauty”.

The information led me to investigate the effect of contemporary high-tech culture on alphabet character structure. Given the quick, and ever-increasing availability of information today via the internet and smart phones, as well as text messaging, popularity of social websites, and development of a more international business climate, how has the alphabet changed?

To investigate the impact of high-tech, and international business culture on alphabet characters I searched the web for recent examples of typeface hoping to find new high-tech inspired typography designs.  I found new typography examples at www.typography.com, a site produced by design firm Hoefler & Frere-Jones.  However, what really intrigued me about the designs were the selling points.

While reviewing the site, three typeface caught my eye: Gotham Extra Narrow, Mercury Text and Display, and Gotham.  Of special interest to me were the website selling points which exemplified the impact of high tech and international business.  For instance, a selling point for the new Gothic Extra Narrow typeface describes it as “A new width of Gothic designed for space efficiency – think web graphics, publications…” and, the Mercury Text and Display type is described as “High performance meets high style in Mercury, a family of text and display faces specially designed to shine in different media.”   The Gotham typeface, is advertised as, “Open Type editions of Gotham contain H&FJ’s Latin X character set, covering more than 140 languages throughout the world…” Ok – well doesn’t this mean that not only can many countries use it, but also that companies with foreign business interests can use the typeface to consistently project their identity throughout the world; international graphic design cohesiveness?

Just for fun, I’ve included the following clip from the website.  The clip talks about “typefacial recognition” and how H&FJ is using it to develop type.  (I had trouble transferring the photograph to the journal, but those interested can view it at www.typography.com/ask/?path=head).

Typefacial Recognition at H&FJ Labs

We're generally content to control font outlines by pushing points around on a screen, but an intuitive interface for managing the entire gestalt of a type family remains elusive. H&FJ's Andy Clymer tends to develop fonts and tools together (one always seems to be the excuse to create the other), and this is his latest exploration: using facial recognition to control the basic parameters of a font's design.

Behold Andy modeling his latest creation, which employs Kyle McDonald's FaceOSC library, GlyphMath from RoboFab, and Tal Leming's Vanilla to mutate the geometries behind our Ideal Sans typeface in realtime. I'm intrigued by the potential to control local and global qualities of a typeface at the same time: fingers and mouse to design the details, faces and cameras to determine their position in a whole realm of design possibilities. I wonder about the possibilities of a facial feedback loop, in which one's expression of wonder and delight could instantly undo a momentof evanescent beauty. And then there are the possibilities of environmental pathogens affecting letterforms: what might too much caffeine, air conditioning, or ragweed pollen do to a typeface? Listening to Louis C.K.? Too many whiskey sours? —JH

Alphabet Function

In addition to exploring the impact of culture on alphabet design, I’m also interested in how culture influences alphabet use in visual communication.  In the textbook, the word ‘alphabet’ is clearly defined on page 18, “as a set of visual symbols or characters used to represent the elementary sounds of a spoken language.”  However, does culture alter how the alphabet is used to communicate?

For instance, during the Christian era, the culture of the period focused on the importance of religion and religious writings became sacred. As the textbook states on page 42,  “Sacred writings held great meaning for Christians, Jews and Muslims.  The use of visual embellishment to expand the word became very important, and illuminated manuscripts were produced with extraordinary care and design sensitivity.”

Illuminated Manuscript

Just as the Christian era influenced the use of alphabet characters for visual communication, today’s high-tech culture is also influential.  The speed with which we are expected to gather, interpret and distribute ever increasing amounts of visual information, seems to have transformed the original use of alphabet characters, to a combination of characters representing vocal sounds and ideas, (or ideographs).

There are articles criticizing technology, especially texting, for ruining our ability to write.  However true this may be, could it also be that today’s fast-paced, visual information loaded culture is trying to transform use of the alphabet to handle all this information?  And, is this new use going to become so identifiable that is gets transferred into graphic design?  I see this in my teenagers and friends text messages – the word ‘you’ is now ‘u’.  Is ‘u’ now a letter, or an ideograph?  Are what we consider acronyms, like ‘lol’, or ‘laugh out loud’, becoming such well know symbols that the combination of letters are an ideograph to communicate ‘funny’?

Text Messaging using Letters for Words

Also, while not alphabet characters, punctuation is used in as ideographs in our text message sentences, i.e. ‘:/’, or ‘argh’?  Following is an interesting text translation website,  http://www.noslang.com/, and some examples from the site,

bbf  -   best boy friend

bbfn  -   Bye Bye for now

bbfs  -   best boyfriends

bbfu  -   be back for you

bbi  -   Baby

bbiab  -   be back in a bit

Culture does impact both graphic quality and visual communication of alphabet characters.  I’m interested to see what the future brings.






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Sources:


www.the-artfile.com/ArtFile/history/classicperiod.shtml


www.typography.com


www.minicampress.com


http://www.noslang.com

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