Frankenstein meets Frankenfont

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, reinvented from fragments of PDF fonts by the team at Fathom Information Design in Boston.
A team of visual storytellers from Fathom lead by data-viz wiz Ben Fry, recently recreated the entire text of Frankenstein using characters and glyphs from over 64,000 PDF documents obtained through internet searches. Precisely 55,382 different glyph shapes were extracted from 347,565 fonts in the PDFs, which were then coded and sequenced to fill all of the 342,889 individual letters found in the Frankenstein text. What emerges from this DNA-like sequencing is a new Frankenfont creation formed from font fragments by Fathoms' Fry and friends.
      The story opens with the display of the most common characters such as Arial, Helvetica and Times New Roman. As the story of the Frankenstein monster evolves, so does the text which is coded to completely devolve into grotesque shapes near the end. Familiar glyphs and fonts merge into obscure scripts; non-Roman fonts begin to appear; and even typefaces morph into pictograms. This Frankenfont transformation becomes the perfect metaphor for Shelley's classic tale of the deformed monster Frankenstein. 

While most books are typically designed to interpret the authors' words with little fanfare and with an obedience to convention as Stanley Morrison once put it, Fry's new Frankenfont edition plays with our sense of order, and the traditional design principles such as consistency, navigation and readability go entirely out the window. As a teacher of book design and typography for many years, I strongly advocate these principles of convention to my students. Afterall, books have been successfully published in this manner for over 500 years. Despite this endorsement, I'm also a big fan of innovation and experimentation in books. In Fry's edition of Frankenstein, a hallmark of book design and innovation has been reached with this conceptual approach to text layout.
      As a timely sidenote to this story, the topic of a frankenfont came up in my classroom just 2 weeks ago when Kevin Larson from the Advanced Reading Technologies Department at Microsoft, was speaking to my students about readability studies of various typefonts and individual characters. Larson is a text enthusiast and has published many studies on the science of word recognition and legibility of characters. The suggestion of a frankenfont was mentioned in jest as one which could build upon the best characters of many fonts in order to achieve greater legibility. The next day, my student Susan Schumacher added a post on our class Facebook page with a link to Fathom's new Frankenfont edition of Frankenstein.
      Copies of the Frankenfont project can be purchased in paperback or hardback editions on Blurb with all profits given to Donors Choose to buy books for students. Incidently, Ben Fry was recently awarded a National Design Award in Interaction Design in June from the Smithsonian's Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum. 

All of the nearly 5500 unique words to be found in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. (Click image to expand). The key to any great novel is to put them all in the right place ; )
:: Thanks to James Gaddy of Co.Design for packaging this story so nicely.

Text Appeal

Readers, writers, typographers, and printers take note. The 6th annual Text Ball—the lettered stepchild of Portland, Oregon's annual literary Wordstock Festival—will take place on October 1st at p:ear Gallery. The theme this year is In Poetic Fashion and it is a benefit for the non-profit Independent Publishing Resource Center in Portland which promotes literacy through DIY publishing. There will be live music by indie-folk heroine Laura Gibson and poetry readings, word games, giant crossword puzzles, dirty limerick challenges, a silent auction and more, including a parade of well-lettered fashions and prizes for the text-dressed. Come dressed as your favorite poem, book, letter, story, or word, enjoy the letterati and support a great cause. Advance tickets for $12 can be purchased here or $15 at the door.
      The photo above is last year's grand prize winner for Best Text, Erica Hijazi. She constructed a fashionable bow from a 1939 Williamette College newpaper she unearthed while picking up a VCR purchased on Craigslist. Soooo Portlandia! Her date wore a tie constructed from the same newspaper.

Mark Anen came dressed as a Government G-Man.

Aimee Pedretti's vision of Hell was Dante's Inferno.

Runner-up for Most Literary is writer and author Myrlin Hermes, featuring the entire text of Shakespeare's Sonnet 129: "The expense of spirit in a waste of shame is lust in action..."
::All photos from the last year's text-dressed are taken by Georgia Perry.

Text Patterns

When I first caught sight of the artwork below by Czech artist and poet Jiří Kolář (1914-2002), it reminded me of the growth rings in a tree. It is actually a collage he made of blackletter text in 1966. Although Kolář died nearly 10 years ago, he is still considered one of Czechoslovakia's most significant fine artists and poets of the latter half of the last century. Below are 2 other Kolář collage artworks from the same 2010 Prague exhibit. 

Taken by Greg Mullinex at a 2010 exhibit of Kolář's work in Prague. Thanks for sharing Greg!

Literature For Your Walls

Printed on satin-finished paper, these books come ready-for-hanging on your wall as posters. Designed by Postertext, most contain the entire text of a book and are illustrated with a memorable scene from the story. New books are added nearly every week, so be sure to check back if you don't see your favorite currently displayed.

From the top: 

Moby Dick

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

The Great Gatsby

Alphabet Dreams

Why has it taken so long for the interior design community to recognize there might be a market for typographic wallcoverings? Here are some nice off the rack designs, but one could easily print up their own custom designs as well.

:: From Freshome via Teaching Literacy

Body Text

Some smart packaging for Davina Peace which is a luxurious and ethically responsible brand of body care products. It was launched last November at Harrods. Designed by Micha Weidmann Studio in London.
:: Via: Designinspiration

Moveable Type

More typographic erosion from San Francisco designer Jason Permenter. This is the third in his series, each of which explores the effects of erosion and weathering on the printed word. The text itself is taken from a 1971 essay on experimental typography by the German designer and typographer Wolfgang Weingart, and is set in Adrian Frutiger's Univers typeface. I have reported on his earlier eroding texts in a previous post. Get your copy here before they erode away entirely.
::Thanks SwissMiss!

Textillusions

Is it just me, or does this photo look like text on a page? Stunning photography work by landscape photographer, Micheal Kenna. The leading is a little loose for that particular point size however.

Tiny vs. Zepto

If I could, I would output this in 2 pt Tiny font (with expanded options for the aged and visually-challenged surely). Google are you listening? There is a licensing opportunity here. About 3 days ago I wrote the post Honey, I've Shrunk The Declaration of Independence, about the design of the Tiny font and today I've received notice from Makezine there is a teeny imposter of the Tiny font by the name of Zepto, available for free on MyFonts. Teeny font = teeny price! Perlin's font on the other hand is not for sale at this time.

Look closely at the images above for comparison. Zepto is similar in size to Ken Perlin's font, Tiny, but it is made of black pixels only. Tiny is created with differently-colored pixels, which are not entirely identical. (Check out the o's and n's.) One could say Zepto is slightly more readable than Tiny at the enlarged size shown above, however just the opposite is true when printed in the 2 pt. range. In this battle of the fonts, I'd say Tiny scores BIG.

Honey, I've Shrunk The Declaration of Independence

Ken Perlin, Professor of Computer Science at NYU Media Research Lab, claims to have developed the smallest readable screen font, called Tiny, which is designed specifically for LCD screens. As an experiment, Perlin reduced our 500 word Declaration of Independence to fit a small 320 x 240 pixel QVGA display using his closely-leaded 2 pt. Tiny font with a justified setting. Surprisingly, it is still somewhat readable. The circular magnification inside Perlin's example below provides some hint of Tiny's resolution, however I would dare him to try and letterspace this text any tighter! At best, he would have to answer to the Type Police. And does he have any clue what the Tea Party crowd might do to him when they see how our Declaration of Independence is being further reduced? Just sayin'...














Via Makezine

Typographic Erosion

Can text on paper be subject to geophysical forces of nature such as erosion or earthquake? See for yourself. Designer Jason Permenter demonstrates scientific proof that it most certainly can.