Typography

Typography

Laika- a dynamic typeface created with Processing

Laika is a dynamic typeface. Via a custom designed control panel, kerning, italics, size and other properties of a typeface can be adjusted. Laika can be responsive to any possible input. The final project installation included type that which was responsive to passers-by.

Laika was done as a bachelor thesis project by Michael Flückiger and Nicholas Kunz.

Laika was created using Processing. In case you did not know, Processing is an open source programming language and environment for people who want to program images, animation, and interactions. I recommend you have a look at it if you have not.

Related Links

Try Laika at it’s website
Processing

Fixing the sIFR 3 text wrap issue

If you are facing the issue of sIFR text wrapping in Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome, just like I did while trying to implement it on my new website meant for the user experience community: UX Quotes , then you should find this post useful.

I am assuming this solution should work with all version 3 revisions though I have particularly tried it with sIFR 3.436.

Try one of the two arguments given below to fix the text wrap issue.

1. forceSingleLine

The forceSingleLine argument forces text to be displayed in a single line.

Values
True, false

Note
Note that if you have a very long line of text, then it will flow beyond the width of the container it is placed in. This argument is different from preventWrap. The preventWrap argument results in text getting clipped or cut off when it exceeds width. Think of singleLineWrap as overflow:visible and preventWrap as overflow:hidden declaration/ value pairs in CSS.

Example

sIFR.replace(test, {
  selector: 'h1',
  css: '.sIFR-root { color: #cccccc; width: 100%; text-align: left; letter-spacing:1;}',
  wmode: 'transparent',
  forceSingleLine: true;
});

2. tuneWidth

The tuneWidth argument adjusts the width of the Flash movie for adjusting the space around the flash movie.

Values
Positive or negative number

Example

sIFR.replace(test, {
  selector: 'h1',
  css: '.sIFR-root { color: #cccccc; width: 100%; text-align: left; letter-spacing:1;}',
  wmode: 'transparent',
  tuneWidth: 1;
});

David Carson on Design + Discovery

The guy who broke all the rules of traditional typography, gave grunge typography an identity of its own, Raygun art direcrtor, David Carson walks through a gorgeous (and often quite funny) slide deck of his work and found images.

About David Carson

David Carson’s boundary-breaking typography in the 1990s, in Ray Gun magazine and other pop-cult books, ushered in a new vision of type and page design - quite simply, breaking the traditional mold of type on a page and demanding fresh eyes from the reader. Squishing, smashing, slanting and enchanting the words on a layout, Carson made the point, over and over, that letters on a page are art. You can see the repercussions of his work to this day, on a million Flash intro pages (and probably just as many skateboards and T-shirts).

His first book, with Lewis Blackwell and a foreword by David Byrne, is The End of Print, and he’s written or collaborated on several others, including the magisterial Book of Probes, an exploration of the thinking of Marshall McLuhan. His latest book is Trek, a collection of his recent work.

Other Links

David Carson’s website
Books by David Carson: The End of Print, The Book of Probes & Trek

Helvetica- The movie- Watch David Carson in the film and his take on expression through Helvetica, especially if you are into what I believe is the rather blind fanatic “Helvetica rocks and Arial sucks, but I really don’t know why though everybody says so” designer fad.