Funny Type

The defining movement of the end of the last century in graphic design was not aesthetical, but a technology based one. If until the late seventies graphic design was dominated by personality and national movements(Swiss modernism, American New Wave, Russian Constructvism, etc), more recent history will be dominated by the engineers, there soft and hardware. What graphic designers do, is not now just a question of function and form, but what the software allows them to do. Against this domination, the Dutch duo Erik van Blokland and Just van Rossum (known as Letterror, www.letterror.com) have redefined the possibilities by learning the secret code of the machines and creating the complicated routines they need to make the computer do as they command.

During the early 90s a series of typefaces appeared that are still unique and truly radical. First was Beowolf (www.fontfont.com), a typeface that forever changed itself, then Kosmik a typeface which kept on changing throughout the document, and then Bitpull a bitmap typeface where each pixel could individually controlled to be bent and stretched at will. But what made these typefaces all so unusual? Simply through there programming these typefaces had taken on new life, they had minds of there own. Many typefaces of today look like they were created by a computer, but they weren’t. They were laboriously made on computers, but they could exist in other technologies. The designs of Letterror were uniquely of the age, they can only exist with the computer.

If Dutch graphic design is often categorised as radical (from the work of Piet Zwart, Paul Schuitema through to Studio Dumbar), it can also be identified by a quality that goes back to traditional craftsmanship. With there radical agenda, it is often easy to forget that Letterror’s work is also based on solid values of good lettering, which can be traced back to the father of modern Dutch type design, Gerrit Noordzij, who taught the duo back at The Royal Academy for Fine and Applied Arts in the Hague.

The latest typeface, Federal designed by Van Blokland, on first inspection appears to be another 19th century revival (or more specifically the lettering on America paper currency), but a second look makes one realise this isn’t another simple retread and exemplifies the process of artistry and technology in unity. The letters aren’t direct copies from the past, instead like the Beatles For the Benefit of Mr Kite, they give one of the impression of the past without actually being from there. In fact such complexity, couldn’t easily exist in the previous era. The application Layer Player that comes with the font allows the user to add and control various levels of engraving and drop shadows with ease. They have even overcome the problem of optical sizing; the greater the size the more the detail of engraving.

All of this work (which has been going on for the last six years) was helped by the development of another typically Letterror item, Robofog (with Petr van Blokland www.robofog.com). This application through the programming language Python, allows the user to programme particular commands that can then be universally applied. So by entering new parameters, additional designs can be quickly created and then perfected. With the addition of small applications like Layer Player, previously complicated and time consuming tasks can be automated for the end user. As Erik van Blokland says ‘Anything that can be automated should be automated, the rest is design.’