Brief Synopsis: The Bad Type Tool is a teaching tool that I developed that allows users to quickly create a really bad font. I determined the fastest way to make a bad font, and learn from it, was by starting with a good font and messing it up. Students can quickly see how small changes interrupt the color of a paragraph of type, while being playful and experimental with letterforms.
While in the Type@Cooper program, one of the biggest learning challenges for me was training my eye to understand what made a typeface work well for different scenarios. I struggled to quickly learn the difference between small adjustments to a series of letterforms and subsequent affect those adjustments have on an entire paragraph of type. To help support this learning challenge for students, I created a tool that lets you quickly mess up the color of the paragraph.
Brief Synopsis: I wanted to use Open Frameworks to see if I could make a font that relies on motion. Inspired by a line made by waving a flashlight back and forth, this Light Array motion font uses traveling circles to create letterforms. To facilitate the“drawing” process, I developed a 5x7 grid system and used a two-digit coordinate-mapping system for each circle’s movement. So“12”, referred to row 1, column 2 and“17” refers to row 1, column 7. This allowed me to have the relatively simple notation for each line of“colMovement(12, 17).”
Notes: A font that relies on motion. Based on the idea of drawing a letter using traveling light, rather than actual lines. To facilitate the"drawing" process, I developed a 5x7 grid system upon which to draw the shapes. Once that was standardized, I was able to map the coordinates for both the start and end position of each circle into 2 2-digit numbers. So"12", means row 1 / column 2."17" means row 1 / column 7. So, both coordinates and their motion can be tucked into a simple(x, y), such as(12, 17). Using this notation, the drawing plan for an"A" can be accomplished in just 4 lines of code:
Projects
CODE: Bad Type Tool
CODE: Pixels to Paint
CODE: Light Array Motion Font
//Draw A colMovement(12, 17); colMovement(52, 57); colMovement(21, 41); colMovement(14, 54)