Type is an interface between people and language, a sophisticated solution, since only a small set of memorizable shapes can be rearranged in countless ways to produce words and language. Type has its problems as well, for example in pictures or icons included in fonts. For a great part of the history of these, one had to either search a glyph palette or memorize and key in seemingly arbitrary key commands to get the correct icon to appear. Peter Bil’ak’s Greta Symbol variant accepts a string, say, ‘house’ and shows a picture of a house through OpenType.
Travis then shows his FF Chartwell and further explores the idea of type as an interface. In designing the type/interface, he worked to create something that could be simply understood and used, and that anticipated user error as much as possible. The final remarks focused on the advances and limitations of OpenType programming and with encouragement to the attendees to keep exploring.

 

Text — David Sudweeks