Though typography is nothing if not purposeful, much of its pleasure is abstract (without meaning). Perhaps the exercise here is an attempt to isolate a pleasingly nonmaterial aspect of a typographic experience, by removing all the communicative aspects.
When thinking of even the most sensually tactile graphic designers (Irma Boom comes to mind) the satisfaction often comes from the combinatory cleverness of conveyance (object and impression — message and carrier). This experiment is something like a love of type displayed by impression and carrier only.
Secondary but also present here is a desire to contribute (albeit in an extremely modest way) to the progress of bringing the power and beauty of printed design into the digital environment. That is, to participate in the growth of web design by showing what is uniquely possible here, with pixels, interactivity, etc (in contrast to that which is impossible with ink and the static nature of print).
The mechanism: three layers are positioned on top of each other. With each click, the layers render between one and three glyphs. The glyphs are chosen at random from a predefined set of characters. Each text layer has its own color — blue, yellow, and magenta, and each is configured to mix with the other layers using the CSS method mix-blend-mode: multiply which produces four additional colors.
The font: Tobias Frere-Jones: “For gritty reality and rust-belt appearance, Garage Gothic was derived from numbered tickets given at city parking garages. Irregular contours and rough alignments found on the lettering were retained in the font, albeit disciplined and restrained.”
HomeWhen thinking of even the most sensually tactile graphic designers (Irma Boom comes to mind) the satisfaction often comes from the combinatory cleverness of conveyance (object and impression — message and carrier). This experiment is something like a love of type displayed by impression and carrier only.
Secondary but also present here is a desire to contribute (albeit in an extremely modest way) to the progress of bringing the power and beauty of printed design into the digital environment. That is, to participate in the growth of web design by showing what is uniquely possible here, with pixels, interactivity, etc (in contrast to that which is impossible with ink and the static nature of print).
Move the circles
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The mechanism: three layers are positioned on top of each other. With each click, the layers render between one and three glyphs. The glyphs are chosen at random from a predefined set of characters. Each text layer has its own color — blue, yellow, and magenta, and each is configured to mix with the other layers using the CSS method mix-blend-mode: multiply which produces four additional colors.
The font: Tobias Frere-Jones: “For gritty reality and rust-belt appearance, Garage Gothic was derived from numbered tickets given at city parking garages. Irregular contours and rough alignments found on the lettering were retained in the font, albeit disciplined and restrained.”