typeface as a program

Thanks to manystuff, I came across the first book we feature here:

Calligraphy and hand-drawn letters comprise series of strokes and curves; mechanical typography does too, through the engraving process of punches and counter-punches. Digital typography, however, dematerializes this operation, leaving the choice of formal references open-ended. Does that mean novel forms of design could evolve through manipulating fonts’ algorithmic data? Several small scripting programs were developed and tested by the students during a series of workshops.

Full details here

decode V&A

Victoria and Albert Museum has commissioned the artist Karsten Schmidt to design a truly malleable, digital identity for the Decode exhibition by providing it as open source code. We are giving you the opportunity to recode Karsten’s work and create your own original artwork. If we love your work it might even become the new Decode identity.

Text quoted from Decode via FormFiftyFive. Image from toxi’s Flickr.

linking europe

London based company Company has created a flexible identity, that draws itself linking the 12 stars of the EU flag every time on a different way, for the European Interagency Security Forum (EISF).

More images and info here

AOL animations

Part of the already commented AOL rebrand. This videos from Field are truly generative, adding even more complexity to the identity.

Apart from that, there is an impressive body of generative work worth looking at at their own website.

Thanks to Generator.x

AOL & brief history of dynamic identities

Roger van der Bergh posted a very interesting article at Identity Forum originated by the AOL new identity and showing that flexible identities are not a trend but a reliable strategy.

melbourne

Another great system from Landor Australia where the filling of the M could be customised according to certain rules to adapt new requirements.

The designs were all part of conveying the diverse and creative fabric of Melbourne. There were fixed rules, in that we could only use the points of the triangular structure. All the crystal style facets, the gridded forms and the intricate patterns and 3d compositions all use the geometric points that the M was created on – nothing is just randomly positioned.

Thanks Jason for the quote.

namics

The Swiss company Heads came up last year with a brilliant identity system for Namics, based on the inputs from the company’s employees.

They just won a reddot design award to be awarded the next December the 9th. Congratulations.

laika

The first dynamic font ever? Let’s play around.

Thanks to Nano @ Zenblog

colour sucker

Colorsukr is an online application by Paul Burgess that generates colour palettes from images. An interesting tool worth looking at.

casa da música

Very interesting project from Stephan Sagmeister for the Casa da Música music venue in Porto, Portugal.

Thanks to Brand New