Monday, February 15, 2010

typeiv words

After conducting several experiments to find new ways to create kinetic typography, I've been lead to a new set of questions. Since there are many nuances in the industry I am not so interested in what I can do to kinetic typography but rather what kinetic typography can do for me. My User Experience professor Michael Kidwell has a benchmark to list the three principle uses of language. They are the Practical, the Poetic, and the Persuasive. All three point to a specific trait that good typography has. This trait is Memorably Specific for a Reason.


Knowing this I set out to find what this means for kinetic typography. I began to look at materials and their possible connotation baggage, and also different words or messages I could say with the materials.


I thought of Andy Goldsworthy and other artists who do ephemeral work. I looked at people who do "Permanent" sculptural work like Takenobu Igurashi. This research lead me to believe that sculptural could be a kinetic and powerful medium for typography that could make it more memorable because the words could interact with real objects and the environment. This would add tactile sensations and other memorable stimuli that people could relate to.


Then another sub-question came to mind. Does kinetic type have to be in a film or can it be depicted in a series of photographs. Or does it even need to be captured at all; just sculpture. Since the earth and all its things are moving all the time, there is no stopping anything. I've noticed that 3d kinetic type is truly the last frontier for the field because it bridges the gap between image and type as well as the gap between photo and film.


make three dimensional bitmap words. work on three dimensional cursive. work on other things, and then make vector and bitmap imagery from them in order to create movable letters and words from them.