Mood Letters. Why cast typefaces in \u201cimmutable metal\u201d when digital offers so much more possibility? Such was the attitude brought by Erik van Blokland and Just van Rossum of the Dutch design firm, LettError to a competition to create a \u201ccivic typeface\u201d for the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota, as reported by Matthew Mirapaul in The New York Times (7\/24\/03). The competition was sponsored by the University of Minnesota Design Institute, and the winner, chosen from among six entries, is best described as \u201ca typeface that can\u2019t make up its mind.\u201d<\/p>\n
This \u201cmorphing\u201d typeface, appropriately named Twin, is based on \u201cthree typographic traits.\u201d Formality is conveyed by \u201cserifs,\u201d informality by \u201croundness\u201d and \u201cweirdness\u201d is \u201csignaled through exotic means, like a lower-case \u2018I\u2019 made with four vertical dots.\u201d Based on this standard, the designers created a total of 880 variations, and ranked each one based on \u201chow much it expressed each trait.\u201d Then the interactive part\u2014the designers wrote software that allows \u201cpeople to decide how much of each trait they wanted.\u201d Just assign a value\u2014from 0 to 100\u2014to each trait, and enter your word, which will look stodgy, surreal, or anywhere in-between. Play with it yourself at: the UMN.edu site<\/a>.<\/p>\n The truly intriguing idea is that the typeface can be controlled not only by people, but also data. For example, it can programmed to respond to temperatures (always a matter of concern in the Twin Cities). The more frigid the weather, the more formal the typeface; as the temperature warms, Mood Letters. Why cast typefaces in \u201cimmutable metal\u201d when digital offers so much more possibility? Such was the attitude brought by Erik van Blokland and Just van Rossum of the Dutch design firm, LettError to a competition to create a \u201ccivic typeface\u201d for the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota, as reported by…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[89,6],"tags":[59,662,661,663,660,299,14],"class_list":["post-2412","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bookmarks","category-writing","tag-design","tag-font","tag-mood-type","tag-morphing","tag-type","tag-typeface","tag-web"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/emilychang.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2412","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/emilychang.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/emilychang.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emilychang.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emilychang.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2412"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/emilychang.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2412\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/emilychang.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2412"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emilychang.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2412"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emilychang.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2412"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nthe typeface turns \u201cfriendly and rounder.\u201d Erik Spiekermann, a Berlin type designer, envisions the typeface responding to bull and bear markets. \u201cOr, he says, \u201cyou could plug it into a calendar. Halloween will look as distinct as Presidents\u2019 Day or the mayor\u2019s birthday.\u201d Ultimately, he says, it\u2019s up to consumers\u2014not designers\u2014to work it all out. \u201cWhen the Wright brothers built their first plane, they weren\u2019t thinking of moving 350 people from Frankfurt to Minneapolis…They just wanted to soar.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"