In this episode a book designer, AI and programming enthusiasts selected by @tomorrow.type.today account’s As some members of our team are living in Russia we have to follow the Russian law. According to the law, every time we post links to Instagram or Facebook we have to mention the fact that these socials belong to Meta, which was recognized as extremist by the Ministry of Justice if the Russian Federation curator Timur Zima share their thoughts on the future of typography.

@khyatitrehan

Khyati Trehan is a graphic designer and 3D visual artist hailing from India, currently residing and working in New York. Khyati’s career has seen her work across disciplines, drawing inspiration from the context of the work and often exploring the edges of all things visual for the likes of the Oscars, New York Times, Apple, Google and Instagram.

Recently Khyati has been immersing herself in different generative AI tools, expressing her experience by stating, «If there’s an accessible generative AI tool on the Internet that doesn’t need me to run a colab, I’d dabbled with it.» However, she acknowledges that she is still in the play mode with GenAI, emphasizing the presence of more serendipity than control in AI’s work.

In her quest for an optimal creative workflow, Khyati recognizes that AI tools don’t necessarily evoke a sense of creativity within her. She expresses, «The text-to-image model is efficient but takes the joy out of the making. It takes spending time on a piece, sleeping over it, making mistakes, solving them, and tons of iteration to take it to a place where it reflects me just as much as it surprises me. My workaround to settle this feeling is to deliberately make a ’back and forth’ between traditional tools and AI tools a part of the process, which makes for interesting workflow possibilities.» So she describes her current, combined workflow as following: «I might start with lettering, use it to make a 3D animation, take the frames to an AI tool (Midjourney, Dall-e, Runway, Pika Labs, Illusion Diffusion etc) to augment it, and then bring it back into more traditional design tools.»

Khyati classifies her current type specific AI works as expressive typography, however, she hopes for that to change. «I expect models to get better at taking on some of the more practical tasks involving typography, like making interactive layout options, or scaling character systems». — shared Khyati.

@darius_ou

Darius Ou is a graphic designer from Singapore. His practice has always revolved around typography and particularly books. As technologies in various digital fields tend to impact the creative industry as a whole, he wonders how they will affect the printed book format, which has been around for millenia. "As the book is also a technology developed to communicate ideas and to store information — the question is not if, but when will it evolve?" — supposed Darius, and with this notion dug into the history and technology of the ancient codex. During the research Darius had been constantly asking himself why graphic designers take the form and processes of printing a book for granted, and what if they actually felt free to print in another dimension instead of just the space designed by x and y axes?

Darius assumes that this question is connected to the phenomena of the death of print in the industry — which is a decades-old saying that has neither gone away nor fully manifested. He is now working on a research combining bookbinding and printing technologies with 3D printing and trying to find out what death of print truly means for graphic designers, and how the 3D-printer would reconcile with it.

So far Darius has created two 3D printed books — a rather experimental prototype SLIC3D and CORPUS featuring more in-depth exploration and analysis of the subject.

@wnzldnl

Daniel Wenzel delved into type design even before university, and had been releasing typefaces under his name since then. Eventually, he took a step back and started 26A1, an independent type foundry named after the Unicode High Voltage symbol (U+26A1). «As the Unicode standard describes how type is stored electronically, the name is bridging the gap between classic type design and technology.» — Daniel explains.

Daniel’s approach to type and design in general is experimental, expressive and with the intent to challenge conventions. He says that the longer he does type design, the better he realizes what to expect from his own typefaces. Daniel’s favourite retail typeface he’s created so far is Knickerbocker, a design system that divides its weight into two separate axes for top and bottom. Daniel shares that despite his love of retail typefaces balancing between expressiveness and versatility, he finds his custom typefaces most exciting. «But these designs are exclusive for a reason. Once there is a branding that uses them, they can’t really be used in another», adds Daniel on the contrary.

However, Daniel implements a lot of coding in his type design practice to create new tools that streamline the design process or offer new frameworks. «While I am driven to make an impact through my own work, I also recognize the exponential potential of equipping others with innovative tools, allowing them to effect change in their own unique ways», says Daniel.

Daniel wrote his thesis on automated type design, and much of his work came from the misuse of software to automate certain tasks in the type design process. So he wants to educate yonger designers about the possibilities they already have, creating typefaces that could be used as tools themselves. «Veelo, for example, maintains a consistent width and outer stroke integrity across all styles and was originally developed to enable animations and designs through uni-width interpolation that would not be possible with other typefaces. I believe that in the digital age, there is much more we can do, and I’m committed to questioning the status quo, empowering designers with tools and typefaces that redefine what’s possible.»