I am currently working on my master-thesis in communication design. My topic is the impact of Characteristics and Techniques in Graphic Design and Typography on the Design of Type.
My project consists of a Typeface that is able to display the curve of tension of a story within a static text. It is like bringing the dynamic animations of Variable Fonts we all know into a static text.
Basically you should be able to select a letter at the highest point of tension of a story, set it as extreme point and all letters on the left and on the right should gradually become regular again. Obviously the extreme point will visually differ from the regular text. All of this should happen within the typeface itself, without any plugins or external programmes etc.
My idea now was to design a regular weight and a extreme weight. Then interpolate all the steps in between (about 5 lets say), but not keep all of them as various individual cuts, but rather grouping them into alternate character sets.
With this I should be able to control every step within OpenType. When you now select a letter in a text and select the extreme alternate, all of the surrounding letters should adapt accordingly until the beginning and end of the text.
I asked another type designer, Jürgen Frost. He did a little experiment with contextual alternates and 5 interpolated steps wihtin regular and extreme.
But he ran into two problems:
only 5 letters were able to be used in the curve
it worked only in one word not over various words
I came here to gain new inspiration and maybe some ideas. I really think this could work and would love to solve this. Maybe someone has a bright idea or a new path I can follow
Yeah, kind of. But I want it to work inside the typeface itself when you use it in e.g. InDesign. I do not want any external App/Plugin.
Also this seems expressive in its form, I do not want to create forms within the text, but rather be able to highlight points within the text, by creating visual tension.
It should be possible to have that working across words. Add five variants of space to your glyph set and substitutions.
But it will only be applied within one line. Because OpenType is applied after the lines are split.
I do not have an exact example I want to visualize. The key point here ist to create this technique inside a typeface itself and apply it to anything you want.
An InDesign Script would defy what I try to achieve. Yes, I think it would be possible, but not the goal of my thesis. This would be my last resort to visualize my idea if it will not work out in the end.
