artist's statement
keely kuester
a-font-of-type.js was born from a beginner's perspective. Barely a month into working at Skeuomorph Press, I stumbled upon an idea which has shaped my thinking ever since.
I spent my first few shifts redistributing type, focused on learning the layout of the California job case. Picking it up didn't take long, but impatient as I am, I started developing a strategy to increase my efficiency. I noticed each individual word had a distinct path. By memorizing the way my hand moved between the letters 't,' 'h,' and 'e,'' I was able to redistribute the entire word 'the' as one sequence of movements, rather than searching around for each individual letter. I then realized that each word's pattern would be strung together by spacing, also present within the job case. If words could be mapped, so could sentences - so could entire texts.
From a pencil sketch on tracing paper to an interactive program in JavaScript, I've found this visualization striking at every stage of development. What began as an artistic concept has evolved into a lens through which aspects of typesetting and text continue to surface. These graphs contain the movements of countless individuals, serving to visualize the typographical DNA which composes a text. Hand-setting established content is, to me, an echo - as I move, so too did Whitman, so too have many compositors between us. This visualization gives those not physically involved a glimpse of this interaction.
I'm also struck by how this changes my notion of text itself - hand-set texts contain both the journey and the destination. This imaging maps a text's journey through a California case, but the text itself is what contains these points, their ordering. The text serves as the function, the case as the coordinate system. In this way, text is itself a map of the humans who composed it. a-font-of-type.js merely brings this latent content to the surface.
In a way, this project falls under preservation. Human movement through space is ultimately intangible- instantly carried away by time. This results in embodied experiences being easily overlooked, but I'd argue that typesetting is itself art- the words choreography, the process a dance. The number of individuals who have hand set Whitman's poetry has dropped by orders of magnitude over time, resulting in the loss of a certain physical intimacy with those poems. This project seeks to solidify a portion of this physicality, to preserve an aspect of these poems that would otherwise disappear. Thus, a-font-of-type.js serves as a preservation of the lines humans carve through space.
This project exists due to encouragement from & collaboration with Kadin Henningsen.
from case to code
creative decisions & hopes moving forward
For this iteration of a-font-of-type.js, I've prioritized aesthetics and intelligibility over firm accuracy. I believe this project is more striking when discernable - a smaller text, within which users can see a beginning and end. In the future, I hope to base such decisions upon more concrete research.
I had several aspects to consider as I began to map the California case. A large and difficult one was spacing.
When I set type, I typically begin each line with an em-quad, for stability's sake. This is a habit I've picked up on my own, but not one I feel I can broaden to all compositors without evidence. Additional considerations are the breakdown of indentation, and even the centering of certain texts. In the future, I hope to look deeper into what 'best practice' might have been in different regions, at different times, and thus while working with different styles of the job case. For now, each new line begins with an em-quad, except for the first, for visual significance.
Additionally, when typesetting, one often uses large amounts of spacing to fill out the end of a line. I tend to grab whichever large spacing is available, and sometimes even measure out leading. While likely always imprecise, I'd like to look further into standard practice for these little bits of improvisation. For now, approximating this filler content felt it might clutter the diagram, and I've opted to disregard it.
Another note is the absence of the composing stick- the way it trails along in a composer's left hand felt too imprecise to map. I hope to include a nod to this object in the future.