Virtual Typography

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Job:01212 Title: Basics typography (AVA)

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104—105

Tomato was founded in 1991 as a collective of artists, designers,

musicians and writers. A commission to produce the music,

titles and closing sequence for the fi lm Trainspotting in 1996 put

them fi rmly on the map of the international graphic design scene.

Jason Kedgley and Dylan Kendle animated textures of lines

that simultaneously symbolise the passing of train coaches and

the tracks of needles on human skin. Their motion graphic also

symbolises the intertwining of the protaganists’ stories.

The animation was originally created in Macromedia Director,

a multimedia design software, and printed frame by frame before

being copied with a thermographic fax. Each fax frame was

then ‘rostrummed’ sequentially, which produced the right look

and texture, but did not provide consistent results. This affected

legibility of the type and also made frame registration impossible.

So Kedgley and Kendle abandoned their fi rst attempt and decided

to recreate the animation in an online suite. But the brown and

cream colouring of the visuals that was meant to hint at heroin

consumption got lost in transition to digital. The remnants of the

fi rst approach can be seen in these character cards (shown at the

end of the fi lm as thermofacsimiles of photographs).

Trainspotting – Tomato

Job:01212 Title: Basics typography (AVA)

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