Virtual Typography

2.3

2

Job:01212 Title: Basics typography (AVA)

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Approaching multimedia: 2.3 Information landscapes

2.2 Temporal and transitional typography 2.4 Novelty value

Information landscapes

Information landscapes are computer-generated

environments that allow users to navigate virtually

through the information that is displayed on screen.

Texts and images are essentially static here. It is

the reader who moves virtually through three-dimensional

arrangements of blocks of text similar to the interactive

navigation used in many computer games. In his essay

Navigating Large Bodies of Text, David Small documents

a concept that originated at the Massachusetts

Institute of Technology (MIT) in the mid-1990s. Small’s

article discusses various cognitive problems in relation

to the perception of three-dimensional texts within a

digital environment. Confusion arises, for example, where

users are confronted with the reverse side of a block of

text. Overlapping text appearing from various angles can

add to this visual irritation. Small also explains that

greeking, a technique that allows for small or virtually

distant lines of text to be replaced with grey lines, can

help to improve the presentation of multi-dimensional

typographic compositions.

Massachusetts Institute of

Technology (MIT)

The MIT is a US-based private

university that emphasises

scientifi c and technological

research. Its Aesthetics +

Computation Group is renowned

for producing outstanding computer

application for communication

purposes. The Visible Language

Workshop, founded by Muriel

Cooper and Ron MacNeil in 1973,

was another considerably infl uential

initiative of the MIT.

‘Although we are currently

undergoing a sea change in the

dissemination of information, from

paper to all of these new things

that are not paper, the messages

themselves remain stubbornly

typographic. As long as we still

speak and think with language, we

will continue to read and write and

therefore, typography

will play a role.’

David Small

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