A)
8Job:01212 Title: Basics typography (AVA)
2nd Proof Page:159001-184 01212_C1.indd 159001-184 01212_C1.indd 159 1/16/09 12:55:50 PM1/16/09 12:55:50 PM158—159
The digitisation of displays
Whether or not it is benefi cial to rely on virtual typography
to communicate messages depends on the situation within
which the information is perceived. We see printed media
increasingly replaced by screens, particularly in situations
where the information needs to change frequently. The
check-in desks at Terminal Four at Munich Airport and
Terminal Five at Heathrow Airport in London are fi tted
with plasma screens throughout. Even the advertising
posters positioned along the elevators at various London
Underground stations are now increasingly operated digitally.
Initially the information here remained static. But by allowing
information to move virtually from one screen to the next,
and thus to follow the motion of the underground passenger,
designers have managed to produce animated information
that the passing viewer will fi nd diffi cult to ignore. Next in
line are billboards, which lend themselves to the use of
digital displays.‘...we drive a technology that
drives our verbal life faster
and faster.’
Michael HeimThe velocity of the immediate impact
Following the principles of etymology (the science of
the origin of words), typography would be translated
as ‘writing about striking or beating’, or ‘a description
of the mark of having been beaten or struck’. This may
remind us of runes, which once were cut into wood,
or of typographic stone carvings, perhaps. But in the
context of screen-based communication, we could
attribute a new meaning to the word typography. In
the world of hypertext it is no longer the medium that
is struck. The force is redirected. It strikes the reader
quite directly, with the immediacy with which texts
appear on screen. If the critical distance is removed
it is no longer the physicality of things, but their
speed, that is threatening. No longer carefully crafted,
typography today is virtually thrown into people’s
faces when it ‘pops up’ on screen. When criticising
new media technologies, Paul Virilio, a contemporary
French philosopher, declares user-friendliness to be
‘just another metaphor for the subtle enslavement of the
human being to “intelligent” machines’ (Virilio, 1995).
If applied to typography, this statement raises questions
about the effi ciency-based evaluation of legible forms
in the context of transitional type.Job:01212 Title: Basics typography (AVA)
2nd Proof Page:159001-184 01212_C1.indd 159001-184 01212_C1.indd 159 1/16/09 12:55:50 PM1/16/09 12:55:50 PM