Virtual Typography

6.7

6

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In haste there is error

The title of this fi nal section is a Chinese proverb. Culture

drives the pace of life, of which technologies are a part.

In line with cultural developments in the Western world,

digital technologies foster the ongoing acceleration of

information transmission. But if the information density

exceeds that which can be effectively acquired by

the information recipient, communication fails. Unless

communication processes can be decompressed, the

growing information overload will continue increasingly

to impair the dissemination of knowledge and

understanding within society. Strategies must be found

to reinstate a temporal element that is necessary for

perceiving and for contemplating information.

In his opening essay in the book Lead Between the Lines

(Haslam, 2007), Andrew Haslam, Graphic Design route

leader of MA Communications at Central Saint Martin’s

College in London, asks: ‘... what does the typographic

code not record? Where are the omissions?’ This book

tries to clarify that what type omits most and foremost is

time. Conventional text presents words simultaneously.

So the pace of verbal expression as we know it from

spoken language is lost. Through the careful defi nition

of perceptual challenges, virtual typography seeks to

reintroduce the time factor to the communication of

words.

Reading is a creative activity. Rather than passively

acquiring meaning, reading is a process of actively

reconstructing meaning. However, meaning is conveyed

not only through texts, but potentially also through other

kinds of information such as fi gurative and abstract

image material. If textual patterns emerge gradually

from imagery, the viewer’s creative activity can be

re-encouraged. The viewer is forced into a process of

guessing the potential signifi cance of the diverse visual

elements. Where gradual changes recur over a period of

time, the information recipient is challenged constantly to

‘...the desire for the new

represses duration.’

Theodor Adorno

The signifi cance of ambiguity: 6.7 In haste there is error

6.6 The virtual and the digital

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