Project. Interactive
Typography Sequence
Purpose. To focus
on strategies for message analysis, spacial organization, and
structure as they interact with typography and graphic composition
in digital space. Students are encouraged to explore new typographic
grammars for interactive electronic communications.
Assignment. This
project sequence forms the core of the graduate level course Interactive
Typography. The first four steps prepare the students for
an interactive typographic project in the course's second half.
Step 1. Poster-scaled
typographic composition - individual. Each student designs a poster-scaled
black and white typographic composition using the text from informational
website on a public health issue. After analyzing the message for
its content, purpose, hierarchy, verbal syntax, parts of speech,
activity and attitude, the text is given typographic form that
expresses the message analysis in a limited vocabulary of typographic
variables using a strict grid system.1 week
Step 2. Poster-scaled
typographic composition - partners. Students work as partners
to develop a poster-scaled black and white typographic composition
that combines the texts from their two public health websites.
After re-analyzing the messages for "links" - content
overlaps and junctures - the combined text is given typographic
form that expresses the content links and two message analyses
in a limited vocabulary of typographic variables using a strict
grid system. 2 weeks
Step 3. Poster-scaled
eye-movement notation. Students observe five readers as they
navigate through their composition's information space, and record
reading paths and eye movement. They then develop a diagrammatic
notation of this, including graphic representations of the composition's
massing, structure, hierarchy and content areas. This step replaces
typographic forms with abstract forms, challenging the students
to invent an original graphic language. 2 weeks
Step 4. Dynamic
eye-movement notation. The eye-movement notation is animated,
with motion and sound, to convey the inherent movement of reading
an information space: the reader's reading paths, and the gesture,
rhythm, variable reading speeds, pacing and elapsed time. It
is important to maintain a visual relationship between the original
typographic piece, the graphic eye-movement notation and the
dynamic eye-movement animation. 3 weeks
Step 5. Interactive
typography strategy. Students chose an element of their text
and develop an interactive segment that delivers the content
and persuades the viewer/reader to become involved and transform
their attitude towards the health issue. They explore how the
reader can explore and trigger transformations through interaction
with dynamic textual and numerical material in spacial relationships
and typographic gesture and behavior. 8 weeks
Format.
Step 1: Black and white laser printer output on a poster scale.
Step 2: Black and white laser printer output on a poster scale.
Step 3: Color ink jet/plotter output on a poster scale
Step 4: Dynamic electronic display of animated typography and imagery
Step 5: Interactive dynamic electronic display
Time. 16 Weeks |
