I finally got an iPhone! It was worth waiting for, though there a few niggly UI things that I have to get used to. Its a must have from a UI design perspective. Creative Review has picked up some of the latest additions to the ever increasing list of new iPhone apps, and two happen to be type related.

Firstly, is the FontViewer by Thomas Podewils at osXwerk.de. It is a fairly basic reference tool for graphic designers: it lists the system fonts found on Apple computers and allows you to examine a type sampler for each font. You can view different sizes using the zoom slider. There’s great potential for this application if you consider it in the context of something like Typophile’s TypeID online resource/forum or Myfonts’ What the font. Imagine if users could upload an image (taken with the iPhone camera) of a font that would then be identified by the app.

On a totally different note is a second type related app by Andreas Muller called For All Seasons. This is a typo animation based loosely on the seasons. It won the Toyko TDC Grand Prix Award in 2005. Muller has now resurrected the work and ported it to the iPhone. Its a quirky piece but it shows off the beauty and surprise of dynamic letterforms when liberated from the traditional page. Its not so much useful as engaging to look at and interesting to muse over.

SVN always advocate designing directly in HTML/CSS rather than creating Photoshop mock-ups of page layouts first. They view working in Photoshop as a redundant activity that does not really advance the design process. Rather, it adds an unnecessary intermediate stage that disrupts the main goal of any project which is getting to the final built website. This is a pretty contentious viewpoint as it presupposes that all web designers should be technically proficient in HTML/CSS, which of course they aren’t.

While it makes sense that web designers should understand the scope of and limitations of HTML/CSS and be aware of the main issues such as cross-browser consistency etc, there are many designers who wouldn’t be able to build sample page layouts without some technical support. Additionally, the other main drawback of this stance, is that it puts the tool before the design. Effectively the tool is dictating the nature of the design. Designers should be free to work out a design first and to then figure out (with assistance if required) how to build it with whatever subsequent modifications or compromises that are required.

Good design examples are hard to find on the web, and the few exemplary sites in existence (subtraction or l2m3) really push the boat out in terms of CSS typographic specification. However, these sites clearly evidence an attention to typographic detail that is painstakingly implemented. Good design and typography on the web takes time and effort and it is not merely a functional activity where usability outranks aesthetic considerations as perhaps SVN and the school of Jakob Nielsen suggest. If it did, the web would become a very dull place where ideas and creativity were subservient to rationality and function. A healthy balance is surely always a good thing.

If creative effort isn’t enabled, the space for innovation diminishes. Already, popular blog themes (some are very well designed) have become so prevalent and repetitious that it is getting harder for anything different to emerge from the blogosphere or indeed web design in general.

Everything You Thought We’d Forgotten by Jason E. Lewis collects together a series of text-based interactive works that explore the border lands between conflicting cultural identities, memory and history, and the visual and the textual. Common to all these works is a formal concern with how kinetics and interactivity can be used to expand how digital texts can be written, read and performed. This video of the exhibition with commentary by Lewis explains the work on show and the methods used.

Lewis is a poet, digital media artist and software designer. His practice revolves around experiments in visual language, text and typography, with a core interest in how the deep structure of digital media can be used to create innovative forms of expression. He is currently an Assistant Professor of Computation Arts at Concordia University where he founded and directs Obx Laboratory for Experimental Media. A list of their projects can be found here.

Lewis’ background is not graphic design, but originally computer science and philosophy, later he went to the RCA. His work blends literary, design and programming skills.

End titles seem to be replacing opening titles in terms of the opportunity for animated typographic sequences. Here is one example of the many that have emerged over the last year, yu+Co’s sequence for Enchanted. It also encompasses the ‘growth theme’ animation style that seemed to crop up everywhere last year (no pun intended!). Its an interesting development in film graphics that the titles sequences are now becoming little epilogues to the main narrative, almost like a ‘come down’ for audience after the adrenalin rush of two hours of thrilling cinema. I wonder how many people stay to watch them. Another one to file under film titles.