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.

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.

The recent firerside chat at Signal v’s Noise with three of the most innovative artists/designers working in the area of information visualisation is an enlightening read. Each has their own particular perspective and approach to ‘infoviz’ as Wescamp puts it. Harris is interested in the ‘humanity of the web’ which might be excavated through the visualisation of hidden data. Koblin describes himself as an artist eventhough his background is in game design, and Wescamp admits to being an ‘interaction designer’ with a strong interest in information visualisation because it provides ‘a little bit of every world, art, visual problem solving and engineering’.

Their discussion the nature of their creative process is interesting, especially the role of experimentation and paper-based sketching in realising their ideas. While it is evident that typographic design is not a major focus for any of them, it forms an integral part of both Harris (Daylife, We Feel Fine) and Wescamp’s work. Harris and Koblin both note the impact that Wescamp’s Newsmap had from a design perspective.

“I think one thing that Newsmap demonstrates, which is important, is the fractal qualities of good design. For instance, you can glance at the grid and instantly see the largest stories overall, and the relative importance of sport vs. business, but then you can move closer and see the individual stories that compose the grid. Those orders of scale are important.” [Johnathan Harris, June 5, 2007]

In my view, whether consciously or unconsciously, Harris and Wescamp are breaking new ground in screen based typography and there are many inherent attributes within their work that signal innovative if complex future directions for the discipline.

amaztype, created by Yugo Nakamura of yugop and monocrafts* fame, is another example of the powerful combination of data-mining and computational visualisation. Type in any word and this engine will mine Amazon for books with that word (title or author) then it will display thumbnail images of the books over and over again randomly in the shape of the word you typed in! I could do it all day. Its reminds me of Spell with Flickr and other examples that I have posted about previously such as NewsMap and We Feel Fine, and the work of Hansol Huh. This technology would be very useful for my literature map which I will publish sketches of shortly.