There is something kind of strange about viewing pixels from the future. Pixels are crude, and although screens are becoming sharper with higher resolutions, rendering type with them is difficult.

Hoefler and Frere Jones have this interesting picture on their blog, its an example of type in a Renaissance ‘lace book’ from La Vera Perfettione del Disegno di varie sorte di ricami, an embroidery guide by Giovanni Ostaus published in 1567. It looks just like a low-res bitmap.

Jonathan Hoefler has this to say: It’s likely that the pixel’s final and most enduring role will be a shabby one, serving as an out-of-touch visual cliché to connote “the digital age.”

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.

Fontshop have just released an online font design and creation tool called Fonstruct. It is fantastic. It was devised and developed for FontShop by Rob Meek, a designer/programmer based in Berlin. Meek has been working on projects like this for quite sometime before joining forces with FontShop.

The Fontstruct interface seems easy to use and there are lots of simple clever functions to make the job of font creation easier. Additional functionality such as the ability to share your font with others via a Creative Commons licence, or to create an embedded Flash version for display on your personal website show how Fontshop have really made the effort to integrate with the best of other successful web technologies and services.

As an educational tool for would be typographers, type designers and design students, it presents a wonderful learning opportunity. It presents a simple entry point to understanding the basics of letterform design and construction without the steep technical learning curve of other professional type design software. It is easy to see how this tool could be integrated with traditional methods of teaching and learning. For example, take a look at Ellen Lupton’s modular type design exercise in her book Thinking with Type as proof of this. I look forward to experimenting with it in class in the next academic year to see how it can augment and extend current curricula.

Earlier last year, Jeff Han made a great presentation at TED of his “interface-free,” touch-driven computer screen, which can be manipulated intuitively with the fingertips, and responds to varying levels of pressure. Since then, the current demo for this multi-touch driven computer screen is truly amazing. It makes the touch screen UI features of Apple’s iPhone look almost quaint!

When TED released the video on youTube it was downloaded a quarter of a million times, and everyone who has seen it, instantly wants one. Its easy to imagine using it at home or at work. It represents the pinacle of the ‘new wave’ in screen technologies, from Wii’s to iPhones, this is the holy grail. I wonder if Lev Manovich is writing the book about it as we speak.

And as for typography on a screen like this, ooooh, you could touch it, roll it, squash it, zoom it, push it, throw it…