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The discourse in early digital type design technologies
This thesis is concerned with the development of digital type design technologies and the discourse around them through new environments during a period of
radical change and transition in the type manufacturing industry. It maps the
emergence of a new field by exploring environments of discourse such as trade
associations, academic institutions and the publication landscape, established
as a response to new communities and identifies them as catalysts of change. The
research considers different numerical models of letterform description devised
through academic research, corporate research and commercial endeavours
during a phase of type manufacturing that spans from the zenith of phototype setting to the introduction of office-based laserprinting, covering most of the 1970s
and 1980s.
A particular event, identified as a highpoint in this discourse and as a main
catalyst of change, is the Association Typographique Internationale’s working
seminar hosted at Stanford University in the summer of 1983. It marks a focus point
in these discussions during a period of several linear and concurrent developments,
and it reflects issues that maintained their relevance after the introduction of the
digital PostScript format, which followed the period surveyed in this thesis.
Although more than a dozen digital type design systems were developed by 1983,
this study is particularly concerned with five systems considered for presentation at
the Stanford working seminar. While some of these systems found no particular
use, others had some commercial success or even became well established among
an international list of type manufacturers. All five encapsulate the relevant issues
discussed at Stanford; from a research standpoint they are equally significant in
providing information on the challenges type designers faced at the time.
As this research investigates a relatively short and recent period, it is characterised by a lack of certain archival material. In addition to a handful of academic
archives, this thesis heavily draws on primary source material, on records and
artefacts from personal collections, on oral history as a method to record the voices
of contemporary witnesses, and uses these sources as an opportunity to discover
hidden figures that have been overlooked in the past.
This thesis explores debated issues such as maintaining standards, while
introducing new ones; shared responsibilities, collaborations as well as conflicts
between designers and engineers; challenges and opportunities for established
manufacturers versus an emerging generation of independent designers; as well
as implications that new technologies had on the essentials of designing and
digitizing type, from learning new terminology to measuring quality, dealing with
compatibility and the introduction of automated and parametric design