Typographical Renaissance

The future of digital typography? (Franchise from Animography)

It’s an Exciting Time to be a Digital Designer

This post was also published on MediumActually, let’s be a little more accurate — it’s a very exciting time to be designing period. The internet is an ever-evolving organism, changing and mutating faster than most can comprehend. Being a designer that cut my design-teeth in the print design world, the best thing about this growth is that the list of “things you could do in print but you can’t on the web” is getting shorter and shorter by the month. The dividing lines between mediums are all blurring and converging together, which makes for one awesome-soup of a time to be a designer. Today, the following statement has never been more true:

“Nobody knows anything.”William Goldman, Adventures in the Screen Trade

Creating things on the internet invigorates me because the digital landscape is constantly redefining itself. One of the biggest challenges I faced coming from print design was how to handle typography. I’m sure most designers making this transition found themselves saying things like:

• Why can’t I just package my fonts up with my designs and send them off to the developer like I used to send them to the printer?
• So you’re saying the type is going to look a little (or sometimes a lot) different to each user depending on a whole bunch of different variables that are completely out of our control?
• Wait a sec, why doesn’t that line break exactly where it did in the comp?

Of course these are pretty minor issues in the grand scheme of things, but it was somewhat frustrating initially. But it’s those types of issues that get me so excited that the web is finally shifting towards embracing quality typography. It’s only pretty recently (compared to the overall history of the internet) that designers have been unshackled from having to worry about “web-safe fonts,” and are free to infuse as much typographic goodness as they can muster in to their digital projects. There’s now an ever-expanding field of services (Typekit, Google WebFonts, Fonts.com, etc.) that are all pushing forward to help make the web a better place for type.Most notably, Hoefler & Frere-Jones, (in my opinion) one of the most influential type foundries of the past 20 years, finally unleashed their long-awaited web font service. The design community has been begging for this since the concept of web type was incepted, and they have not disappointed. Instead of figuring out how to serve their existing print-oriented fonts, they took the time to redraw every single family, specifically for the web. Their commitment to doing the right thing, even though it took them much longer to come to market, is something that is inspiring to witness. Especially since it seems so common these days to try and ship products as fast as possible.So, what’s next? If there’s one thing the internet isn’t capable of, it’s sitting still. How does type keep evolving in it’s new digital home? Like any kind of huge paradigm shift, someone will need to come along and question the very core of typography to answer that question. The internet has always had a way of taking age-old concepts and turning them on their head, just simply by asking why. I think if you look around, you can see people beginning to ask these questions right now.One example of this comes from a young type foundry that goes by the portmanteau of Animography. Their core philosophy comes from a simple question — why are typefaces static? From that nugget of inspiration, they’ve managed to create a handful of extremely impressive animated typefaces. That’s right, each and every glyph has been animated to life in the form of a downloadable After Effects project (you can see an example of this in the header image for this post). The results are extremely impressive and exciting. With a little bit of work you can add a layer of energy and life that would previously have taken a skilled animator at least a few hours. Couple this with a tiny bit of JavaScript (or even a well optimized gif), and you’ve got yourself a pretty awesome and attention-grabbing piece of type.Of course, people may write off things like Animography as cop-outs — quick presets that devalue custom animation. But how is this any different than choosing between hand-lettering and using a typeface? Both are definitely appropriate depending on the context and project requirements. Personally, I think we may be seeing a glimpse in to a more vibrant future for typography on the web.Only time will tell.