Find a library that has issues of Emigre magazine and read them. Fuse magazine will be harder to find, but seems quite applicable here. You should also read Gerard Unger’s book While You’re Reading. It is not directly relevant and will not answer any of your questions, but it will give you a great foundation in understanding what type and reading are, and why they are what they are, which will make it easier to think about where it’s all headed. Last, contact Nick Shinn about his essay It’s Hip to Be Square. It’s a great read about why traditional type designs will become less relevant and new type will be square.

Read the interesting comment posted by Mr William Berkson on the 19th of December, 2006, 1:08 PM, at :
http://typophile.com/node/30130

I still can’t get over how novel/uncomfortable the Kromofons concept is.

I highly suggest you absorb mr. Martin Venezy’s written thoughts called “Design and Melancholy.” You can find this essay in his amazing book “It is Beautiful ... Then Gone.” [ along with the most impressive hand-made typographic experiments I have ever seen. ]

In great depth and consideration, it ponders the simple moments of our lives when we find an arrangement of things, circumstances, interactions, and / or ideas that appear in a fleeting instance as perfectly designed — as if beyond human capability — and then are just as quickly gone from our perceptions. Within that moment, pure beauty is realized in the simplest of forms and it is in this realization that we, as designers, can create the kind of conceptual wonders that you are aiming for.

martin’s design studio can be found here :: Appetite Engineers

Should check out Bill Hills thoughts on this subject... http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=54978

with regard to mr. berkson’s commentary and opinions...

If typing in lowercase is an issue for the majority on this forum, I will gladly compromise. Let me clarify that I’m not looking for degradation or a “flame war.” I really do want feedback. This forum was recommended to me by a professor for research purposes - as a tool.

I’m not asking anyone to do my “homework” for me. I’m interested in thoughts, opinions and suggestions. I want to learn. I understand that at this venue in my career, I don’t know as much about typography as a middle-aged individual who has dedicated their life to design.

Back to the subject at hand...

Thanks in advance for any contributions, I really do appreciate it. I am in talks with the head of “special collections” at my university library, which is also proving helpful. He is the only mentor I have right now, aside from my type instructor.

Milwaukee...say hello to Max and what the heck is the name of that type instructor? Is it still the same guy from about 5 years ago...Richard something with a Z?...can’t remember...say hello to him, if that’s him, too. Thanks. Feel free to contact me through my web site any time. I might not know much more than you do, but am always up for musing. Your big questions are fun to think about.

The opening chapter of David Consuegra’s American Type Design & Designers (Allworth Press) provides an excellent time-line of the technological changes in typography, with related events.

Text usually seems to be at the vanguard of new media technology, due, I think, to the alphabet’s low “bit-rate” of information required for meaningful communication. So although we may develop more sophisticated ways of communicating with existing technologies, as long as we are inventing new media it will depend on text from the outset.

Agreed. Call me limited, but I cannot imagine a more practical and efficient communication tool than the alphabet. I’d like to see English spelling become more phonetic and logical, but that would take one serious bit of house cleaning, and everyone would have to be on board...or maybe that’s evolving right now in the world of instant messaging (something else I know nothing about!). Finding a way to incorporate and convey tone and tempo might be nice, seeing as that’s what people tend to have problems with when communicating with strangers over emails and in discussions like this. So, like economics, think about what the demands are, or will be, and start the forecasting there.

In some ways text is more efficient than speech—more easily stored and searched, arguably easier to render decipherable—and in fact you can already see it encroaching on verbal communication. It might be an issue of not quite having reached the tipping point here, but why do people still use IM with the advent of things like Skype or other “internet phone” applications?

Think: have you ever seen someone send a text message when they’re perfectly free to call someone? Or seen someone shoot off an email when they could just shout over the cubicle wall?