Write a paper about how design academia is infested with dullards incapable of understanding how anything less subtle than Keedy Sans or Dead History can be experimental. The truth is that, aside from the most servile revivals, there’s some degree of experimentation in all type design.

I think you got a good point there.. Maybe the word experimental just sounds a little too big for it..

The term "experimental" seems to be a post facto pigeon hole description imposed by critics/historians/academics who don't have a more fitting slot to typecast the object in. If you are writing an academic paper, you need to qualify your research in a more specific manner. You may use your example above and focus on legibility issues. There is a huge dataset published on that alone. If you are doing something more arty and less rigorous, you might look at types beginning to break the mould of the status quo at the time. Herbert Bayer's Univversal or Van Doesburg's work might be an area that is fruitful from the early modernist period.--The unicase attempts of Bradbury Thompson and others as well. Even the 1980s ITC excess of x-height period is a more specific instance. There is always the overexamined Grunge period and the Carsonogenic excesses that followed him.

ChrisL

Carsonogenic

Chris, sometimes I just love the way your mind works.

The Digital Past: When Typefaces Were Experimental
http://www.aiga.org/content.cfm/the-digital-past-when-typefaces-were-exp...

Certainly the term "experimental" is one of the most abused in the field of type. But Miniscule is a great choice, because it shows that something that seems too experimental can actually work great. And I think this is because it originates from the mind not of a posturing artist, but an old-school scientist, the great Emile Javal.

hhp

All typefaces, except the most unimaginative rip-offs and revivals, are experimental, because the type design process is one of "let's see if this glyph shape works with the other ones". So the designer experiments with applying variations of thematic qualities like stress, contrast, weight, spacing, serifs, and curve shapes to individual glyphs, and seeing how they look--first in the metrics window, then in sample documents in various media. Next step is to go back and refine things to work better en masse. It's the feedback loop that's a part of so much creative production.

But I think what is loosely meant by experimental design is that which is unusual enough to draw attention to itself, rather than being part of a seamless whole where only the message is apparent, not the means by which it is delivered.

Recently "experimental" has been updated (rebranded? obselesced?) in the concept of Critical Design, so perhaps you could approach your topic by looking to see how a typeface could be an example of critical design, which carries more intellectual clout.

> All typefaces ...

Yes, and that's why the term shouldn't be used that way! It's best used when the design is deployed to some extent and then tested, somehow (not necessarily in some laboratory), using readers. Not just glared at by the designer (and his buddies).

hhp

But I think what is loosely meant by experimental design is that which is unusual enough to draw attention to itself…

I think it’s also become a term with pedantic connotations. I see the same ideas rehashed over and over and labeled experimental. They’re usually images from workshops or school projects. Sculptural letters, found letters, Sagmeisteresque letters made of string, counterless letters, modular letters, and code-generated letters are all commonly labeled experimental. But there’s a great deal of sameness to them; most of the variety comes from the raw materials or camera angles. It seems to me that experimental is often used in the same sense as school science lab experiments: the outcomes are predetermined and the purpose is hands-on education rather than innovation.

"Experiments in Type Design," by Tobias Frere-Jones. In Texts on Type: Critical Writings on Typography, edited by Steven Heller and Philip B. Meggs Allworth Press, 2001.

Hard to find though.
Not sure how I managed to get a copy. :-)

--

Correction: the original booklet is hard to find.

hhp

There is also the Teal Triggs book, "Type Design, Radical Innovations and Experimentation"

ChrisL

Experimental doesn't necessarily refer to the aesthetic properties of it. It could be in reference to people doing new things with OpenType programming; it could be projects like what Letterror has done messing with font format technology; it could be free fonts that the priesthood of us designers look down on, where every letter is a pot leaf or a cat. You can interpret the notion of "experimental" a number of ways, but I would definitely agree with James P. -- keep away from the Keedy Sans interpretation of what "experimental" means.