This is the first in a sequence of articles on Typography in Flash, it investigates creative uses of animated typography in Flash. The aim of this instalment is primarily an introduction by way of illustrating some excellent examples of experimental type in Flash to whet your appetite. Later articles will look at some of the methods behind these kinds of creations as well as some "dos and don'ts" when using fonts in Flash. Later I will also look at some Classes and Prototypes (do you remember those?) as well as comparing third-party software for creating text effects. The Web -- combined with environments like Flash, Director and Proce55ing -- has brought typography to life. But itis not the first time poets and writers have tried to free up their prose by utilising experimental typographical layouts. In 1918 the French poet Guillaume Apollinaire published a book of poems that did not look like poems, he named the book 'Calligrammes'. The poems were essentially configurations of letters or words forming an image of the subject of the poem itself. In 'Il Pleut' (1916), words appear to cascade down the page like raindrops on a windowpane itself. The inspiration for this work undoubtedly came from Arabic Calligraphs where the poem or verse is a shaped picture of the poems content.
Ni9e.com follows this tradition of typo-pictures with some excellent work grouped under Typographical Illustrations. The titles of each piece are simply the names of some well-known classic fonts, Book Antiqua, Century Gothic, Helvetica, etc. Over time, an initially chaotic scramble of letters builds into well-defined sketches and portraits. The soundtracks to each work add another dimension, sometimes irreverently, as they play along while the illustration builds up on screen. 'Interactive Typography' also at Ni9e is worth a play -- dynamic, nervous type jumps, jitters and flickers in browserspace.
Typedrawing is a unique drawing application that lets you draw with type. This Flash application is both fun and intuitive to use. You can add your own drawing to the database that contains some of the author's favourite creations. Another interesting on-topic experiment is Typoscope where simple-yet-effective interactive kaleidoscopic patterns are generated using type. In a similar vein to Typedrawing is the playful Robotype which allows you to create anthropomorphic (and other) designs from typography using Univers, Bodoni, Future and Helvetica. Apollinaire would have loved both of these.
Keats at the excellent Storynest arranges the words 'Here Lies one whose name was writ in water' in a circular form. Mouse proximity effects the size of each of the letter, more importantly a center point (full-stop?) can be teased to effect the circle as if where behaving like water. The line, incidently, concludes the epitaph inscribed upon the English poet's tombstone. Again the effect is made prominent by a soundtrack that pans audio-spatials according to the movement of the mouse.
Typorganism is a series communication experiments exploring computational interaction design and interactive kinetic typography based on the metaphor 'Type is Lifeform'. 'Dna' recombines spheres on a nucleic spiral into letters when a key is hit. The ingenious 'Weight' interactively simulates the weighing of type with a set of scales. Be sure also to check out EmoChat -- a Flash Chat client with a nice typographical twist.
The interface to Leogeo is a nice piece of typographical art in itself. A spiral menu formation greets the user once the page is loaded. When an item is clicked the letters of the item float to the top of the page on their own path to collectively reassemble before the page opens each piece.
As these examples show, Expressive and Kinetic typography can convey moods, ideas and aesthetics with an interpretive potential that static type cannot thereby infusing a message with life. Letters are not just glyphs for communication they are also real physical shapes that can be played with and animated to create complex semiotic experiences with extra layers of metaphor.
No small article on this subject could give a full account of all the work dealing with experimental typography. Below is a list of some other work worth visiting, including some that have been crafted in other environments. I am sure I've left out some great examples so feel free to leave URLs in the comments section.
In the next article I will get down to the nitty-gritty of dealing with fonts in Flash!
EXPRIMENTAL TYPOGRAPHY LINKS