Website for Type Brief or Challenge Generator Name?
Laurensius Adi
Posts: 45
in Resources
Hi. I remember there was a website where you can get random typeface ideas, kinda like this:
Make a flared sans serif fonts, with tall x-height, with ink traps, for a cafe in Paris. or,
Make a wide serif fonts, with low x-height, in old style, for bla bla bla etc.
So you press the "random" button and get another random brief.
The website was colorful, with big type like 100px.
I can't seem to find it anymore.
Anyone knows the website I meant?
Thanks
So you press the "random" button and get another random brief.
The website was colorful, with big type like 100px.
I can't seem to find it anymore.
Anyone knows the website I meant?
Thanks
0
Comments
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It's called TypeCooker. And I do not recommend it.
Feel free to imagine briefs, but briefs that you believe the world needs.0 -
An alternative way of using TypeCooker, rather than just automatically accepting the first brief it gives you, is to have it generate several, until you get one that seems interesting.3
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Hrant, the main purpose of TypeCooker isn't to replicate a real-world brief; it’s to help you imagine and practice different ways of drawing letters. Many type designers and lettering artists get caught in a particular mode/style, and TypeCooker pushes their boundaries. Type design instructors also use it as a regular exercise for stretching their students’ design muscles.6
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Pushes boundaries? It's dripping with insularity. From platform elitism (this is on my Windows machine), to entrenching the illusion that contrast comes from obsolete black-marking tools ("notan lol"), to Latin chauvinism (Arabic is not "reversed", thank you very much), to casting vertical proportions as a flight of fancy (descender and ascenders are interlinked, HELLO), a much better name for it would be TypeBoilerplate...
You guys want a hypothetical brief that can push boundaries? Instead of rolling the dice until something tickles your fancy, try this: ANY NON-LATIN. Latin might be saturated enough to justify aimless wandering (especially on the diminutive island of chirography) but there's really no shortage of cultures that need *focused* attention. And if one must stick to Latin, at least don't treat it like an exercise machine with no users.
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Exactly this. Some brief might generate an unreadable or unappealing typeface, but few might just be the inspiration I need, or be a good typeface someday.Stephen Coles said:Many type designers and lettering artists get caught in a particular mode/style, and TypeCooker pushes their boundaries.
How is this site not google-able? LOL.
Thanks all!
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Hrant, why must this one simple tool do everything for everyone? Your Hague hate is blinding you.
You’re a smart guy. Make your own tool that answers the global script needs you see in the type world!2 -
No tool can do everything, or should even try to. But to me TypeCooker is a symptom of a cavalier, maker-centric attitude towards Design; in fact more Art than Design. Confronting this comes not from hate but from the love of what we could be doing instead.
Students are impressionable* and the tools we give them should implant a respect for end-users (from all cultures) more than for their personal desire to create things. An inspiring brief comes from a societal need; to me randomness cannot be inspiring.
* https://typedrawers.com/discussion/comment/51881/#Comment_518811 -
Sharpening your knife will serve you well when you start cutting vegetables.2
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This reminds me that I did pretty much that a few years ago. http://simoncozens.github.io/scriptcooker/Stephen Coles said:Hrant, why must this one simple tool do everything for everyone? Your Hague hate is blinding you.
You’re a smart guy. Make your own tool that answers the global script needs you see in the type world!4 -
Nice! BTW, I got creeped out because when I clicked it I got Armenian, but then I realized in the initial Easy level there's only one other possibility. :-) As an aside, I've long thought that Armenian is a superb "gateway script" for getting one's non-Latin feet wet (and I think that panned out in my TypeWknd workshop last year) although the spacing of the floating punctuation is decidedly *not* easy... :-) I'm curious, what were your criteria for determining a script's difficulty level? And is there a list of the included scripts?0 -
Very cool, Simon! I'd love to hear more about how you assigned the difficulty levels. Also, I’m not sure how the word “Class” relates to difficulty.1
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It must have simply been copied from TypeCooker... but it actually doesn't make sense there either. There are so many ways to teach, and so many kinds of students.Stephen Coles said:I’m not sure how the word “Class” relates to difficulty.
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I think TypeCooker would need some logic where certain options exclude each other to avoid entirely nonsensical sets, it would reduce having “it generate several, until you get one that seems interesting” — but then why engineer away a problem that teaches you to evaluate the task it gives you.Also, the tool says nothing about giving “briefs”. It gives a set of design constraints. Technique and skill are two different things. Critiquing a randomizer for being random is a moot point. And teaching how to develop a brief with a client based on real world practical and aesthetic demands is not something a few clicks will be able to convey.1
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By the way, Simon; you can't really get that page to load in HTTP anymore in many browsers, they simply refuse to load it over HTTP and this causes the scripts and stylesheets to be blocked (because the main page is now loaded over TLS). You can resolve this by starting the URIs for those assets with just "//" instead of "https://" or "http://" (or you can enable HTTPS for all of them).Simon Cozens said:
This reminds me that I did pretty much that a few years ago. http://simoncozens.github.io/scriptcooker/Stephen Coles said:Hrant, why must this one simple tool do everything for everyone? Your Hague hate is blinding you.
You’re a smart guy. Make your own tool that answers the global script needs you see in the type world!0 -
Johannes Neumeier said:I think TypeCooker would need some logic where certain options exclude each other to avoid entirely nonsensical sets…
I got high contrast speedball a couple days ago.
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That’s a broad nib alphabet using lots of rotation, I think Typecooker would call that “between expansion and transitional”. Typecooker defines Speedball as “Very low contrast as produced by the Speedball pen.” so I think it means the circular type that gave Speedball its name.
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Yeah, I was being snarky.0
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Hrant has a MAJESTIC point.
That tool teaches you the rules but at the same time it put a limit into your head. Becouse you learn to think that those are the sacred rules and put you in a confort zone that limits your capity of seeing he wonderfull invisivible caos that also goes into the shape or each letter. It makes you blind to the whole magic that creates LIve into an alphabet created fron dead points and lines.
The tool fiix ypur head into the "average human population" view of type, and you will become blind to all the crazy caotical and magical part that goes into injecting live into your shit.
Imagine if you ever need to design type for non-humans!!! Thats is my dream!! It suddenly makes designing non-latin a super easy task, just like that.
You need you head as caothic and crazy and limitless as posible. Drugs are good for fine tunning your brain and sences into states that your body was not designed for. You need to manage all the new information whitout getting crazy, paranoic or whatever. You need to grow you creazines and to keeping it under control at the same time. So you can enjoy it insyead on having panic.
Controling you panic, diggesting, acepting and adapting to a huge flow of really unexplicable new information its a magical progress.its not really inexplicable at all. But you feel its inexplicable and you think you are getring crazy. Just becouse your way to thing about life was tricked and limited in the first place.
Limits are good for 99.9999 of all.
It keep good thibgs things working without exploding.
But your brain can not be limited if you call yourself a creator insteaf of just an academmic desigers. Your thinking neer to be free and Nature will put the limits for you.
Basically, to make short short
The tool diggest the needs of the brief into easy chunks so you can diggest it whiout gettingi into panic. It thinks you are average population and too stupid for a real brief.
All that is true. But also not true at same tine.
Becouse the true value of the untility is the capacity to quickly generate briefs for student to practice. Hrant is evaluating the tool for the of the briefs theyself. Since he is just as picky as most of you. Its only that he points in the oposite direction making you all crazy hahq i love it
Hrant.. yoju can suggest the tool again my freen. Briefs are compartimentrized true. But generating lots of brief one by one by hand only for practicing badic drawing skills is a pain in the ass and the tool is great for that
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What I don't like about random brief generators is that they don't take the user's needs or wants into account. I think of typefaces as art supplies. We make the tools, the user creates. If you're looking for unfilled niches, look beyond Latin and you'll find a wealth of alphabets with extraordinarily little variety. For example: UCAS (Unified Canadian Syllabics). There are no UCAS octagonal sports typefaces. No cowboy slabs. No techno. If you're a kid learning UCAS, you have no cool fonts for your project. If a young software developer is developing an indigenous futurism sci-fi game, there are no inspiring ultramodern typefaces to choose from. Instead of random typeface ideas how about looking around for a need? If we've infilled Latin so much that we need to use random brief generators, maybe that's a sign that we should start exploring other worlds.2
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@Ray Larabie Agree on the 'art supplies' part. But sometimes we mix different paints randomly to get an unexpected color. It's also a good point to look for needs and fulfill them.
It's still a good tool to practice drawing, imagining and flexing my art muscle.
Maybe we need a better tool?
How about a website where people can submit typeface ideas?
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@Laurensius Here's a better tool: pick a real company that uses off-the-shelf fonts (or even worse, free fonts) for their branding, and prototype text and/or display fonts for them. Bonus: imagine they're going to expand to a market that needs some non-Latin support.3
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@Hrant H. Papazian Great idea! I guess I need to learn a new non-Latin language first.
Can a type designer design a non-Latin type even if they don't speak the language?
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Some people will tell you that only natives should design type. They're dead wrong. Our field is thankfully full of non-natives who have enriched minority cultures through their expertise and dedication. While we also have natives who have designed inauthentic type... There is one caveat to keep in mind: the more you intend to innovate, the more you should ask natives for feedback. But even so, to paraphrase Lord Tennyson: It's better to have tried and failed than never to have tried at all. Run with your good intentions.Laurensius said:Can a type designer design a non-Latin type even if they don't speak the language?0
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