Ai generated display Latin typeface: Mario

https://mario.visualfolder.xyz/story

Comments

  • k.l.
    k.l. Posts: 109
    And?
  • John Butler
    John Butler Posts: 295
    Moderngasm.
  • The active people on this forum are talented, perceptive and intelligent, and posting this seems to me to be an insult.
  • Nick Shinn
    Nick Shinn Posts: 2,209
    AI can certainly come up with some odd letter constructions that would never occur to one otherwise. But making them into a coherent typeface is another matter. Baby steps, here.
  • Dave Crossland
    Dave Crossland Posts: 1,430
    Miles, no insult intended. It seems newsworthy to me, and professionals should be aware of and discussing the news of our profession, shouldn't we?
  • Florian Hardwig
    Florian Hardwig Posts: 269
    edited January 20
    What interests me most about this is to see the source material, namely the calligrapher’s “drafts and sketches from the early 1900s” … but none of it is shown on the Story page, it seems.
    A preview from September 2023 doesn’t make any mention of such original material. There, the process is described as follows:
    1. Dalle2 image generator
    Promt “a letter “A” in the style of (foundry name)
    2. Midjourney blend
    image A: visual (dalle 2)
    Image B: Typography sketch
    3. Training Process
    Repeat
  • @Miles Newlyn I totally agree with you.
  • John Hudson
    John Hudson Posts: 3,204
    Dave, I think Miles’ point is that this stuff is a long way from ‘news of our profession’. There is news about AI that has implications for our profession, and there is engagement by people in our profession with AI, but this seems neither.
  • Dave Crossland
    Dave Crossland Posts: 1,430
    Did I miss someone else retailing a font with AI generated letterforms?
  • Hmm, I thought valid fonts were only drawn on artboards or "vellum" before being sent out for photography and grid manufacturing. 😀 I think the more valuable question remains whether readers, people creating graphics (or using software that composes type), or type licensers discern a difference between a well-made or interestingly designed typeface, and something that looks half-digested at the present.
  • John Hudson
    John Hudson Posts: 3,204
    edited January 21
    .
  • Ray Larabie
    Ray Larabie Posts: 1,432
    I just wanted to add that I think if you can get it to generate enough variations, you can sift through and find things that look like viable candidates for letters. But, I don't think that's very useful for typeface design. 
  • Dave, thank you, none taken.
    John put it very well for me. Thanks John.

    The post appears only buzzworthy, and not newsworthy. The author avoids any useful thought on the use of AI in the design process.

    It would be worthy if we could discuss the value that has come from the use of AI in this project, but I can't see how to do that.
  • Vasil Stanev
    Vasil Stanev Posts: 775
    edited January 22
    I can certainly see it as a generator for ideas, because to me one letter has enough DNA to inspire a whole font. eg this image is the result of the simple prompt "alphabet" and it has an interesting /e that can be stylized and  developed into something usable. Inside the /e are also other interesting ideas. I can reroll this n times and get as many new ideas as I want. I see an interesting Q inside the /e, a peculiar N... 
  • Aside from that "a", which is sitting sideways rotated 90 degrees counter-clockwise, the rest looks like something a modestly talented 1970s designer could have conceived without any automation. "Intelligence" is not the appropriate term for the "AI model", a machine is and remains a "quick processor" and nothing more.

    As far as automating tasks goes, it can be good to follow developments. As far as inspiration for ideas drawn from algoryhtm generated images… anything can provide inspiration but to me these images look all the same.
  • John Savard
    John Savard Posts: 1,130
    edited January 29
    The active people on this forum are talented, perceptive and intelligent, and posting this seems to me to be an insult.
    If it were combined with the claim that it was as good as what those people produce, yes. But absent such a claim, it's merely a warning, and not an insult. And not necessarily a warning that the technology will soon get good enough to put you out of business, but rather the much less insulting warning that public taste might decline to the point that it would settle for this kind of stuff.

    That was my initial reaction, although the typeface did seem to not stand out too much from some of the outrageous display typefaces of the 1970s. However, following the link to the Instagram page, I learned that the typeface is the AI-assisted creation of a Real Typographer who just happens to be an experimental typographer, one Edoardo Benaglia, and his intent was to see if AI could capture some of the style of another Real Typographer, one Mario Salvi, after whom the typeface is named.
    Or at least he was a calligrapher, at the Pigno paper mill in Bergamo. An initial search by Google did not turn up a typeface he designed that I could compare to this modern imitation.
    Ah. Mario Salvi was Edoardo Benaglia's great grandfather. Finally, a good excuse!