TUTORIAL QUICK LINKS
About TYPE+CODE Processing for Designers
Authors: Yeohyun Ahn and Viviana Cordova
Managing Editor and Design:John Page Corrigan
Forword: Ellen Lupton
Publisher: Maryland Institute College of Art's Center for Design Thinking.
Typography by Yeohyun Ahn and layout design by John Page Corrigan
TYPE+CODE explores the aesthetic of a new code driven typography with an emphasis on Processing. Processing is a free programming language for the electronic arts and visual design community created by Ben Fry and Case Reas. The use of coding for Typography is allowed to extend and explore the visual creativity through coding with numbers, algorithms (logical sequence in computer programming,) and libraries (collection of subprograms used to develop software.)
Initially TYPE+CODE got inspired by Abott Miller's Dimensional Typography in terms how letter forms can be transformed and reinterpreted in the collaboration with new technology rendering techniques in virtual space as well as TYPE+CODE began as parts of researches for the book, Graphic Design: New Basics. It is a book for graphic designers to present the study of fundamentals of form and ideas including contemporary trends, written by Ellen Lupton and Jennifer Cole Phillips. Inside TYPE+CODE, Binary tree algorithm, each node has at every two offspring, is referenced to create typographic pattern designs and L-system algorithm, generating fractals and realistic modeling of a tree, is included to render a typographic tree with the word, Code.
Caligraft, created by Richard Marxer Piñón, is engaged into showing the possibilities how hand drawing based letter forms could innovate a new dimension of textual letter forms with the codes. TYPE+CODE has been extended as a tutorial book for graphic designers and graphic design students with limited or none prior knowledge of programming languages with two collaborators, John P Pages and Viviana Cordova. It will help designers understand new ways of typography through coding with Processing and extend their visual explorations in the collaboration with various mathematic expressions.
As managing editor and designer, John P Pages created all of the beautiful layouts for the book, and all of my letters generated by Processing have been reinterpreted into a meaningful and organized typography. As a co-author, Viviana Cordova has developed graphic designer friendly tutorials as parts of the basic chapter and written the graphic designer oriented description for the book as parts of the basic chapter. It got honored by the AIGA Graphic Design Educator Conference, Massaging Media II, in Boston, in April, 2008, to be presented. It is on the final step to be published by Maryland Institute College of Art.