"The old and new media technologies are in a constant state of flux, of speedy obsolescence, of political contestation and of curious rejuvenation, proceeding at a mindboggling rate."
Ross Harley (1)
Currently many forms of media communications are experiencing a metamorphosis from analog to digital through the process of digitisation.(3) Although digitisation is a technological manifestation of the late twentieth century, digital processes can be traced back much further in history. By tracing the prehistory of the digital process in a typographic and magazine context, it will become apparent that we have already been acquainted with digital representations, and that any contemporary digital transformation is therefore more ‘evolutionary’ than ‘revolutionary’. It will also become evident that digital and analog are not explicitly opposing forms, but interdependent and flexibly entwined.
‘Analog’ is simply a waveform that is premised on physical dynamics. Thus an analog representation is based on the proportionality between physical changes in a signal, and changes in the information it represents. An analog medium is one that stores information at different points on a continuous curve.(4) A simple way to illustrate an analog manifestation is through music. When played, the musical notes displayed on the chart below create an analog signal that is continuous in time.
An analog representation of music.
In a typographic context, analog letters are drawn, carved or moulded and operate along smooth lines of impression, or the "daisy wheel" method common to typewriters, where a key strikes an ink ribbon and prints the letter.(5) Movable lead typographic printing is analog, as the imprint of the letter results from the contact of lead type, ink and paper in a continuous pattern. Any inconsistencies in the force of the impression of a typeface, ink and paper are also directly apparent in an analog typographic text. This can be referred to as ‘noise’, a disturbance in the communication of the signal or the analog wave.
As letters are typed into a digital computer their initial existence can be described as analog since the sequential hit of each of a computer’s keys renders the digital imprint. However, variance in the force of impression of a computer’s keys does not render a lighter or darker imprint like an analog typewriter and lead printing press would. One exception to this convention is a digital typeface entitled ‘Taktile’, which was designed to produce character imprints on the computer screen that corresponded to the length of time the user’s finger remains on the computer’s keys.(6) Thus, even one of the most digital of technologies - the computer, relies on an analog dimension to produce texts, which in a sense reveals a digital nostalgia for the analog.
Irrespective of the fact that most communications media are in the process of, or already have, undergone digitisation, it is unlikely that analog processes will become obsolete. Cotton and Oliver describe one irony of the digital revolution as being the fact that people interface with digital media in increasingly analog ways through the use of desktops, data gloves and body suits.(7) The print magazine is itself a media form that shifts between being analog and digital. A magazine’s pages can be physically turned to reveal the next sequential page in a continual analog pattern. However, the structure of content in a magazine and the way in which a magazine is consumed, does not necessarily adhere to an analog form of sequential page turning and a continuous flow of information.(8) The print magazine is a media form that has the capacity to represent both analog and digital forms, through production, consumption and distribution.
Digital media are discontinuous and their form is not at all like the signal they reproduce.(9) Digital representation is based on arbitrary symbols, the zero and one, which are grouped together to represent alphanumeric characters, audio and images. Compact discs are digitally encoded forms of music. Although the music is heard continuously as if it were an analog waveform, however it is in fact stored as discreet bits of information that are sampled for example at the rate of 44.1 thousand times a second.(10)
A digital representation of music.
The zeros and ones that represent digital information, known as ‘bits’, are the smallest definable pieces of digitally coded information. Negraponte describes the digital bit as thus - "It is a state of being: on or off, true or false, up or down, in or out, black or white. For practical purposes we consider a bit to be a 1 or 0."(11) Digital bits further represent information by combining into ‘bytes’. A byte is a string of eight bits and can be combined in up to 256 different ways. A byte typically represents one piece of information in the computer’s memory, such as a letter, number, punctuation mark, tone or colour.(12)
Digital typographic forms are constructed within grid matrixes from many ‘bits’ controlled by the computer’s zero-one, on-off binary code. Robin Kinross argues that through digitisation, "letters become fragmented."(13) Although this is an accurate description of digital typographies, many analog typographic forms are also highly fragmented.(14) Any argument that digital technology has explicitly caused the fragmentation of letters, language and society, can be undermined by an examination of analog typographic forms from as early as the sixteenth century as conditioning culture into a fragmented state that digital technologies have been said to foster.
Digital typographies can be created and stored in two ways: as ‘bitmaps’ or page description languages such as PostScript or TrueType. Bitmaps are built with bits of digital information, the more bits used per inch, the higher resolution the character. Bit-mapped typographies are limited by size variations, as the larger a letter gets the more evident the matrix of dots and the letter’s fragmented structure appears. PostScript and TrueType fonts(15) define letterforms as a series of mathematically coded lines and arcs that can be altered in size without loss of resolution. The co-ordinates for the size of a desired type are sent to the printer by the computer which constructs the true outline of the letter and then fills it in to produce a letter at the highest possible resolution. To construct a true outline of the letterform ‘Bezier curves’ are used. Bezier curves are line segments mathematically defined and controlled by anchor connection points. Complex curves and shapes can be constructed by manipulating Bezier curve anchor points.(16) This typographic production eliminates ‘jaggies’, a common feature of bitmaps.(17) However, in decoding the mathematical data of a PostScript or TrueType letter, the printer is simply preparing a high-resolution bitmap.(18) Therefore all digital typographies are then constructed of many fragmented bits.
(1) A bitmap digital letter.
(2) A digital letter built with Bezier curves.
Digitisation refers to the process whereby a continuous analog signal is converted to digital binary code. Through digitisation, typefaces can be stored without decay and used many times over, without the continual degradation of hot metal type. Analog typeforms can be ‘immortalised’ by way of digitisation.(19) The processes through which typographies are digitised are simple. Generally artwork is scanned onto a magnetic disk that provides digital representations of the letterforms. This raw data is then edited, refined and manipulated in a graphics program after which master fonts can be generated.(20)
A popularly digitised analog typeform is the metal-key typewriter typeface.(21) The analog typewriter typeface has an on-going existence through digitisation in an age that has relegated the manual typewriter to nothing but ‘dead media’(22) technology. Roger Walton however, argues that the authentic typewriter typeface, with its natural eccentricities and connotations of journalistic urgency, is a form of typographic language that is disappearing in the digital age.(23) This project does not debate the fate of any particular typographic form, but recognises that through digitisation, analog typographies can be transferred into a new technological environment for continued use long after their own means of production have become obsolete.
(1) 'g' of 'Gill Sans' by Eric Gill drawn in 1933.
(2) 'A' of the 'Champfleury' alphabet by Geoffroy Tory, a pupil of leonardo da Vinci, in 1529.
(3) 'B' of the typeface 'romain du roi' from 1693.
The computer and its digital binary code can be described as fostering a language code as ancient as western philosophy. Sadie Plant argues that inherent within the digital process are "symbols of the orders of Western reality, the ancient logical codes which make the difference between on and off … form and matter, mind and body, white and black, good and evil."(26) Green argues that the Chinese actually formulated the world’s very first binary operating system, the ‘yin and yang’ over two thousand years ago.(27) The computer through its utilisation of zeros and ones, on and off, reinforces this long cultural tradition of binary hierarchies. Thus the computer can be considered as a technologisation of the Western conceptual apparatus of binary opposites, and a formulation which has long been one of the defining organisational principles of Western society and power.
Analog printing from Gutenburg’s invention of movable type between 1440 and 1450, captures the digital premise of breaking down information into its smallest definable bits, then recombining it in various combinations with other bits to represent information. Adam Smith argues that the essence of digitisation is similar to Gutenburg’s moving letters but is much simpler as it only involves zeros and ones.(28) Smith goes on to argue that Morse code was also a "rehearsal of the great digital transformation of codes which has arrived now in the 1980s."(29) Given these debates, one could also then look back to the invention of writing, around 4000BC, as necessarily the first discreetly digital representation. Writing, in any of its various forms whether pictographic, alphanumeric or ideographic, according to Tofts, functions "through the relentless force of its own internal mechanisms of repetition and alteration," that is not unlike the on/off, 0/1 processes of digital technologies.(30) Each written sign would essentially represent a piece of digital information that can be continually re-arranged and repeated.
A significant development towards digital typographic design arose out of the Italian Futurist art movement, most prominent between 1909 and 1915. The central components of the Futurists’ works were - dynamism, speed and movement: the very characteristics that are now prominently associated with the digital-electronic world.(31) The Futurist’s attitudes were a response to the fast-pace of technological development in the early 20th century "the new industrial age."(32) Filippo Tommaso Marrinetti (1876-1944) addressed Futurism’s interpretation and dislike of traditional typographical harmony in a 1913 manifesto entitled, "Destruction of Syntax - Imagination without Strings - Words – Freedom." The manifesto speaks of a revolution to bring out the expressive force of words by leaps and bursts of representational style.(33) The Futurists were thus early advocates for the development of an attitude towards typographic layout that is common and technically feasible in the contemporary digital age. The typographic design of Ray Gun magazine exemplifies many of the Futurists’ ideas regarding expression, style and technology through the leaps and bursts of its dynamic and expressive typography.
F.T> Marrinetti's 'SCHRABrrRrraaNNG' (1919). This work was a statement against the typographically linear and static book at a time when cinema in the 1920s, was introducing dynamic representations.
Similarly, the Bauhaus, a German design school founded in 1919, had an important impact on typographic design that points to the evolution of typographic practice in this contemporary digital age. Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, a teacher at the Bauhaus, anticipated that typographic communication would be replaced by the new techniques of sound recording and film. Moholy-Nagy argued in a 1925 essay titled "Contemporary Typography - Aims, Practice, Criticism", that typography must embrace the machine age to gain a much more serious grasp of technology and represent the new visual experiences of the age.(34) The Bauhaus’ recognition that print media and typographic practice in the 1920s entered a stage in which its dominance as a communications media was threatened by new media has significant resonance in the 1990s. After reforming their typographic practices to compete with television, magazines must now respond to competition from digital technologies, most significantly the computer and the Internet.
The magazine’s own structural form, and the act of reading an analog print magazine, can also be argued as representing a digital process. The structure of a magazine’s content is such that a reader can flip randomly back and forth throughout its pages due to the discontinuous nature of its content. It is a common practice in many magazines to run a feature article over four continuous pages and then continue the rest of the article at a later stage in the magazine, and even then split the rest of the article on several different pages. Ellen Lupton, argues that the "non-linear structure of the magazine … is the printed prototype for multimedia publishing."(35) Multimedia is a distinctly digital medium where disparate forms of information such as text, image and audio are reduced to the same binary code which allows all the information to be independently manipulated bit by bit, therefore also allowing non-linear information retrieval. Negraponte describes multimedia as nothing more than "commingled bits."(36) Print magazines can be similarly described as "commingled bits" especially in terms of the first third of a magazine’s pages where there is generally lots of short ‘bytes’ of information mingled together. Thus, the analog print magazine has pre-conditioned culture with the discontinuous and fragmented structure and presentation of digital media.
This discussion of ‘analog’ and ‘digital’ has highlighted their intertwined and fluid nature. Digital does not exist without a trace of the analog, and analog is not replaced by the current foregrounding of the digital process. The historical presence of digital-like manifestations indicates that contemporary digital typographic practice and magazine culture are not as particularly ‘new’ and ‘revolutionary’ as they may seem. The following chapter will extend an examination of the digital domain’s most prominent functional characteristics and aesthetic forms.
1) R.Harley, ed. New Media Technologies, Australian Film, Television & Radio School, Sydney, 1993, pps.7-8.
2) Ron Eglash says that the most fundamental characteristic of any representational system is found within the analog-digital distinction. R.Eglash, 'African Influences in Cybernetics,' in C.H. Gray, ed. The Cyborg Handbook, Routledge, New York, 1995, p.18.
3) The process of digitisation will be explained later in this chapter however, it is simply the process by which a continuous analog representation is converted to a fragmented binary digital code through scanning into a computer or digital video capture. Television is currently undergoing extensive metamorphosis from analog to digital.
4) L.Holtzshue & E.Noriega, Design Fundamentals For The Digital Age, Van Nostrand Rhienhold, New York, 1997, p.17.
5) C.Chauncey, ‘The Art Of Typography in the Information Age,’ Technology Review, February- March 1986, Volume 89, pps.26-33.
6) ‘Taktile’ was a student project by Ben Tibbs and Tony Side undertaken at Great Britain’s Royal College of Art in 1995. The Taktile project was cited in R.Poynor, Typography Now Two, Implosion, Booth-Clibborn Editions, London, 1996, p.199. Poynor further describes the ideas behind the Taktile project, writing, "digital technology and the keyboard have had a profound effect on the physical nature of writing. The emotional directness of mark-making on a surface has been reduced to the uniform pressing of a key. Taktile is an attempt to restore the physicality of writing by combining the tangible and the digital: the longer your finger rests on a key, the more impact it will make on the character’s density and legibility."
7) B.Cotton & R.Oliver, The Cyberspace Lexicon, An Illustrated Dictionary of Terms from Multimedia to Virtual Reality. Phaidon Press Limited, London, 1994, p.61.
8) The following section ‘The Evolution of Digital Representation,’ will outline the digital aspects of the print magazine.
9) Cotton & Oliver, 1994, p.61.
10) N.Negraponte, Being Digital, Hodder & Stoughton, Rydalmere, 1995, p.14.
11) Negraponte, 1995, p.14.
12) Holtzschue & Noriega, 1997, p.17.
13) R.Kinross, Modern Typography, An Essay in Critical History, Hyphen Press, London, 1994, p.135.
14) Early stages of digital fragmentation will be outlined in the next section examining the evolution of the digital process and representation.
15) The term ‘font’ and ‘typeface’ are often used interchangeably. "A font is the complete set of characters in any one design, size, or style of type." R.Carter, Working With Computer Type 1, Books, Magazines and Newsletters, Rotovision, Switzerland, 1995, p.10.
16) See Holtzschue & Noreiga, 1997, p.184.
17) ‘Jaggies’ are the ragged edges most evident on the curved parts of bitmap letterforms.
18) Cotton & Oliver, 1994, p.63.
19) Immortality’ is a term used by Eric Martin to discuss the features of digital graphic design. Martin writes, "the ‘immortality’ of the objects you create, together with the ease of editing, encourages the development of a personal library of imagery which may have many unexpected uses over time." Cited in, A.Grieman, with overviews by E.Martin, Hybrid Imagery, The Fusion of Technology and Graphic Design, Watson-Guptill Publications, New York, 1990, p.57.
20) A.Lawson, Anatomy of a Typeface, David R. Godine Publisher, Boston, 1990, p.402.
21) Common digital ‘typewriter’ fonts are American Typewriter, Courier and Crudfont. An Internet site which features digital typewriter and other older typographies is, Recycled Alphabets® by Coniglio Type @ http://www.conigliotype.com/
22) Bruce Sterling describes ‘dead media’ as those technologies that become obsolete due to the rapid invention of new media technologies. Sterling argues that ‘dead media’ must be analysed "otherwise commercial pressures can lead to a grave misunderstanding of the true nature and behaviour of technology." A.Kroker & M.Kroker, ‘Dead Media Project: An Interview with Bruce Sterling,’ Event-scene 75, 16th of March 1999, CTHEORY, Theory, Technology and Culture, Vol.22, No.1-2. Online @ http://www.ctheory.com/e75.html
23) R.Walton, Typographics 1, The Art of Typography from Digital to Dyeline, Hearst Books International, New York, 1995, p.8.
24) Meggs, 1998, p.108.
25) E.Lupton & J.A.Miller, Design, Writing, Research, Writing on Graphic Design, Princeton Architectural Press, New York, 1996, p.54.
26) S.Plant, Zeros and Ones, Digital Women and the New Technoculture, Fourth Estate, London, 1997, p.34.
27) M.Green, Zen and the Art of the Macintosh, Discoveries on the Path to Computer Enlightenment. Running Press, Philadelphia, 1986, p.58.
28) A.Smith, Books to Bytes, Knowledge and Information in the Postmodern Era, British Film Institute, London, 1993, p.40.
29) Smith, 1993, p.42.
30) D.Tofts & M.McKeigh, Memory Trade, A Prehistory of Cyberculture, Interface, Sydney, 1998, p.44.
31) Futurism was not an ‘art’ movement in the usual sense. It was more of an ideology, a way of approaching life. Futurism began in literature, but spread quickly to art, sculpture and theatre with its strong political ideas. Marinetti, Futurism’s founder, established the themes of the Futurist movement as "the exaltation of speed, youth and action: of violence and conflict; rebellion against the past and disgust with the stagnation of Italian culture; a passionate enthusiasm for the beauties of the industrial age." Cited in J.Rye, Futurism, Studio Vista, London, 1972, p.11.
32) Blackwell, 1998, p.22.
33) Blackwell, 1998, p.22.
34) Blackwell, 1998, p.34.
35) E.Lupton, Mixing Messages, Graphic Design in Contemporary Culture, Princeton Architectural Press, New York, 1996, p.135.
36) Negraponte, 1995, p.18.
