This chapter examines nine characteristics that have become prominently associated with the digital environment and are specifically active in the production and design of texts in this environment. The following digital production features can be traced in print magazine culture, as well as in the socio-cultural organisations of the late twentieth century generally. These features are:
o Mutability
o Fluidity
o Implosion
o Pixelation
o Perfect Reproduction
o Randomness
o Speed
o Iconisation
o Hypertextuality
Once reduced to digital binary code, information can be easily and continuously mutated. Manipulation and change are common terms used to describe the notion of mutability, a biological term that refers to the ability of something to turn into something else, that is to mutate.
Computer programs such as Quark XPress, PageMaker and Photoshop, allow typographic texts and images to be easily mutated. Eric Martin points out that a common process by which computers perform mutation on texts, is through the ‘undo’ function that, "allows you to take back something you just did, without a trace; or, with another click, restores it."(1) Along with the ‘undo’ function as a sign of mutability we should also include - cut, copy, paste, bold, italic, outline, and type size and style changes. These functions expose the mutability of digital texts through the processes of ‘selection’ or ‘highlighting,’ then ‘clicking’ the preferred style or setting.(2) The digital environment essentially speeds up the processes of textual manipulation that have long been prominent in ‘traditional’ analog text production, where producers had to manually cut, copy and paste.
Typographic forms are made easily mutable through digital type design programs like Fontographer. Stylistically opposing type designers - Barry Deck (an avant-gardist) and Jonathon Hoefler (a traditionalist), produced the type design titled ‘Family Values’ by each contributing one of their own designs and digitally combining them using the ‘interpolation’ feature of Fontographer which "averages two graphics and finds the median."(3) Many writers have commented on the possibilities that the mutable digital environment allows the typographic designer.(4) Rob Carter writes, "classical letterforms can be wildly and irresponsibly distorted from their original designs, … on the other hand, the visual nuances in type can be adjusted for improved typographic readability and quality."(5) The extensive variety of digital mutations in the alphanumeric code can be determined by visiting some of the many type foundaries on the Internet, which sell and/or give away digital fonts.(7) The English alphabet is notably the most prolific typographic code to undergo extensive digital mutation as it is a globally dominant language code used for communication. The computer’s keyboards are also based on the alphabet.
Mutations conducted in the digital environment are visually evident in a printed medium, although the processes of mutation are not. When transferred onto the printed page, a digital text becomes static at the moment of its most recent mutation. The simple formatting effects, bold, italic, outline, shadow and strikthru expose the occurrence of mutability through the absence of the ‘unformatted’ letter.(8)
(image to be fixed) A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A A
The digital environment’s ease of mutability is enabled because of its fluidity. Texts in this environment can move and change incessantly. A text’s producer and consumer can also move fluidly between and within texts in the digital-electronic domain.
The notion of ‘fluidity’ is commonly used to represent the digital-electronic and postindustrial age, whilst ‘mechanical,’ is used to refer to the analog-industrial age. Mattelart and Mattelart, argue that today, the "fluid," has replaced the "mechanical," as the dominant mode of thought. They write, "force is counterposed to flow, rigidity to flexibility, … linear causality to circular causality, closure to openness, sum and juxtaposition to cross-analysis."(9) The movement from ‘mechanical’ to ‘fluid’ is largely an influence of society’s move to digital technologies. This shift subsequently implicates a shift in the perceptual orientations of the individual that renders them more susceptible to typographic texts that move and can be easily manipulated and erased. Thus, essentially through computers, the organisations of the socio-cultural world are moving towards a more fluid understanding of language and representation, are far removed from the mechanical age defined more by a static, fixed typography and monumentalised in the printed text as permanent and unchangeable.
The fluidity of the digital environment has a connection to the fluidic and dynamic patterns of the natural ocean. Freud’s idea of the "oceanic feeling" reveals this resonance. Freud describes the "oceanic feeling", as a state of being that constitutes, "a sensation of ‘eternity’, a feeling as of something limitless, unbounded – as it were, ‘oceanic’."(10) Freud’s "oceanic feeling," can also be used to describe the individual’s experiences and sensory orientations in the digital environment, as one can experience feelings of limitlessness and unbounded discovery through constant movement and change. The Internet in particular, is a pertinent example of the digital environment’s oceanic, fluid nature. Browsing the Internet has become better known by oceanic inspired notions like, ‘netsurfing’ and ‘surfing the net’, rather than any notion that reflects the technological nature of the Internet.
Typography on television and computers often moves fluidly in their allusive three-dimensional screen space.(11) Richard Hollis says that the still images of print, although constructed electronically, nonetheless have to compete with the moving images of the television screen.(12) To counteract the fluid textual representations of television and computer screens, print media can use computers to create static texts that blur the boundaries between fluid and static representations. Most commonly, fluidity in print is emphasised by typography that is curved or varied in focus and not confined to traditional, hierarchical layouts defined by rigid grids. The next chapter will reveal techniques through which fluidity can be implied on a static page to compete with the actual fluidic representations of the digital-electronic environment.
‘Implosion’ refers to a merging or bursting inwards and is usually defined as the binary opposite to ‘explosion’. Marshall McLuhan says that, "after three thousand years of explosion, by means of fragmentary and mechanical technologies, the Western world is imploding."(13) A term often used in conjunction with implosion is ‘convergence’. Convergence is a more technologised notion that is also used to refer to the process of collapsing different analog data into a common binary language. Multimedia texts are examples of digital implosion or convergence. In the production of multimedia texts, previously disparate forms of information such as type, image and audio can be converged into a "common weave" of digital zeros, ones and keyboard commands.(14)
The traditional separations of text production roles such as writer or author, designer, printer and publisher have considerably imploded in this contemporary era. A writer is also a designer in that through the production of texts on computers one must select typographic styles, sizes and alignment functions simultaneously with the writing of the text. A computer’s default settings are rarely ever used when there is a much larger variety and flexibility of presentation techniques available. Thus, the convergence of the components of textual production roles has been indirectly fostered by anyone who uses a computer to produce a printed text. Also, in specific reference to typographic production specialists, a single computer operator has now brought together the roles of the typographic designer, setter and printer, that were once dominant throughout the long history of lead type produced printed texts.
The convergence of textual production roles on these many fronts can be revealed as responsible for the subsequent explosion in the number of print publications available. It is relatively easy for anybody to learn and practice the skills of desktop publishing, thus writers have become designers and publishers, designers have moved into writing and publishing. Contemporary print culture continues to flourish due to the newfound ability for a single person to do the work of many with simply a computer, some desktop publishing software and a printer. In particular, ‘zines’ and ‘fanzines’ took off with the spread of computers in the mid-1980s. Zines are generally low budget, self-produced and distributed small magazines that support highly specific and often very obscure subcultures. Gunderloy and Janice say that "most zines start out with the realisation that one need no longer be merely a passive consumer of media. Everyone can be a producer!"(15) Whilst maybe not ‘everyone’ can be a media producer, the capacity to be so is definitely on the rise due to lowering computer prices and the accessibility of high quality photocopiers amongst other things.
Although the digital age has foregrounded implosion over explosion, information is still inherently fragmented and continually exploding. This trace of fragmentation is exposed by the fact that for the implosion to occur, information must be broken down to zeros, ones, bits and pixels. Thus the digital-electronic age plays on the binary distinction between implosion and explosion and redefines the two in terms of their presence in each other.
The digital environment is fragmented into ‘bits’, but it is also fragmented and represented by ‘pixels.’ ‘Pixel’ is the term derived from the abreviation of ‘picture (pix) element’ which essentially refers to one small fragment of a picture. Pixelation predominantly refers to the structure and appearance of texts on screen based technologies such as televisions and computers. However, pixelation has a strong lineage in print culture long before the arrival of the electronic screen that will be examined shortly. On the electronic screen, pixels are structurally identical, where individual pixels represent the colours: red, green and blue, or intensity, hue and saturation.(16)
Contact Needs
This is Xcreen-Double
Xcreen-Double
This is Xecrics
Xecrics
This is Happy Dots
Happy Dots
‘Pixelation’ can be traced back well beyond contemporary digital-electronic technologies. Zuzana Licko argues that, "inlaid stone mosaics, stained glass windows, embroidery, and weaving designs," use the digital’s concept of combining distinct elements to form a coherent image.(18) Richard Lanham writes, "Roy Litchtenstein’s paintings seem as if created by and for electronic means … the microdot technique resembles a pixeled screen seen very close up."(19) William Mitchell argues that the processes of digital image capture and an impressionist painter converting a scene to discrete brush strokes are remarkably similar.(20) The early twentieth century art movement, Pointillism, which includes George Suerat, can also be positioned within a digital environment due to its pixelated renderings. These early texts reveal an extensive cultural embrace of pixelated representations that are similar to the digital-electronic images of computers and television common today.
(1) An early mosaic.
(2) Detail of a Roy Litchenstien painting.
(3) Detail of a George Suerat painting.
Contemporary magazines commonly contain images and type that reveal an inherently pixelated nature. In using pixelated images and type, print magazines primarily create an intertextual connection between themselves and the representations of the illuminated digital-electronic screen. To enhance the pixelation of a screen-based media on a printed page, type and images can be enhanced through ‘filters’ in computer programs such as PhotoShop.(21)
Digital computers are highly regarded for their ability to reproduce texts without any loss of quality. This perfection however, has spawned many typographic and magazine designs that both suggest and emphasise that the digital environment has its own version of dirt and noise that penetrates this clean perfection.(22)
Typographies in the digital environment are programmed binary codes. Thus the representation of each typographic character is the same as its direct replica. The typeform ‘Crudfont’ appears inconsistent and randomly imperfect yet every ‘a’ is the same, even after its thousandth repetition. Every inconsistency of this letter ‘a’ is perfect. Both perfection and imperfection are achievable through the controlled programming of the digital bits that compose the letters. Mendleson writes that, "unlike metal type, which always has random variations based on the typeface’s individual casting and wear, digital type is antiseptically regular."(23) The ‘perfect’ typographies of the digital environment thus erode centuries of analog type production and printing which ‘suffered’ from imperfections.
Recognising that the digital environment produces perfect copies over and over again foregrounds the debate that original or master forms are non-existent in the digital-electronic age. Zuzana Licko writes "the digital letterform … does not exist in a physical master form. Instead, the digital printer generates each letter as an original, yielding an image that is perfectly accurate and consistent."(24) Eric Martin similarly argues that, "there is no ‘original’ in the usual sense. Every copy is identical to the original."(25) The ability of the digital environment to render copies and originals imperceptible has been active in stimulating the enthusiastic embrace by large sections of society in the tools of digital production. Personal computers and digital printers allow anyone with a degree of computer literacy to construct and reproduce quality print publications that could compete with professional text production and reproduction.
It seems contradictory that if the digital environment is one of perfection, it should also facilitate randomness. Randomness however, is enabled through a "randomness chip" which generates complicated computations to produce randomness.(26) Thus herein lies the contradiction: for random functions to operate in the digital environment they must be precisely programmed. The presence of such ‘randomness’ is only apparent once the ‘randomised’ text has been printed. In analog text production, randomness comes into play much more naturally, as can be seen through the manual typewriter and lead printed typographic texts.
Typographies have been designed with programmed randomness that plays on, and questions, the perfection of the digital environment. Two examples are ‘Beowolf’ and ‘Burroughs’.
‘Beowolf’, by Erik Van Blokand and Just Van Rossum, is a type that has been programmed with various levels of randomness. The randomness in Beowolf is enabled through the randomizing command built into the Postscript language that was used to initially construct the type and is used to print it.(27) Beowolf produces slight variations in its representations so that every character that is the same on the page appears slightly different from every other.
Jonathan Barnbrook's digital typeface ‘Burroughs,’ named after William Burroughs, the novelist with a taste for textual "cut-ups", extends a nihilistic randomising principle that replaces what is typeset, with words generated at random by the software.(28) On the left is the typed computer screen display, and on the right is the printed result of the screen display when intersected by a digital randomising function.
The production of random, chaotic and imperfect typographies is realistic in a ‘perfect’ digital environment, as the appearance of each character depends on programmed codes. Blokand and Rossum have speculated about designing fonts that drop characters out at random, print upside down, and slowly decay until they become illegible in a digital parody of hot metal type.(29) These instances of ‘randomness’ however, would be inherently perfect and calculated. Randomness in the digital environment is generally a sterile parody of text production techniques of the past, but is also a critical comment on the weaknesses and future possible chaos that digital technology could collapse into.
The evolution of media technologies such as: print, telephone, radio, cinema and television, have each in turn accelerated the pace of a previous culture.(30) The digital age, with its computers, satellites and fibre optic networks, extends this acceleration of culture. A comparison of electronic mail (email), and traditional mail procedures most thoroughly exemplifies the immense spatial and temporal reorientations caused by digital-electronic technologies.(31) The possibility for near instantaniety or ‘real time’ communications across vast distances has had a profound impact on culture that has stimulated an increased desire for even greater acceleration.
A perceived conflict between print and digital culture is that they exist in opposing temporal and spatial conditions. Taylor and Saarinen argue, that "the way we were educated in print culture does not prepare us to communicate in that urgent instant," of the digital-electronic age.(32) Print culture however, through magazines and newspapers, has significantly redefined itself to compete and keep up with the speedy information delivery of digital technologies. Neil Postman writes that, "within months of Morse’s first public demonstration, the local and the timeless had lost their central position in newspapers, eclipsed by the dazzle of distance and speed."(33) Print magazines (though to a lesser degree than daily newspapers), are eclipsed by the dazzle of speed, as new issues are on sale as quickly as every week, but more commonly every month. A sign of the magazine’s desire to not only be up with times, but ahead of them, is emphasised by datelines that are one month ahead of that issue’s sale month. Many magazines on sale in July for instance, will run with an August dateline. Magazines play a prominent socio-cultural role as mediums to keep people up to speed with ‘new’ styles, trends and ideas, as once the next issue is published, the previous becomes obsolete, run over by the next fashion trend.
In regard to textual production, the speed of the digital environment has translated into considerable cost efficiency. The speed at which digital production tools operate allows designers the freedom to manipulate texts to the most minute degree without going through the costly and time consuming processes such as recasting or re-setting lead type, or re-shooting photographic plates. As magazine publishers aim to make a profit, the digitisation of the print production industry has become inevitable to maintain the economic viability of print. The old catchphrase - ‘time is money’ reveals much of the reason why the print industry has embraced high-speed text production tools such as computers, scanners and printers.
Many of the operations of the computer, its software and the Internet, occur through symbolic icons and pictures rather than alphanumeric representations. Pictographic and ideographic codes are in fact one of the earliest known forms of written and visual communications. Prehistoric cave inscriptions and Egyptian hieroglyphics are the most well recognised pictographic and ideographic communication systems. However, Chinese, Mayan and Summerian cultures also use pictographic and ideographic codes for communication purposes.(34) Pictographs are images that represent words, and an ideograph is a symbol that stands to represent a word, concept or object.(35) Thus the seemingly ‘new’ interfaces and codified languages of the digital environment are actually building on a successful language tradition that has been extensively used throughout history in a range of cultural contexts.
Picture and symbol codes function at a basic literacy level, as can be illustrated by the globalised symbols that inform you of accommodation, food, airports and telephones. The use of iconographic codes in digital environments represents what have become known as, ‘user-friendly’ technologies.(36) Standard icons on computers have simplified the learning processes of technological tools across many cultural distinctions. McLuhan has argued that, "ideograms transcend national barriers."(37) This argument is indeed a valid one in many instances, such as the iconographic codes illustrated above show. However, there are many ideographic communication codes that are also highly culturally specific and do not easily transcend national barriers, such as Egyptian hieroglyphs and Chinese written symbols. Cultural and language barriers are however greatly superseded with digital technology’s use of simplistic pictorial codifications, although one must still first learn the language of computer icons and the digital environment to effectively use such communication technologies.
Dingbats are typographic devices used to decorate or add emphasis to texts, and have been around since Gutenburg’s movable type printing. Heller and Fink explain that "throughout type history these typographic bits were founded in forms from abstract glyphs to minicartoons. In the digital age – also known as the epoch of little icons – the witty dingbat enjoys a serious revival."(38) The revival of dingbats in the digital age can be shown by the many pictographic and iconic alphabets that are now common to a computer’s font list. Some of these pictographic-iconic typographies are illustrated below.
Technobats
124567890-=][poiuytrewqasdfgjkl;'/.,m]
Zapf Dingbats
qwertyuioplkjhgfdsazxcvbnm,.';[]=
Wingdings
Qertyuiopasdghjklzxcvbmn1235
BrightSide
Qwertyuioplkjhgfdsaxc
AHIRU1
Theodor H. Nelson coined the term ‘hypertext’ in the 1960s to describe the method of publishing electronic texts by way of "non-sequential writing".(39) Hypertext is essentially a digital-electronic manifestation, however some of the features of hypertext are firmly embedded in analog print culture.
Hypertext is essentially an appropriation of print conventions in a new technological medium. Hypertexts are made up of pages, paragraphs and sections, connected by ‘links’ that act like dynamic footnotes, automatically retrieving the material to which they refer when activated by clicking the hyperlink signifier.(40) Hypertext links are distinguished through the print typographic conventions of underline or bold configuration. The signifiers of digital hypertext have also in turn been re-appropriated by print culture, to attract readers who spend most of their time engaging with digital-electronic media rather than print media. Also hypertext signifiers are used in print to educate readers who may be unfamiliar with the typographic language of hypertext. Wired magazine often uses hypertextual typographic design to directly associate the digital media form to its printed magazine text.
Digital hypertexts release texts and readers from structure and fixity. Landow explains that hypertext removes the linearity of print by freeing individual passages from the ordering principle of sequence.(41) Print magazines actually structure their content discontinuously, which in a sense frees the reader from the structure and fixity of ‘traditional’ texts. Nelson says that magazine layouts are simply "nonsequential writing on paper" that computers are building on in the form of hypertext.(42) Traditional print culture thus contains the early signs of hypertextual information presentation and arrangement. Landow argues that scholarly articles too embody non-linearity and multi-sequentiality through their use of graphically marked footnotes, endnotes, in-text references, and the very structure of literary writing that layers and weaves into its own texts, the ideas of many other texts.(43) Bolter describes digital hypertexts as the electronic equivalent to footnotes used in printed books for hundreds of years. He writes, "the machine is merely handling the mechanics of reading footnotes."(44) Thus hypertext can be seen as emanating from the traditions of print culture and is not a revolutionary feature of the digital environment. However, its technological manifestation is revolutionary in that it speeds up and simplifies the process of linking to references and other texts that are hypertextually layered and woven into the principle text.
The notions analysed in this chapter have generally exposed a double imperative. Firstly, these features express ‘new’ technological opportunities for the production of print texts made possible by the development of digital-electronic technologies. Secondly, the analysis of these features has exposed their presence throughout a long history of textual production. This historical outlook implies that textual representations considered ‘revolutionary’ as a result of the digital age have in fact had a much wider and extensive development. The digital age may not be revolutionary in its representational strategies, however it is in the respect that it has made more feasible features of text production that were time and labour intensive throughout analog text production times.
1) E.Martin, ‘Overviews,’ in A.Greiman, Hybrid Imagery, The Fusion of Technology and Graphic
Design, Watson-Guptill Publications, New York, 1990, p.55.
4) Rick Poynor writes, that "in this polymorphous digital realm, typefaces can cross fertilise each other
or merge to form strange new hybrids." R.Poynor, Typography Now, The Next Wave, Internos
Books, London, 1991, p.11.
5) R.Carter, Working With Computer Type 1, Books, Magazines, Newsletters, RotoVision,
Switzerland, 1995, p.8.
6) Type foundary is the traditional label for a typographic production house and has remained in use since
the days of founding lead type.
7) For a comprehensive list of Internet sites which sell and give away fonts visit:
http://www.microsoft.com/typography/links/links.asp?type=free&part=1
Some of the many type foundaries on the Internet include:
Émigré Fonts http://www.émigré.com/fonts.html
Garage Fonts http://www.garagefonts.com
Font Diner http://www.fontdiner.com
Font Addict http://www.fontaddict.com/archive.html
BoyBeaver Fonts http://www.boybeaver.com/site/fonts.html
ITC – International Typeface Corporation http://www.itcfonts.com/itc/fonts/index.html
The Type Quarry http://www.3ip.com/library.html
FontFont Finder http://www.fontfont.de/fffstuff/f_central.html
8) An ‘unformatted’ letter is one not applied with digital formatting effects such as bold, italics, outline,
and strikthru. These are not initially a property of the typeface and are added at the production stages
of the text.
9) A.Mattelart, & M.Mattelart, Rethinking Media Theory, Signposts and New Directions, University of
Minnesota Press, Minneapolis,Mattelart & Mattelart, 1992, p.48.
10) Cited in C.Connery, ‘The Oceanic Feeling and the Regional Imaginary,’ in R.Wilson &
W.Dissanayake, eds. Global/Local, Cultural Production and the Transnational Imaginary,
Duke University Press, Durham, 1996, p.289.
11) Some Internet sites which display typographic fluidic movement are:
LettError 2.0 http://www.letterror.com
FontFont Finder http://www.fontfont.de/fffstuff/f_central.html
Buro Destruct http://www1.bermuda.ch/bureaudestruct/
Beetles & Dry Fish http://www.lotsofpeopleinboxes.com/lotsold/sitefonts.html
12) R.Hollis, Graphic Design, A Concise History, Thames & Hudson, London, 1994, p.186.
13) M.McLuhan, Understanding Media, The Extensions of Man, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London,
1964, p.3.
14) Eric Martin describes the basic premise of digital language, to bring disparate forms of information
into a ‘common weave.’ Cited in Greiman, 1990, p.11.
15) M.Grunderloy & C.G.Janice, The World of Zines, A Guide to the Independent Magazine Revolution,
Penguin Books, New York, 1992, p.3.
16) N.Negraponte, Being Digital, Hodder & Stoughton, Rydalmere, 1995, p.106.
17) L.Holtzschue & E.Noriega, Design Fundamentals For The Digital Age, Van Nostrand Rhienhold,
New York, 1997, p.24 & 185.
18) Cited in Licko, Vanderlans & Gray, 1993, p. 36.
19) Lanham, 1993, p.44.
20) W.Mitchell, The Reconfigured Eye, Visual Truth in the Post-Photographic Era, The MIT Press,
Cambridge, 1994, p.60.
21) William Mitchell defines ‘filters’ as "devices for picking and choosing … once a digital image has
been recorded, it can be filtered further to bring out aspects of interest and to suppress others."
Mitchell, 1994, p.87. Pixelation filters in Adobe Photoshop include; crystalise, facet, mezzotint,
pointalise and mosaic.
22) Any early issue of Ray Gun, or any of the ‘new wave’ of hybrid digital typographic designs such as
Heroin Sheik or Anorexia that emphasise scratchy and distorted typographic
Forms, will show this feature.
23) E.Mendleson, ‘Beowolf Fonts Mimic the Look of Metal Typography,’ PC Magazine, September 12,
1995, Vol.14, Number 15, p.49.
24) Cited in Licko, Vanderlans & Gray, 1993, p.23.
27) Mendleson, 1995, p.49.
28) Poynor, 1991, p.11.
29) Poynor, 1991, p.11.
30) See D.De Kerckhove, The Skin of Culture, Investigating The New Electronic Reality, Somerville
House Publishing, Toronto, 1995, p.65.
31) See D.Tapscott, The Digital Economy, Promise and Peril in the Age of Networked Intelligence,
McGraw-Hill, New York, 1996, p.49.
32) M.Taylor & E.Saarinen, Imagologies, Media Philosophy, Routledge, London, 1994, ‘Speed’, p.3.
35) Holtzschue & Noriega, 1997, p.147.
36) The Macintosh is commonly noted as a ‘user-friendy’ computer because of its use of icons.
37) M.McLuhan, ‘Culture Without Literacy,’ in M.Moos, ed. Media Research, Technology, Art,
Communication, Essays by Marshall McLuhan, Overseas Publishers Association, Amsterdam, 1997,
p.138.
38) Heller & Fink, 1997, p.92.
39) Theodore H. Nelson’s, Literary Machines, 93.1, Mindful Press, California, 1993, discusses
hypertext and the notion of ‘non-sequential writing’.
40) S.Moulthrop, ‘You Say You Want A Revolution: Hypertext and Laws of the Media,’ in E.Amiran &
J.Unsworth, eds. Essays in Postmodern Culture, Oxford University Press, New York, 1993, p.76.
41) G.Landow, Hypertext, The Convergence of Contemporary Critical Theory and Technology, John
Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 1992, p.54.
42) Nelson, 1993, Chapter 1, p.15
43) Landow, 1992, p.4.
44) J.D.Bolter, Writing Space, The Computer, Hypertext and the History of Writing, Lawrence Erlbaum
Associates, New Jersey, 1991, p.15.
