Re: Need a quick font? make your own!
This is pretty interesting. Is it art, is it a toy? Make your own TT fonts created by a genetic algorithm! http://alphabet.tmema.org Thank you for a very interesting link. I have tried making a number of fonts and have really enjoyed both experimenting with The Alphabet Synthesis Machine, which can be run directly on the web using a Java enabled browser, and also experimenting offline afterwards with the fonts that are produced. I have continued to experiment with using the Alphabet Synthesis Machine. Readers might like to know that I have included a few images produced using some of the founts that I have produced in the Art Gallery in our family webspace. A direct link to the Art Gallery is as follows. http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~ngo/art0.htm The images in the Art Gallery that use founts produced using the Alphabet Synthesis Machine were produced using PowerPoint, then using the Save as HTML option to produce the gif format files. The sizes were then trimmed using Photo Editor, as a special size was needed. Two of the pictures used the founts with the WordArt facility, the other used the fount Cobalt glass directly in a text box, with the character formatted to a large size. As the founts are TrueType founts, they display well at large sizes and the elegance of the designs that can be produced using the Alphabet Synthesis Machine can be observed. A technique that I use when using WordArt with these founts is to first produce a character using a text box, then produce the character using WordArt. I then adjust the size and aspect ratio of the WordArt object so that the two characters are the same size and shape. I then delete the text box character. This ensures that the character displayed using WordArt, where lines and fill can be separately set to different colours, are of the correct aspect ratio for the fount. As well as directly displaying individual characters from some founts as art, I am also experimenting with using some founts in other ways. For example, for some founts I use Microsoft Paint to display a character at 72 point. I then make 3 copies of the display. I reflect one horizontally, I reflect one vertically and I reflect one both horizontally and vertically. I then combine the four images in a 2 by 2 format display, so as to produce a large symmetrical fleuron. I then trim that to size and produce a gif file using Photo Editor, making the background transparent. This produces an original artistic design suitable for a web page. This technique can also be used in PowerPoint using WordArt, so that the lines and fill of the characters can be in different colours. Another example is to use some founts as background to a large capital letter. One can then use a background of a plain rectangular area with a border in a different colour, the character in a third colour on top, then the English capital letter on top of that. This effect is best when the fount from the Alphabet Synthesis Machine is one that has lines that reach into the corners of a rectangular area. This can be easily achieved when using the Alphabet Synthesis Machine by setting the handmass control at minimum. Differently, the large sweeping curves of a fount such as Pools of glass in ceramic used in the Art Gallery are produced by not altering the handmass control from its starting position but by reducing the friction control to its minimum position. The use of the width control is also desirable as I have found that some founts that are low in friction can be difficult to display as the tops can get clipped off in Paint and in small sizes in text boxes in PowerPoint, though Word Art in PowerPoint seems to always display the characters in full, though sometimes in the wrong aspect ratio. I am thinking that a fount produced by the Alphabet Synthesis Machine would look good as large floor tiles, where the tiles would be made from stone fired clay consisting of a terracotta body with an inlay of the character in a white clay. The http://alphabet.tmema.org website also has links to other sites about art. William Overington 26 April 2002 www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~ngo
Re: Need a quick font? make your own!
This is pretty interesting. Is it art, is it a toy? Make your own TT fonts created by a genetic algorithm! http://alphabet.tmema.org Thank you for a very interesting link. I have tried making a number of fonts and have really enjoyed both experimenting with The Alphabet Synthesis Machine, which can be run directly on the web using a Java enabled browser, and also experimenting offline afterwards with the fonts that are produced. A nice aspect of the project is that it is an interactive online artwork and all of the fonts produced by people using The Alphabet Synthesis Machine are available for everybody to use in an online archive. A font that I produced with which I am particularly pleased is a font that I named Pools of glass in ceramic. I produced it early on Tuesday 5 March 2002. As the archive shows the latest produced fonts first, it is already some way in the archive, though here is a link that I think will allow a direct download of the font if anyone would like to have a copy of the Pools of glass in ceramic font. I copied it from the source code of the hyperlink on the web page in the archive. http://alphabet.tmema.org/cgi-bin/getfont.cgi?fontname=1015311579 Now, if one opens the font by double clicking on it, then one might wonder about the legibility of the characters. However, the characters were produced with a particular application in mind, for which they are very suitable. If one uses these characters in PowerPoint and one produces a WordArt object using the outline style, the one which is at the top left in the WordArt Gallery, and one uses just one character of one's choice from the Pools of glass in ceramic font, and then one holds down the shift key and one drags a corner of the object so as to make the object huge, then one sees the character as it is intended. One can then colour the lines and colour the fill as one wishes. My first experiment was to use the character that corresponds to a lowercase letter c in the Pools of glass in ceramic font and then to colour the lines blue and to fill with red. One can use the Save as HTML feature of PowerPoint, if that feature is available in the copy of PowerPoint that one is using, so as to produce a set of files for a web based presentation. However, one may use the gif file for the slide as a free-standing gif if one so chooses, which is the way that I usually use gif files that I have produced using PowerPoint. Such a free-standing gif file can then be trimmed using a package such as Photo Editor or Paint Shop Pro as desired. I wonder if I may mention a method that I use in PowerPoint in certain circumstances that might be of interest: the method might be of particular interest in relation to experimenting in PowerPoint using WordArt objects produced using the Pools of glass in ceramic font. I devised the method back in 1998 and it has been useful on a number of occasions for a variety of PowerPoint graphics. Suppose that one has added a graphic to a PowerPoint presentation and one wishes to centre it on the screen. The technique is as follows. Draw a rectangle, as large as possible on the slide so that it covers the whole slide, then fill the rectangle with No Fill. Then use Edit | Select All: then use Draw | Align or Distribute | Align Center then use Draw | Align or Distribute | Align Middle: then click on the background so as to deselect both of the objects on the screen, then select the rectangle and delete it using the delete key. The original object is now centred on the slide. For clarity of the above, perhaps I may mention that Align or Distribute is a menu item of the Draw item, so that Draw | Align or Distribute | Align Center means to click on the Draw item, then to move the mouse over the Align or Distribute menu item, then to move across onto the cascading menu that appears and to then click on the Align Center item on the cascading menu. I might also mention that I usually turn the snap off when designing graphics in PowerPoint: just a personal preference, but the snap might perhaps affect the align commands, so I mention it. I am hoping to make a number of graphics using the Pools of glass in ceramic font and use them as ornaments on web pages in our family webspace. I am also thinking that the designs from the Pools of glass in ceramic font might look very good as background designs in posters. Also, perhaps they will also be used for producing ceramic art objects in accordance with the idea that led to the naming of the font, that of producing a slab of clay that is incised with a character design and which is then stone fired with coloured glass pieces placed in the incisions in the clay, so that when the clay is stone fired the glass melts and runs along the incisions producing an artistic effect of pools of glass in ceramic when the stone fired clay object cools. I wonder if I may suggest the possibility that some of the designs might look good as art on panels of stainless steel about
Re: Need a quick font? make your own!
On Thu, Feb 28, 2002 at 10:34:04AM -0800, Barry Caplan wrote: This is pretty interesting. Is it art, is it a toy? Make your own TT fonts created by a genetic algorithm! http://alphabet.tmema.org/ See also: http://www.theory.org/artprojects/alphabetsoup/ which generates new letters based on forms found in existing (Latin) scripts. -- Evan Martin [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://neugierig.org
Need a quick font? make your own!
This is pretty interesting. Is it art, is it a toy? Make your own TT fonts created by a genetic algorithm! http://alphabet.tmema.org/ Best Regards, Barry Caplan www.i18n.com - coming soon, preview available now News | Tools | Process for Global Software Team I18N
Re: Need a quick font? make your own!
This is pretty interesting. Is it art, is it a toy? Make your own TT fonts created by a genetic algorithm! http://alphabet.tmema.org/ It appears to have a severe limitation in that characters with multiple strokes are prohibited. All in all, the characters look more like squiggles than like characters. For instance, Roman capital letters look boxy and blocky, but they are all rather distinct (except for maybe C and G). Hiragana look more feminine and not quite as distinct as roman letters (such as kana "me" and "nu"), but they still jump out at you when written in a sharp hand. These weird characters seem to lack the "sharpness" of natural writing systems. Is this just my opinion, or does yours match? I think that the problem is that these new characters have too low of a stroke count. _ メールだけじゃなかった！インターネット便利サービスがひとまとまり http://explorer.msn.co.jp/
