Kromofons

Gus Winterbottom
30.May.2007 7.25am
Gus Winterbottom's picture

Using colors to represent words or alphabets. Now typographers will have to be graphic designers and color spectroscopists, too, and can argue about Pantone values and geometric shapes and chromatic aberration and how color vision “really” works...

http://content.zdnet.com/2346-9595_22-67749.html
http://www.kfons.com/ (don’t miss the “KGRAMS”)



jazzsammich
30.May.2007 7.46am
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ouch. ouch, ouch, ouch, ouch, ouch, ouch. “This is the future of reading,” indeed. e_e


panpainter
30.May.2007 8.14am
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... wow. Don’t forget the argument about colorblindness, let alone any sort of usability considerations.


G T
30.May.2007 9.55am
G T's picture

is there some colour based reasoning behind the choice of each letter or is it just arbitrary? cos that makes me wonder what the point is.

It reminds me of when I was younger and my friend and I translated extracts of a book into music by assigning a note to each letter of the alphabet. But there was no reasoning to it, we just started with a, and started with a. it sounded odd, but was kinda fun - my point is however it was completely impractical and imparted no feeling or meaning from the book at all, except you could see patterns from common letters like ’e’s and’a’s.


Linda Cunningham
30.May.2007 4.54pm
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Synesthesia: Phenomenology And Neuropsychology: A Review of Current Knowledge by Richard E. Cytowic has been out for awhile (1995) but is a good reference for learning more about the interaction between sounds and colours.


hrant
30.May.2007 5.02pm
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What about shapes and color?
And ideas and color?

hhp


kromofons
2.Jun.2007 4.40am
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Actually, now almost every author will have to hire a typographer,
to help shape the NEW unique ways that their words phrases sentences passages and even whole pages look.

Kromofons, by NOT relying on the shape of the letter to tell the message, now frees up the shape of the message, to be used for second layer messaging, graphic impact.

Even new unique fonts to represent each characters dialogue, well you get the idea.

You guys are about to be in HIGH DEMAND !

Gear up !

In fact, the first 3 books are shaping up, (literally),
any takers ?


hrant
2.Jun.2007 6.43am
hrant's picture

> by NOT relying on the shape of the letter

Been there, done that:
http://www.themicrofoundry.com/ss_uniglyph1.html

hhp


kromofons
6.Jun.2007 2.04am
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Uniglyph is one shape.

So, no, you have not not
been there nad done that.
Quite the contrary!

Kromofons allows for any and all shapes.
Please go to kfons.com
choose kreators
you will find at least 5 typewriters with over 13 different shapes, some even animated that change shape constantly.
allowing for expressions to be unlimited in their variety of look.

A serious look at this,
instead of a quick dismisal will show a new area of typgraphy undreamed of til now.

OPEN YOUR MIND.
That is why we also call the learning to read and thinking in KF as interdimensional shifting.

Later,
Lee


Jongseong
6.Jun.2007 2.16am
Jongseong's picture

Just when I thought typography was the one area of the graphic arts where my red-green colour vision deficiency was not a significant drawback, I’m about to discover that I’m kromofonally dyslexic.


kromofons
6.Jun.2007 2.18am
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Are you suggesting that there is a relationship NOW between the shapes of the letters and the sounds that they represent ?

Color is closer than shape in being able to match the spectrums of sound light. That approach was tried and rejected.

Sanscript is said to have been created by monks meditating for months on the sounds of their language.

Have you seen Sanscript, No connection at all.

The shapes of the alphabet evolved and are still.

The pointr to this medium is that it uses the systems employed by the technology of alphabetic applications while freeing us from the restrains of rigid set shapes. Like plastics, fluids, or molds.

Try to draw out a single sentence from a new story line in KROMOFONS. What does it look like ? A HAH ! And the words with in, or the phrases ? They are all now free to contain meaning or spacial relationships, or just be ART. Combined, interwoven, 3-D, the list is as endless as the shape of the fluid, after it is poured into the empty vessel.


hrant
6.Jun.2007 5.58am
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You really thought Uniglyph is serious?
Didn’t you even bother to click to the second page?

hhp


timd
7.Jun.2007 12.39am
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Power, Corruption and Lies – Peter Saville did something similar, people are still puzzling over it.

Tim


Thomas Phinney
13.Jun.2007 4.04pm
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Too bad the web site is down. Still, the whole thing is so over-hyped given the limitations, that I had to blog about it.

http://blogs.adobe.com/typblography/2007/06/kromofons.html

Cheers,

T


muzzer
13.Jun.2007 4.57pm
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Jesus christ mate, this is one of the stupidest ideas I have heard in ages!!

what the bloody hell is a kromofonagrafur?? Did you just make that up?

———————————-
Chopper Reid says “Harden the **** up”.


cerulean
14.Jun.2007 4.27pm
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“Witness the first animated writing in history !”

LOL


cevans6299
28.Apr.2008 1.41pm
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oprion
28.Apr.2008 2.07pm
oprion's picture

Whee! I am not the only color-blind designer out there!
_____________________________________________
Personal Art and Design Portal of Ivan Gulkov
www.ivangdesign.com


Theunis de Jong
28.Apr.2008 3.02pm
Theunis de Jong's picture

Do you spot the subliminal Kromofons message in the colored dots? I read “NLRVMOET” — perhaps I’m supposed to ’think’ something now.

“Yours is here” decodes as “RTILO IE TERM” — smart product placement for the Microsoft browser?


M.A.S.
29.Apr.2008 2.21am
M.A.S.'s picture

Is this the typographic equivalent of Scientology?


Oisín
1.May.2008 10.31am
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«Sanscript is said to have been created by monks meditating for months on the sounds of their language.

Have you seen Sanscript, No connection at all.»

I wasn’t aware that meditating monks were prone to the creation of programming environments.

 

«Are you suggesting that there is a relationship NOW between the shapes of the letters and the sounds that they represent ?»

Why does that even matter? And how does Kromofons do anything to change it? The fact that you enhance (as you claim, though this is highly doubtful to begin with) the connection between the shape/colour of an individual letter and the sound it represents on its own doesn’t change the fact that individual letters frequently lose or change their inherent sound when used in conjunction with other sounds. You’d have to apply Kromofons to pure IPA for it to make any kind of sense, and even then, it would present no actual improvement, since two people will usually pronounce the same word differently.

And yes, o is a fairly good graphic depiction of the sound the letter represents.

 

A bit silly, perhaps, to be responding to (and even asking questions to) someone who most likely just signed up and disappeared again those 11 months ago. Best consider this a rant, I guess.