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Typography and iPhones - help!
Posted by quietlymad in
21 May 2009 — 6:35am
21 May 2009 — 6:35am
Hi!
I've been lurking on typophile for a while but have only just summoned up the courage to post - I was about to say please be nice but actually at this point what I could probably use is vicious criticism :)
I'm working on a project for uni to develop a concept for an iPhone app which explores the classic elements of typography that people sometimes find a bit dull to begin with - grids, letter spacing, hierarchy etc. I've been trying to come up with an approach that isn't necessarily a scored game but which can engage people repeatedly, over short spaces of time, in manipulating text using the physical controls of the iPhone (such as pinching to scale things, dragging to select and move type around).
My solution so far is to create an app which feeds in typography related articles from the internet and uses a simple interface to allow readers to edit the typography as they are reading, creating points of emphasis, altering the layout etc. Thus learning about how typography affects legibility in a very active and immediate manner. I've mocked up a basic overview of how it might work here (the finished product will obviously be a lot more attractive! these were just sketches) and the full background to my project is here - I was basically wondering if anyone had any thoughts on any of this at all? Comments, thoughts or criticism of any kind would be most gratefully received!
Thanks,
Kate
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21 May 2009 — 9:29am
Interesting project, I wish there were iphones when I was in school.
I think you have some good ideas for allowing fine typographic control over iphone content. Functionally, it isn't going to teach anyone anything about typography unless there's some kind of feedback or instructions to let someone know they've made a good decision. Typography education is mostly about teaching people how to see microscopic relationships between really small spaces. The iphone screen is way too coarse to show refined typographic detail, so you might want to focus less on emulating print typography and make it more about screen type. Speaking of which, your type is way too small for the iphone.
21 May 2009 — 5:16pm
Thanks for the feedback! You're right, the type gets very small at times, but in terms of creating a complete layout I couldn't see how I could get around that. However, your point about focusing on screen type means that to a certain extent I may not need to anyway. Though there's still the issue that one of the things I have to include is grids, so the type is by necessity going to get quite small when you view the whole thing at once. In terms of feedback, I was thinking of having a slider which lets you see when you've got a 'comfortable' texture to the type - since this is something the program could actually work out based on space etc, whereas I'm not entirely sure about trusting an app to make judgements on aesthetics.