"Experimentation" is indeed a problematic term. Some people use it to justify play while some others use it to dismiss any attempt at improving Latin. Anyway.

Depending on where you draw the line, you might end up with a fair amount, or virtually nothing. I know you're not interested in things like NotCaslon (hooliganism), but I assume you're also not interested in things like Tiresias (leveraging empiricism to cement the satus quo). I guess asking this is a good litmus test: would you include Thompson's "Alphabet 26"? It's based on a scietific intent, but an imaginary one. It might seem unwise to include it, but then you might be stuck with highly "scientific" efforts which -due to the historic inadequacy in typographic empiricism- will give you nothing.

Another issue is whether you're focusing on a certain intent: improving readability, heightening a certain emotion, or what? Or are you interested in any intent. That would be ideal I think, but it would also make the article quite broad and long.

Trying to guess at what you really need, I can think of these three instances:


1) A pretty old one, but from the catalyst of the understanding of readability himself: Javal. In his book of 1905 he shows two alphabets intended for reading small sizes:
http://www.themicrofoundry.com/other/Javal_a.gif
http://www.themicrofoundry.com/other/Javal_b.gif
This effort seems to have been picked up by Thomas Huot-Marchand (see his article in Typografische Monatsbl

Thanks for the examples. Yes, i'd love to see more. As a matter of fact i wasn't familiar with Javal and Thomas Huot-Marchand. Can you direct me to more information please?

A lot that you mention is based on an idea of reformation, which basically works only in opposiiton to somethign else. Do you think that experimental design operates in this field? In other words: do you think that if you were the only typographer/type designer on an isolated island that than it would be impossible to make experimental typography?

if you read my initial entry than you see that this is not what was i interested in, but since this is how experimentaion is widely understood, it is interesting to think about it.

Is there a transcript or other recording of your ATypI 98 talk, Hrant?

Minor correction:
I never invited Hrant Papazian for ATypI Lyon that I organized in 1998. Its more ATypI Boston 1999.

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quote:

Is there a transcript or other recording of your ATypI 98 talk, Hrant?

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Yeah! Let's have that, Hranter! You're usually the who takes on
the whine-o-phone duties when folks don't record lectures. ;)

Peter, your angle on the reform-centric nature of experimentation (at least in the layman understanding of the term) is interesting - I hadn't thought of it. It seems to make sense that you have to be going against something, something expected or assumed. On the other hand, I'm not sure being on an island precludes it: as long as there's some context (and there always is), there's something to "reform". Even an individual is not one static thing, so experimentation is always a natural facet of learning.

Javal/Huot-Marchand:
I'll email you a PDF of an article about it - assuming you read French... You could also ask Lukas Hartmann (the editor of TM) for a copy of the actual article (in issue #2/2004) which I presume details everything - if you do get a copy please let me know. And if you want more/better scans from the Javal book just holler.

My stuff:
The best single place to read it is my 10K-word essay in the book "Graphic Design & Reading". Gunnar says he doesn't mind if I republish it elsewhere, but as long as the book (which just happens to contain some great other material besides! :-) is still selling, in fact as low as $2 used on bookfinder.com, I feel bad just throwing it out. There's also a quarter-length version of that essay in issue #54 of tipoGrafica magazine (in the English original and a superb Spanish translation) and that can be bought for around $10. But if you're really that strapped for cash here are the PDFs:
(136Kb) http://www.themicrofoundry.com/other/tG54_s.pdf : Spanish + Illustrations
(110Kb) http://www.themicrofoundry.com/other/tG54_e.pdf : English text
But for the full-length treatment you gotta go to GD&R.
OK, Stephen? :->

* Which also contains an interesting and revealing article by Smeijers.

hhp