ACROSS THE WIRES - ANTI TYPE

This project took the KHiO Letter Archive at the Oslo National Academy of the Arts as an Archive source that informs Norwegian design and design education. The archive facilitates an understanding of the historic context for drawing in typography and provides a range of international (USA, UK, Sweden, Germany, Italy etc.) source material influencing the typography and printing traditions of the 20 century. The point of departure for this artistic research project was role of drawing with regards to the edge of form in type design in the creation of letter forms. In order to structure the investigation, this the project examined a variety of tools that facilitate drawing ranging from; the humble pencil to contemporary design programmes such as Adobe Illustrator and Glyphs (a type design programme), and also a number of other tools such as CNC milling, letterpress techniques, lino printing etc. Through a series of workshops various iterative exercises were undertaken in order to not only identify and edit the research material and to develop questions more accurately, but also identify the thematic sources for investigation. This included issues such as the role of line, form, shape etc. The project team was expanded at his point to include; Ane Thon Knutsen, Artistic Research Fellow at the Department of Design, and Ellmer Stefan, type designer and Visiting Lecturer were invited to join the project. The team developed a number of key insights which identified that an investigation of the spaces between letters, offers a means of understanding the role of form in creation of letter forms. In other words creating form from the outside in, as oppose starting from a line and working out. The project's working title was reformulated into ACROSS THE WIRES - ANTI TYPE. Moreover, it was felt that a more methodologically robust process would be to examine these insights by inviting colleagues from an international background, involved in letter design, letterpress and lettering arts to also co-investigate the idea. To this end Helen Ingham at Central Saint Martins - London and Edwin Pickstone at the Glasgow School of Art were invited to participate in this project.