Mathematicians Devise Typefaces Based On Problems of Computational Geometry

KentuckyFC writes: "Typeface design is something of an art. For many centuries, this art has been constrained by the materials available to typographers, mainly lead and wood. More recently, typographers have been freed from this constraint with the advent of digital typesetting and the number of typefaces has mushroomed. Verdana, for example, is designed specifically for computer screens. Now a father and son team of mathematicians have devised a number of typefaces based on problems they have studied in computational geometry. For example, one typeface is inspired by the folds and valleys generated by computational origami designs. Another is based on the open problem of 'whether every disjoint set of unit disks (gears or wheels) in the plane can be visited by a single taut non-self-intersecting conveyor belt.' Interestingly, several of the new typefaces also serve as puzzles in which messages are the solutions."

Re:missing the point?

[celebril]

The funny thing is that this sort of mathematical and reductionist take on font "design" is precisely what modernism and then postmodernism did to other art forms — by stripping a tradition of its presupposed axioms, picking a certain point as a "first principle", establishing an alternative deriviation from it, and then calling that "art". I hope the typographers hold out, unlike what has become of fields such as sociology, post-tonal music, and continental philosophy.