Abstract/Summary

This thesis is concerned with the development of digital type design technologies and the discourse around them through new environments during a period of radical change and transition in the type manufacturing industry. It maps the emergence of a new field by exploring environments of discourse such as trade associations, academic institutions and the publication landscape, established as a response to new communities and identifies them as catalysts of change. The research considers different numerical models of letterform description devised through academic research, corporate research and commercial endeavours during a phase of type manufacturing that spans from the zenith of phototype setting to the introduction of office-based laserprinting, covering most of the 1970s and 1980s. A particular event, identified as a highpoint in this discourse and as a main catalyst of change, is the Association Typographique Internationale’s working seminar hosted at Stanford University in the summer of 1983. It marks a focus point in these discussions during a period of several linear and concurrent developments, and it reflects issues that maintained their relevance after the introduction of the digital PostScript format, which followed the period surveyed in this thesis. Although more than a dozen digital type design systems were developed by 1983, this study is particularly concerned with five systems considered for presentation at the Stanford working seminar. While some of these systems found no particular use, others had some commercial success or even became well established among an international list of type manufacturers. All five encapsulate the relevant issues discussed at Stanford; from a research standpoint they are equally significant in providing information on the challenges type designers faced at the time. As this research investigates a relatively short and recent period, it is characterised by a lack of certain archival material. In addition to a handful of academic archives, this thesis heavily draws on primary source material, on records and artefacts from personal collections, on oral history as a method to record the voices of contemporary witnesses, and uses these sources as an opportunity to discover hidden figures that have been overlooked in the past. This thesis explores debated issues such as maintaining standards, while introducing new ones; shared responsibilities, collaborations as well as conflicts between designers and engineers; challenges and opportunities for established manufacturers versus an emerging generation of independent designers; as well as implications that new technologies had on the essentials of designing and digitizing type, from learning new terminology to measuring quality, dealing with compatibility and the introduction of automated and parametric design.