ART•TYPE: book of illustrated fonts. Two volumes.

(From the Intro, Volume One) I came of age in a remarkable time for typography. When I arrived at Pratt Institute out of high school, I had little experience designing type except to draw logos for local businesses, letters as illustration for the yearbook and to paste up galleys as the editor of the school paper. Then I met David Gates, my Type teacher, who threw the doors open to a whole new world. Type was not a musty old art form.

In my senior year, I won a Guest Editorship at Condé Nast, landing on Madison Ave after graduation. My type world exploded. Photo Lettering was near my office and I took the opportunity to sketch typefaces, walking over to submit them in person. When I first started working, our type was set in metal using samples from The Composing Room to design pages. Type technology sped from metal to film to digital in a few short years. I admired the typographic designs of Ed Benguiat, Herb Lubalin, and Tom Carnase. I loved the U&LC magazine and their sample books of fresh new typefaces like Avant Garde Gothic.

One of my most vivid memories of my Media Studies program at The New School was the day in 1984 that one of the students walked into our round-table class and placed a little Mac in the middle of it. Everything changed. Rubber cement and Xacto knives had been the staples of my art office supplies. Soon everything would be done on the computer. It took a while, but not long.

And so it was natural two years ago, when I learned about the availability of AI to the general public, one of my first thoughts was, “What can you do with type?” Here on the pages of this first in a series of little books is my answer. You can make really fun, beautiful type. In my case, I have used that type to decorate clothing, home decor and gear using POD, print on demand. (Words don't just belong on paper, e.g. Jenny Holzer et al.)

Free AI is an amazing advancement for designers and art directors. But it is not perfect and it still requires ideas, direction and a good deal of production to become print worthy. Prompting requires thought, planning and a clear use of language. An alphabet design does not spring forth like Athena from the head of Zeus—yet. I am confident that my designs are as good as they can be at the time within the limitations of the tools and my abilities. When I began this project, I was working on a ten-year-old computer using software that was long outdated. My rural internet access was a hot spot on my cell phone. Last year, my computer died. My file sizes grew to exceed the capacity of my cell phone. Of necessity, I am now working on a new computer, an up-to-date operating system, design software and broadband internet access.

Inherent in using AI in the creative workflow is also the limitation of AI at that moment. What was remarkable in year one of this project, was consistently unacceptable by year two and all of those early designs begged to be re-done. The concepts were still legitimate but the digital execution had advanced so much that my first year’s work was trashed and everything regenerated. I think this will be one of the enduring characteristics of AI digital design life.

For each typographic design, I present here the alphabet, one letter, coordinating patterns and examples of POD application. I have provided a brief description for each typographic design and sometimes comment on the process of creating it.

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