Helvetica in Space or; the impossibility of the capital R of Helvetica in the mind of the living

Type has the power to affect the space around it. What if a space could alter the type contained within it? This project uses live data from the Arch-OS system installed in Portland Square to dynamically alter a typeface (Helvetica, in this case) based upon the changing environment of that space.

Technical details

The starting point for the project is a copy of Helvetica as a type 1 postscript font. Using a free / open source software package called t1utils, the font is disassembled into raw text (see here for an example). This text file contains the coordinates for the points that make up each character in the typeface.

An application written in Processing reads live Arch-OS data from Portland Square and uses this as the basis for altering the point data in the text file. Half of the points in each character are changed by code and half are left untouched so as to leave the typeface legible. The type is then reassembled back into postscript with t1utils

A Mac readable font-suitcase is then created in FontLab from the altered postscript version. The font file is copied into FontBook; overriding the original Helvetica. The application displaying the document using Helvetica is restarted, displying the altered type. A PDF image can be created at this stage.

This whole process in automated using an Automator workflow, which can be scheduled to run at a regular interval; constantly updating the type as the data coming from Portland Square changes.

The following PDF examples use a document taken from the Arch-OS website and demonstrate the effect that the software can have on the type in a document.

1. Unaltered sample
2. Example 1
3. Example 2

Critical background

According to a quote from a book I was given, the capital R of Helvetica looks like a man with his penis hanging out of his trousers. After reading this, I started noticing Helvetica everywhere.

In fact, I started to notice all sorts of type everywhere I went. On posters, shops, doors, signs, bins, cars... everything. Type was definitely a big part of the (urban) space around me. Signs, in particular, caught my attention as they seemed to have a power over a space and the way that people negotiated it.

Foucault calls this dispositif, because he is French. The word apparently has several meanings, but part of it is jurisdiction; the invisible and visible rules of a space. Type definitely forms a part of this.

Having decided that type had an effect on space, I wondered what would happen if a space could affect some of the type within it. The Arch-OS system in Portland Square was ideal for this, as the building's operating system broadcasts live data from the building that alters over time and with human activity. This project allows a piece of type to exist within a space, asserting its own influence upon that space, whilst at the same time being influenced itself by the space around it. A circular relationship between the type and the space is explored in this way.