Ziningy1 – Looking Outward 09

For this week’s Looking Outward, I chose Superwat’s Post on week 7 post of Computational Information Visualization: https://courses.ideate.cmu.edu/15-104/f2017/2017/10/13/svitoora-07-font-map/

Actual Project：http://fontmap.ideo.com/

 

So the Front Map is a exploration from designer at IDEO to address the pain point of designers looking for a proper font. With the aid of utilizing Artificial Intelligence,  the IDEO team was able to create an insightful and valuable tool that facilitate designers’ decision making. The Font Map is a computer(machine learning algorithm) generated visualization of 750 fonts and those font are arranged according to their visual relatedness. It is very impressive as a design student to see this kind of tool designed to help the design process. I indeed agree with what Superwat indicated in his post that the visualization map definitely provide more information on the interaction between fonts. When I was also reading other articles on this project, I found this interesting metaphor commenting the map, “Imagine the map as a country, where the font samples are the locals. As you travel between the different lands, the local dialect changes very slightly. In this example, the dialect is a metaphor for the different fonts that are spread across the map. ” If it is not the computer algorithm, It will be painstaking for people to analyze each font and organizing them into this kind of visualization. Inspired by this project and also looking into the current progress on computer vision, I suddenly felt that we as designers are also entering a new era where computer will be more involved in our design process. Image processing, for example, might able to generate simple similar iterations for a graphic design, which might help the designers making small twists. I can also imagine that image processing technology will help graphic designers to find other designers that may have the similar styles and aesthetics. I am always excited to see how the emerging technology can facilitate creative process such as design and art.