“What if Noguchi sculpted the letter N? Or Hilma af Klint painted her own initial?” A new book by designers Andrea Trabucco-Campos and Martín Azambuja seeks to find out as the two worked with AI platform Midjourney to imagine what each letter in the alphabet would look like if created by 52 historical artists.
Entitled Artificial Typography, the book is as much a meditation on art history, as it is on the current hysteria surrounding AI, and the very nature of communication. By using text prompts, the two former Pentagram alumni took on the role of curator as they meticulously sifted through a pool of AI-generated imagery to guide readers along a creative journey through the alphabet. “It puts an emphasis on art direction and the idea, which is what some of the best image makers spend their time on,” said Trambucco-Campos in a past interview. “Once you achieve a certain level of craft, making doesn’t take you as long as the thinking before the making.”
Contrary to the popular idiom, it’s perfectly acceptable to judge a book by its cover, given our visually-driven age and our increasingly shortened attention spans. For Artificial Typography, the two tinkered with a breadth of images that teetered between antiquity and modernity, particularly in nailing an artwork that centered at the intersection of typography, the history of art, and artificial intelligence. The resulting cover features a monolithic object that ominously hovers in space. Aesthetically, the stone object harks to the Rosetta Stone, which allowed experts to tap into the forgotten language of the ancient Egyptians. “In the same way that Rosetta Stone changed the history of writing and our understanding of hieroglyphs, we wonder what will be unlocked by artificial intelligence and what changes it will cause in our lives as designers,” Trabucco-Campos added.
Azambuja, who currently works as a senior graphic designer at PORTO ROCHA, and Trambucco-Campos who now helms the title of creative director at Gretel, joined forces in recent times to create their own publishing house called vernacular. As the first release under their new venture, Artificial Typography bridges the gap between old and new, fear and excitement. The limited-edition book spans 60 pages and is printed in the UK at PurePrint with Italian Fedrigoni papers. Grab your copy for $35 USD.
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