The primacy of the pixel

Low-res first

The approach used by most type-designers creating screen fonts today is to start with a high-resolution outline, and then add instructions to scale this design down to low-resolution grids.

As useful as this strategy might be to produce hybrid print and screen fonts, it is conceptually limiting and unnecessarily complex for creating typefaces which are meant to be used primarily on screens. If what we want is to produce well-formed low-resolution lettershapes, why start from a high-resolution master?

With the bitmap approach, type-designers work directly on the pixel grid, painting the exact pixels that readers will see on their screens. Nothing gets lost in translation, and nobody is left out.

The pixel is the measure

a “fractal” approach to typeface design for screens

In today’s scaleable screen font paradigm, the final pixels that make up type on screens are not painted by humans, but computed by rasterizers. Type-designer and reader are separated by intermediary layers of technology, and readers are separated from each other by different brands of software and hardware, and their particular characteristics.

The dependency on smart rasterizers to interpret gridfitting instructions introduce rendering differences and incompatibilities between devices and platforms. The result is an unnecessarily fragmented typographic experience for readers — the same digital document can have a radically different appearance depending on the device, operating system and application used to access it.

With the bitmap approach, lettershapes and spacing are gridfitted by design, so they look the same in all screens and platforms, without need for smart rasterizers.

Moving forward

We live in very exciting times, with whole fields being rebuilt thanks to the transformative force of digital media. But we seem to be paralyzed by the creative possibilities which have been opened up for us. The so-called “developments” in screen typography during the last decade can hardly be considered as such — they largely neglect the screen as a medium for typographic expression, and take us back to the aesthetics, forms and limitations of print typography.

I claim that these “technical developments” actually hinder new creative developments in type design and typography for screens. They undermine the type designer’s ability to give a unique visual identity to text.

As we strive to move our field forward, we must do our best to make sure that the foundations on which we are building our work are solid. Instead of trying to obscure the pixel with volatile black-box technologies, we must embrace it as the primary building block of screen type. We must have the courage to leave print behind and acknowledge the primacy of the pixel.