The future of typography is uncertain:
Monotype is keen for you to know what AI might do in typography. As one of the largest type design companies in the world, Monotype owns Helvetica, Futura, and Gill Sans — among 250,000 other fonts. In the typography giant's 2025 Re:Vision trends report, published in February, Monotype devotes an entire chapter to how AI will result in a reactive typography that will "leverage emotional and psychological data" to tailor itself to the reader. It might bring text into focus when you look at it and soften when your gaze drifts. It could shift typefaces depending on the time of day and light level. It could even adapt to reading speeds and emphasize the important portions of online text for greater engagement. AI, the report suggests, will make type accessible through "intelligent agents and chatbots" and let anyone generate typography regardless of training or design proficiency. How that will be deployed isn't certain, possibly as part of proprietarily trained apps. Indeed, how any of this will work remains nebulous.
Monotype isn't alone in this kind of speculation. Typographers are keeping a close eye on AI as designers start to adopt tools like Midjourney for ideation and Replit for coding, and explore the potential of GPTs in their workflow. All over the art and design space, creatives are joining the ongoing gold rush to find the use case of AI in type design. This search continues both speculatively and, in some places, adversarially as creatives push back against the idea that creativity itself is the bottleneck that we need to optimize out of the process.
That idea of optimization echoes where we were a hundred years ago. In the early 20th century, creatives came together to debate the implications of rapid industrialization in Europe on art and typography at the Deutscher Werkbund (German alliance of craftspeople). Some of those artists rejected the idea of mass production and what it offered artists, while others went all in, leading to the founding of the Bauhaus.
The latter posed multiple vague questions on what the industrialization of typography might mean, with few real ideas of how those questions might be answered. Will typography remain on the page or will it take advantage of advances in radio to be both text and sound? Could we develop a universal typeface that is applicable to any and all contexts? In the end, those experiments amounted to little and the questions were closed, and the real advances were in the efficiency of both manufacturing and the design process. Monotype might be reopening those old questions, but it is still realistic about AI in the near future.
[...] But the broader possibilities, Nix says, are endless, and that's what makes being a typographer now so exciting. "I think that at either end of the parentheses of AI are human beings who are looking for novel solutions to problems to use their skills as designers," he says. "You don't get these opportunities many times in the course of one's life, to see a radical shift in the way technology plays within not only your industry, but a lot of industries."
Not everyone is sold. For Zeynep Akay, creative director at typeface design studio Dalton Maag, the results simply aren't there to justify getting too excited. That's not to say Dalton Maag rejects AI; the assistive potential of AI is significant. Dalton Maag is exploring using AI to mitigate the repetitive tasks of type design that slow down creativity, like building kern tables, writing OpenType features, and diagnosing font issues. But many designers remain tempered about the prospect of relinquishing creative control to generative AI.
"It's almost as if we are being gaslighted into believing our lives, or our professions, or our creative skills are ephemeral," Akay says. She is yet to see how its generative applications promise a better creative future. "It's a future in which, arguably, all human intellectual undertaking is shed over time, and handed over to AI — and what we gain in return isn't altogether clear," she adds.
[...] That shift to digital type was the result of a clear and discernible need to improve typographic workflow from setting type by hand to something more immediate, Akay says. In the current space, however, we've arrived at the paintbrush before knowing how the canvas appears. As powerful as AI could be, where in our workflow it should be deployed is yet to be understood — if it should be deployed at all, given the less-than-stellar results we're seeing in the broader spectrum of generative AI. That lack of direction makes her wonder whether a better analog isn't the dot-com bubble of the late 1990s.
[...] Both Nix and Akay agree a similar crash around AI might actually be beneficial in pushing some of those venture capitalist interests out of AI. For Nix, however, just because its practical need isn't immediately obvious doesn't mean it's not there or, at least, won't become apparent soon. Nix suggests that it may well be beyond the bounds of our current field of vision.
[...] Though, that remains more speculation. We are simply so early on this that the only AI tools we can actually demonstrate are font identification tools like WhatTheFont and related ideas like TypeMixer.xyz. It's not possible to accurately comprehend what such nascent technology will do based solely on what it does now — it's like trying to understand a four-dimensional shape. "What was defined as type in 1965 is radically different from what we define as type in 2025," Nix adds. "We're primed to know that those things are possible to change, and that they will change. But it's hard at this stage to sort of see how much of our current workflows we preserve, how much of our current understanding and definition of typography we preserve."But as we explore, it's important not to get caught up with the spectacle of what it looks like AI can do. It may seem romantic to those who have already committed to AI at all costs, but Akay suggests this isn't just about mechanics, that creativity is valuable "because it isn't easy or fast, but rather because it is traditionally the result of work, consideration, and risk." We cannot put the toothpaste back in the tube, but, she adds, in an uncertain future and workflow, "that doesn't mean that it's built on firm, impartial foundations, nor does it mean we have to be reckless in the present."
(Score: 5, Insightful) by istartedi on Monday August 25 2025, @03:15PM (7 children)
Fonts that change when you avert your gaze sounds like a great way to make people question their own sanity, or perhaps some kind of early 21st century BLINK tag that a few people are going to think is cool and everybody else will just find annoying. Even if the font changes daily when you're not visiting a site it can cause issues. People don't realize what's going on. They'll be like... why do I feel different? Is this the same site? Has it been hacked?
Fonts are part of communication; but they've always been a *fixed* part of communication. I'm willing to wager that making them a dynamic form of communication isn't going to be terribly popular, and file that in the "Just because we can doesn't mean we should" category.
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by gznork26 on Monday August 25 2025, @04:08PM (1 child)
Worse: if typeface can be changed dynamically, so can the text itself.
Khipu were Turing complete.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Tuesday August 26 2025, @02:19PM
That's always been the danger of the internet. When Amazon discovered that 1984 was still under copyright, it yanked all Kindle copies and refunded the readers, who discovered their books missing, some after reading half of it!
The Stupid-Ass Voter Evisceration act: SAVE Trump and his family from prison
(Score: 2) by aafcac on Monday August 25 2025, @05:51PM
The main situation where that could be useful would be for dyslexia. It would be great to have a dyslexia simulator that really mimics the feeling of having the letters appearing out of order and possibly moving.
Having documents that can change is potentially rather dangerous for anything that people don't expect to be dynamic.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Tuesday August 26 2025, @12:47AM (1 child)
For me, the question is what benefit is this supposed to generate? I agree that fonts are supposed to be a fixed part of communication. My view is that this is something like a bridge. Do we really need our bridges to change every time we drive across one? Sure, it'd be an interesting novelty experience, but we don't need our daily driving route changing so much that it's a struggle each day to get to your destination even if you've been there a few hundred times before. Same goes for fonts. Do we need to struggle to read basic text? I'm not feeling the need over here.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Tuesday August 26 2025, @02:22PM
For me, the question is what benefit is this supposed to generate?
A question the idiots who came up with this lame brained idea should have asked. The designers of a lot of garbage put out these days should have asked the same.
The Stupid-Ass Voter Evisceration act: SAVE Trump and his family from prison
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Tuesday August 26 2025, @01:12AM (1 child)
That definitely sounds like something fnord the conspirators would fnord do.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 4, Funny) by istartedi on Tuesday August 26 2025, @01:17AM
Have you driven a Fnord lately?
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(Score: 4, Insightful) by chucky on Monday August 25 2025, @03:25PM (1 child)
AI? Ok, first use it on fixing fonts with wrong kerning, then use it to make all fonts fully Unicode. It will have what to do for a while.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by aafcac on Monday August 25 2025, @06:15PM
It could potentially useful for identifying unicode characters that look the same, but are considered separate for things like directing people to forged websites that appear to share the same URL. It was incredibly poor planning to allow unicode without bothering to have any provision for that issue.
(Score: 4, Funny) by VanessaE on Monday August 25 2025, @03:55PM (8 children)
So we'll just fight back with Impact and Comic Sans!
(Score: 4, Funny) by krishnoid on Monday August 25 2025, @04:28PM
I have a vague sense that you made an insightful comment, but I need to wait until they make a font that cleans my reading glasses every few hours.
(Score: 2) by looorg on Monday August 25 2025, @04:30PM (6 children)
I was going to go the other way. I sure hope the AI default font won't be Comic Sans Serif. Even tho a crayon font might be just inline for the crayon level AI.
(Score: 2) by crm114 on Monday August 25 2025, @04:44PM (1 child)
Yeah, I'm going that way. "AI" of today (well public AI[1]) is an LLM trained on (mostly) public information. Think Reddit/Slashdot/Facebook/Whatever is public on News/Old books/Wikipedia/bootleg book distributors, youtube, and the like. But it is probably also trained on old GeoCities/Yahoo/NetZero(?)/4Chan *archives* as well. So if the pond is already seeded with the things many of us remember with regret, what will the future of fonts look like?
[1]The SIGINT communities probably have AI that is much, much more useful.
(Score: 3, Funny) by fliptop on Tuesday August 26 2025, @01:52AM
I could use a friend who remembered posting in those [google.com] days [google.com].
Ever had a belch so satisfying you have to blow your nose afterward?
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Tuesday August 26 2025, @02:28PM (3 children)
I'd like an AI that actually understands English and can correct spelling and grammar errors, like when you leave out half of a word you type, like "though". Lazy, dyslexic, or aliterate?
I'd like an AI that understood that "aliterate" is a real word and not a misspelling of "illiterate", one that knows the difference between there, their, and they're.
Read any good books lately? At all?
The Stupid-Ass Voter Evisceration act: SAVE Trump and his family from prison
(Score: 2) by aafcac on Tuesday August 26 2025, @02:33PM
Or,hear me out, just get your OCD meds refilled. Allowing AI to rewrite things because you've got issues, is just asking for problems. Really people like you need to chillax, people on the net have varying degrees of education, primary language and disability. It's not worth flushing Democracy down the toilet by allowing AIs to rewrite posts assuming that the "fixes" actually fix things in ways that don't change the intent and that are consistent with what other people are seeing. It's bad enough that we have to just trust that what we're being presented with is what the poster posted and what the poster sees, now you're suggesting that we just completely break that, because you've got emotional issues?
(Score: 2) by looorg on Tuesday August 26 2025, @08:02PM (1 child)
I know my online spelling is lacking from time to time. Part of it is laziness. Part of it is just fat fingers and a lack of an edit function. But that one was on purpose. As far as I know and can recall "tho" is an approved non-standard spelling of "though" according to all the big dictionaries. I was even taught so in school by my teacher that attended Oxford. So if you have issues with it I suggest taking your complaint over to the OED.
Have I read any good books lately? Yes. Thanks for asking.
(Score: 2) by aafcac on Tuesday August 26 2025, @11:40PM
What I don't get is all the wasted effort that comes from people wanting to appear smart on the internet correcting minor typos and bullying people. With the exception of deaf people that may have issues recognizing the words if they're swapped for a homophone, most other people can just read the post as is, or just skip it. No need to go around bullying people that may not speak a particular language as their first language, or could be having autocorrect running amok. Or, have an actual learning disorder and really don't need any more bullying about spelling. There's a lot of people that somehow managed to graduate without knowing that they have a learning disorder.
(Score: 4, Funny) by krishnoid on Monday August 25 2025, @04:35PM (1 child)
I bet they attach a neuralink and fMRI to a lab rat, then change the font outlines and kerning until it maximizes recognition and minimizes recognition time. Then you'll have an optimized font family. Oh, and rats that can read, but who cares about that?
(Score: 2) by crm114 on Monday August 25 2025, @04:54PM
LOL, and you can clone them, and they breed fast.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Mojibake Tengu on Monday August 25 2025, @05:01PM
I like this one generator:
https://github.com/airaria/GAN_hanzi [github.com]
Quite old, but still perfect for stegano.
Must be a nightmare for automatic translators of typical funny agencies.
The kinder you are, the easier it is for wicked people to morally coerce you.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Monday August 25 2025, @06:00PM (7 children)
> It could shift typefaces depending on the time of day and light level. It could even adapt to reading speeds and emphasize the important portions of online text for greater engagement.
Sure, you don't have to label tech AI to get that, it's just an advanced form of text communication with awareness of the reader state. It seems like a good channel for additional communication bandwidth, focusing attention on the important points... until you consider who is the man behind the curtain pulling the levers. Glad that everything communicated to us in text form comes from benevolent sources looking out for our own best interests, right? Didn't I read that just last week...?
This is just an extension of the "fine print" problems from the birth of typesetting. Shysters will attempt to deflect your attention from things they are legally required to disclose in print... if you've got the patience, the "fine print" is an excellent place to start when looking for reasons to object to an agreement.
🌻🌻🌻🌻✌️ [google.com]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by corey on Tuesday August 26 2025, @01:13AM (1 child)
Oh, but to keep up with the Jonses, you must use the phase "AI". It's pathetic how most tech companies right now are clamouring to find ways to announce "AI" in some of their products or services. As you say, most of the time it's just an algorithm, which is simple to write, maintain and understand -- as opposed to "AI" which is a black box of neural network crap which consumes way too much energy to do the same function.
I'm looking forward to the day that "AI" is passe and companies go back to focussing on products.
To this article, I could only get half way through. It sounds like total bull**it, of the worst kind. Actual "look at me, I'm here!" pathetic bull**it. Nobody will want dynamic fonts, it's a waste of power, waste of developer time, waste of resources. Text on the corner of my vision is already blurred, thanks to my focal area, and depth of field.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday August 26 2025, @01:44AM
There was an old movie about replacing actresses with CGI (great excuse to show models being scanned in the nude), and later in the drama they showed (science fiction for the day) realtime eye gaze tracking naturally in close orbit of any visible cleavage. I believe that was released to cable at least 40-45 years ago.
We have been making steady progress toward that future ever since, but actual passive eye gaze tracking is still rare.
🌻🌻🌻🌻✌️ [google.com]
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Tuesday August 26 2025, @02:33PM (4 children)
until you consider who is the man behind the curtain pulling the levers
Excellent point. Serif fonts are easier to read than sans-serif but harder for a computer to render. So Google has propagated the bald faced LIE that sans serif is easier to read! And the gullible people who voted for a convicted criminal fraudster for president believe it!
The Stupid-Ass Voter Evisceration act: SAVE Trump and his family from prison
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday August 26 2025, @03:14PM (3 children)
I wonder... I simply prefer sans serif. I suspect it has to do with typesize vs visual acuity threshold. Big and easy to read? Serif is even easier. Tiny near the limit? Sans serif works better with my eyes.
The one I agree with whole-heartedly; right justified is harder to read and remember. A jagged right edge has more visual information more readily available.
🌻🌻🌻🌻✌️ [google.com]
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Tuesday August 26 2025, @06:34PM (2 children)
Computer monitors were all sans serif only for decades. Large print from a distance, like street signs, are easier to read with sans serif. But there's a damned good reason few printed books are sans serif.
I think it should be illegal to use any typeface smaller than nine point in any legal document.
The Stupid-Ass Voter Evisceration act: SAVE Trump and his family from prison
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday August 26 2025, @06:47PM
>I think it should be illegal to use any typeface smaller than nine point in any legal document.
Absolutely, but then you get into malicious compliance of all kinds with thin strokes on the characters, unfamiliar shapes, etc. etc.
It wouldn't kill the lawyers to have a specified standard font for all legal documents, with minimum size of 10 points as far as I'm concerned.
Of course, with e-ink readers you can get it any size you like...
🌻🌻🌻🌻✌️ [google.com]
(Score: 2) by aafcac on Tuesday August 26 2025, @06:50PM
10 point tends to be the best for a quick read, it's why Times New Roman looks so ugly at larger sizes, it's not intended to be used for that. It's meant to enable a quick and efficient reading.
For legal documents, it probably should be larger, and if the length of the contract is too long when doing that, you should be reconsidering what's in there, or just accept that it's a long contract.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 25 2025, @11:41PM (1 child)
From tfa: "As one of the largest type design companies in the world, Monotype owns Helvetica, Futura, and Gill Sans — among 250,000 other fonts."
They still have room to grow -- 640K fonts should be enough for anyone.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 26 2025, @07:19AM
Maybe it's that the fonts may look like copyrighted fonts, but being AI generated, can be used royalty-free?
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Tuesday August 26 2025, @02:16PM (1 child)
AI will result in a reactive typography that will "leverage emotional and psychological data" to tailor itself to the reader. It might bring text into focus when you look at it and soften when your gaze drifts. It could shift typefaces depending on the time of day and light level. It could even adapt to reading speeds and emphasize the important portions of online text for greater engagement.
This all assumes that paper becomes obsolete. They're been predicting the "paperless office" since at least 1990.
And a changable typeface would be annoying as hell! I am certain I'll never be a repeat visitor to any web site that uses it, assuming I live long enough for it to be more than SF. Don't these people even think about their crackpot iseas?
The Stupid-Ass Voter Evisceration act: SAVE Trump and his family from prison
(Score: 2) by aafcac on Tuesday August 26 2025, @02:43PM
Yes, although we're closer to that than ever before, Android devices even take cursive handwriting input if you want to, and Google Keep seems to be able to scan, at least some, handwriting. And, I've seen people using a stylus to hand write some rather neat looking notes on their tablet. I think the actual issue more than anything else is that you have to plan ahead and have a digital device to use.
It's also worth recognizing that for most people we're most of the way to being paperless. Most of the stuff I used to get in the mail is electronic now, or at very least could easily be conveyed electronically.