The concept of representing a number of variables and all their possible values as a spacial object stems from the world of mathmatics.
Namespace
Used in computer science Namespace describes all unique terms (identifiers) that bear a function in a given programming language.
Color Space
The term color space describes a gammut of colors. The picture below illustrates the RGB color space.
You will probably encounter the notion of a color space most often in the context of imaging devices such as digital cameras printers or scanners to describe the colors they can process.
Adrian Frutiger and the three dimensions of Univers
In this matrix illustrating the different styles of the typeface Univers Adrian Frutiger represents three logical axes in a two dimensional graph. The dimensions here are with, weight and slant.
The numeric values Frutiger assigned to the different fonts of the Univers family bear witness of his pioneering understanding of fonts as instances in a design space. By adding the numerics to the font names he added a device for logically accessing a family of typefaces that in its complexity went beyond Light, Bold and Italic.
Namespace
Used in computer science Namespace describes all unique terms (identifiers) that bear a function in a given programming language.
Color Space
The term color space describes a gammut of colors. The picture below illustrates the RGB color space.
You will probably encounter the notion of a color space most often in the context of imaging devices such as digital cameras printers or scanners to describe the colors they can process.
Adrian Frutiger and the three dimensions of Univers
In this matrix illustrating the different styles of the typeface Univers Adrian Frutiger represents three logical axes in a two dimensional graph. The dimensions here are with, weight and slant.
The numeric values Frutiger assigned to the different fonts of the Univers family bear witness of his pioneering understanding of fonts as instances in a design space. By adding the numerics to the font names he added a device for logically accessing a family of typefaces that in its complexity went beyond Light, Bold and Italic.
Imagine a bag full of type. It contains all letterforms that are theoretically possible. That's the type design space. There is no type outside this bag. In other words if you took the fattest, heaviest glyph and the lightest, thinnest glyph you can possibly imagine the space between these two glyphs would contain all possible weights. So there is no heavier and no lighter glyph and all weights in between are lined up along this axis from super bold to extra light. Now imagine the widest glyph and the most narrow glyph you can possibly imagine. They form another axis. How many of these axes can you come up with?
Of course every glyph has a certain with and a certain optical weight. This means that all these one dimensional axes are not running paralel but instead — descibing different qualities of the same glyph — they all form different dimensions of the type design space.
So if you explored the outer crust of the type design space you would only encounter really, really extreme letter forms, their own carricatures. All moderate, responsible, well behaved glyphs live deeper inside the design space somewhere between the extremes.
Of course every glyph has a certain with and a certain optical weight. This means that all these one dimensional axes are not running paralel but instead — descibing different qualities of the same glyph — they all form different dimensions of the type design space.
So if you explored the outer crust of the type design space you would only encounter really, really extreme letter forms, their own carricatures. All moderate, responsible, well behaved glyphs live deeper inside the design space somewhere between the extremes.
Probably the most well known of Gerrit Noordzij's illustrations this cube shows the transition of weight ammount and type of contrast. The slice of glyphs at the front of this cube depicted in black shows pure translation contrast, bold in the right most colum and light on the left. The verical axis shows hight contrast at the top and low contrast at the bottom.
The slice of characters at the back of the cube shows the same two dimensional transition of weight and ammount of contrast but for the expansion type contrast. The whole cube is filled with all transitional forms.
The slice of characters at the back of the cube shows the same two dimensional transition of weight and ammount of contrast but for the expansion type contrast. The whole cube is filled with all transitional forms.
When you draw type remind yourself that the font you are working on is just one tiny spec inside the vast design space and you can move it along every single axis and change every property of the design without creating a different typeface. This is obvious for the weight axis. The bold Helvetica is the same typeface as Helvetica Light. The same thing is true however for less obvious axes like contrast or construction.
Check out the Superpolator™.
Check out the Superpolator™.
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