Testing the Waters

After doing our first experiments and research we realized it wasn't taking us anywhere so re-assessed what we were wanting to do and focused on a common denominator in communication. We realized emoticons are new developments in new media. They are a physical representation of human emotion and body language  in a new digital space. This idea helped to inspire our revised question, "how can typography cross cultural boundaries? How can experimental typography serve as a bridge to fill in the gap that is the communication breakdown."

Jessie and I developed two separate experiments to test the emoticon direction. My experiment focused on language and how emoticons with language effects meaning/feeling.

On the other hand, Jessie focused on the digital space, and how we can further explore the affordances of typography and emoticons in Processing. Through her experiments we hand a serendipitous moment. We found by accident how to associate key strokes with color. We then came up with this idea about how we can associate type with color and also communicate a feeling through a range of color. For instance white being more positive and black being negative.

The Question:
The question for the first step is what would we discover about typography through comparing the formal qualities of multiple languages.


Experiment
So far we're in the process of gathering research on various languages and seeking out experts in linguistics to help supplement our journey. Here's a step by step approach to this particular experiment:


1. Research
2. Develop different scenarios to organize characters
3. Conduct experiment
4. Analyze results
5. Chart results


more notes to come...