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I agree that typography could be an exact science, but I think starting with mathematics would be the wrong choice. Rather, it would be better to devise percept

I agree that typography could be an exact science, but I think starting with mathematics would be the wrong choice. Rather, it would be better to devise perceptual experiments and back fit a mathematical model to the results. The excellent LAB color space was created this way. Scientists used experiments - for example the MacAdam ellipse to measure what colors are distinguishable - then backfit a model to that. It involves a bunch of cube roots and funny constants, not something you'd reach from a standpoint of mathematical purity. But it works really well. So if you were looking at rigorously defining typography, I'd look at quantifying how spread out a pattern of ink needs to be before it looks smaller (aligning I and L might not be the leftmost pixel). I'd also look at quantifying some of the gestalt laws of grouping.

goldenkey 9y ago
I agree with you. But I'd like to point out that the color specifications and audio response ranges we have are pretty much an exact science despite being informed by human experiment. Human experiment is not at all exclusionary to a topic of study being an exact science; it just makes the truth harder to discern. We are still coming up with new color spaces that claim to match the human range better, after decades of research. Regarding typography however, I argue that there are a multitude of concerns such as readability, aesthetic, and sustainence of focus. People will have different preferences and rankings for which concerns should be most optimized. Thus, the science of typography may need to be parameterized by the context of the text and what it is going to be used for.
jacobolus 9y ago
The CIELAB color space was an attempt to make an invertible and fast-to-compute (for simple hardware devices in the 1960s) approximation to the Munsell color space (a lookup table carefully constructed by studies and expert adjustments done by the Optical Society of America in the early 1940s).
npgatech 9y ago
Edwin Land also made tremendous contributions to color science through empirical measurements and finding the deeper "mathematical" models[1]. Besides his scientific achievements, he was a real renaissance man, a tour de force of human intellect. Unfortunately, Josef Albers's pseudoscience[2] and artistic non-sense get most of the credit[3] when it comes to color theory. [1] https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2016/12/the-story-of-edwin-land/ https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2016/12/the-story-of-... [2] http://depts.washington.edu/jrphys/ph214A07/albers.pdf http://depts.washington.edu/jrphys/ph214A07/albers.pdf [3] https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/01/arts/design/josef-alberss-science-and-soul-of-seeing.html https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/01/arts/design/josef-alberss...
- theoh 9y ago
  Credit for color science goes to the scientists, credit for artistic effects using color goes to the artists. There's plenty to go around. Jan Koenderink's book on color measurement looks good.
  - npgatech 9y ago
    The problem isn't that he used color to make interesting new art. I think he explored new areas of color which were not known before - and I applaud his artistic efforts. However, Josef Albers went beyond his art to make false claims about color theory, how the human brain perceives color and made broad generalizations - based on anecdotal evidence and intuition. He went unchallenged for the most part. See the criticism linked in my original post. I just checked the book "Color for the Sciences" that you had mentioned. I think I am going to purchase this one! Thanks.
    - jacobolus 9y ago
      I recommend Mark Fairchild’s book Color Appearance Models.
      - npgatech 9y ago
        Thanks. This looks extremely interesting.
- jacobolus 9y ago
  I don’t think it’s fair to criticize Albers in this context, and this particular critique seems mostly like pedantic nitpicking at a fairly concise non-technical book; he wasn’t trying to establish a detailed technical model, but rather to teach artists to think. (“The book does not begin with optics and physiology of visual perception, nor with any presentation of the physics of light and wave length…. What counts here—first and last—is not so-called knowledge of so-called facts, but vision—seeing.”) His book and teaching method are all about learning to work with colors through direct experience. To that end, he made students do numerous small projects with colored paper, etc. (Have you read Albers’s book? I would definitely recommend it, with the proviso that you actually try to do Albers’s recommended exercises, which are really the important part of the book, instead of worrying too much about the text. Reading Albers’s book straight through is like reading a math textbook straight through without doing the problems.) If you want to call Itten out for nonsensical babble though, go right ahead. * * * Edit: here’s Dorothea Jameson’s response to Alan Lee http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.470.2468&rep=rep1&type=pdf http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.470...
adekok 9y ago
> Rather, it would be better to devise perceptual experiments and back fit a mathematical model to the results. We already have those results: thousands of existing fonts. The fonts have all been manually optimized. It should be possible to back-fit the optimization process.

goldenkey 9y ago

I agree with you. But I'd like to point out that the color specifications and audio response ranges we have are pretty much an exact science despite being informed by human experiment. Human experiment is not at all exclusionary to a topic of study being an exact science; it just makes the truth harder to discern. We are still coming up with new color spaces that claim to match the human range better, after decades of research. Regarding typography however, I argue that there are a multitude of concerns such as readability, aesthetic, and sustainence of focus. People will have different preferences and rankings for which concerns should be most optimized. Thus, the science of typography may need to be parameterized by the context of the text and what it is going to be used for.

jacobolus 9y ago

The CIELAB color space was an attempt to make an invertible and fast-to-compute (for simple hardware devices in the 1960s) approximation to the Munsell color space (a lookup table carefully constructed by studies and expert adjustments done by the Optical Society of America in the early 1940s).

npgatech 9y ago

Edwin Land also made tremendous contributions to color science through empirical measurements and finding the deeper "mathematical" models[1]. Besides his scientific achievements, he was a real renaissance man, a tour de force of human intellect. Unfortunately, Josef Albers's pseudoscience[2] and artistic non-sense get most of the credit[3] when it comes to color theory. [1] https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2016/12/the-story-of-edwin-land/ https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2016/12/the-story-of-... [2] http://depts.washington.edu/jrphys/ph214A07/albers.pdf http://depts.washington.edu/jrphys/ph214A07/albers.pdf [3] https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/01/arts/design/josef-alberss-science-and-soul-of-seeing.html https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/01/arts/design/josef-alberss...

theoh 9y ago
Credit for color science goes to the scientists, credit for artistic effects using color goes to the artists. There's plenty to go around. Jan Koenderink's book on color measurement looks good.
- npgatech 9y ago
  The problem isn't that he used color to make interesting new art. I think he explored new areas of color which were not known before - and I applaud his artistic efforts. However, Josef Albers went beyond his art to make false claims about color theory, how the human brain perceives color and made broad generalizations - based on anecdotal evidence and intuition. He went unchallenged for the most part. See the criticism linked in my original post. I just checked the book "Color for the Sciences" that you had mentioned. I think I am going to purchase this one! Thanks.
  - jacobolus 9y ago
    I recommend Mark Fairchild’s book Color Appearance Models.
    - npgatech 9y ago
      Thanks. This looks extremely interesting.
jacobolus 9y ago
I don’t think it’s fair to criticize Albers in this context, and this particular critique seems mostly like pedantic nitpicking at a fairly concise non-technical book; he wasn’t trying to establish a detailed technical model, but rather to teach artists to think. (“The book does not begin with optics and physiology of visual perception, nor with any presentation of the physics of light and wave length…. What counts here—first and last—is not so-called knowledge of so-called facts, but vision—seeing.”) His book and teaching method are all about learning to work with colors through direct experience. To that end, he made students do numerous small projects with colored paper, etc. (Have you read Albers’s book? I would definitely recommend it, with the proviso that you actually try to do Albers’s recommended exercises, which are really the important part of the book, instead of worrying too much about the text. Reading Albers’s book straight through is like reading a math textbook straight through without doing the problems.) If you want to call Itten out for nonsensical babble though, go right ahead. * * * Edit: here’s Dorothea Jameson’s response to Alan Lee http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.470.2468&rep=rep1&type=pdf http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.470...

adekok 9y ago

> Rather, it would be better to devise perceptual experiments and back fit a mathematical model to the results. We already have those results: thousands of existing fonts. The fonts have all been manually optimized. It should be possible to back-fit the optimization process.