How AI is Revolutionizing Typography
How useful is AI in typography?
The story is yet to be completely written with AI and typography, but at Monotype, we’re looking at a couple of different things. Over the past 25 years, the number of typefaces in the world has increased dramatically, on a scale of around 10 to 20x. So if you think of the turn of the century having roughly 20,000 digital files in the world, and now we’re probably globally approaching closer to a million or a million plus.
We all set type daily and we all interact with type throughout the year. AI can help us to navigate the bounty of typefaces as we move into the third decade of the 21st century. When you have that many digital typefaces, it’s often hard to find the one that you need. AI will help us to sort metadata, assign metadata, and make the discovery process much more seamless for the end user, because the end user has changed quite a bit in the 21st century. In the 20th century, typography was a highly specialized field, but in the 21st it’s for everyone.
Is AI going to take jobs in typography?
It will take work. It will probably not take jobs, at least not immediately. There are a lot of aspects of type design that are highly repetitive, time-consuming tasks. I’m thinking about the fitting and kerning of typefaces, the extending of typefaces into global scripts, the number of non-alphabetic and numeric characters that exist in a typeface. A lot of these things take a lot of time, but aren’t at the heart of the creative aspect of type design. And the idea of them being automated is probably a welcome thing for a lot of type designers. But I think the true creative aspect of it will still, for a long time, be the realm of actual human designers.
What is the role of human creativity nowadays?
This trends report is an introduction to what we’re doing throughout the rest of the year, and one of the first activations that we’re doing around the themes in the report is around typography and AI, and that’s the Human Types project. And what it looks at is precisely that question: what is it that we bring to the equation that a machine or machine learning or artificial intelligence won’t ever be able to replicate? We’ve engaged three type designers with very different points of view to put that question to them. We don’t pretend in the report to have all the answers, we know we’re going to get three very distinct views of what that looks like.
But one of the overarching ideas is that humans are the sort of creative chaos in a system, we are the ones who question and bring about different modes of thought by wanting to act in a contrary nature or a chaotic nature. Creativity is not a linear path. It’s a path or a journey that begins without knowing where it’s going to end. And I think that is the thing that we’ll continue to bring to the creative equation.
How do you see AI and the role of creativity evolving?
Right now, I am concentrating on the here and now. The story of typography over the last 600 years has been about this conversation between the typefaces themselves, the thing that we look at and read, and the technology that allows that to be made. So at the very beginning it was metal type, and then it evolved into machine set metal type and then into photo and then into digital.
I see AI and typography as being a continuation of that sort of ‘technology plus art’ narrative arc. The ways that it will affect typography are probably along the same triumvirate that has defined typography in the first 600 years, which is the form of type, how type is made, and the use of type – of being able to choose type, being able to use type well, to choose type appropriately, to pair type, to space type – all of the things that sort of govern what happens after we finish making type.
Conclusion
The role of AI in typography is still evolving, but one thing is clear: it will revolutionize the way we interact with type. From automating repetitive tasks to helping us discover new typefaces, AI will have a profound impact on the world of typography. But what about the role of human creativity? Will AI take over or complement our work? According to Charles Nix, the answer is clear: human creativity will continue to play a vital role in the world of typography.
FAQs
Q: Will AI replace human typographers?
A: No, AI will not replace human typographers. While it will automate some tasks, the creative aspects of type design will still require human input.
Q: How will AI affect the role of human creativity?
A: AI will not replace human creativity, but it will complement it. AI will help us to focus on the creative aspects of type design, while automating repetitive tasks.
Q: What is the future of typography?
A: The future of typography is uncertain, but one thing is clear: AI will play a significant role in it.
