Kromofons

[Gus Winterbottom]

This topic was imported from the Typophile platform

Using colors to represent words or alphabets. Now typographers will have to be graphic designers and color spectroscopists, too, and can argue about Pantone values and geometric shapes and chromatic aberration and how color vision "really" works...

http://content.zdnet.com/2346-9595_22-67749.html
http://www.kfons.com/ (don't miss the "KGRAMS")

[jazzsammich]

ouch. ouch, ouch, ouch, ouch, ouch, ouch. "This is the future of reading," indeed. e_e

[panpainter]

... wow. Don't forget the argument about colorblindness, let alone any sort of usability considerations.

[G T]

is there some colour based reasoning behind the choice of each letter or is it just arbitrary? cos that makes me wonder what the point is.

It reminds me of when I was younger and my friend and I translated extracts of a book into music by assigning a note to each letter of the alphabet. But there was no reasoning to it, we just started with a, and started with a. it sounded odd, but was kinda fun - my point is however it was completely impractical and imparted no feeling or meaning from the book at all, except you could see patterns from common letters like 'e's and'a's.

[Linda Cunningham]

Synesthesia: Phenomenology And Neuropsychology: A Review of Current Knowledge by Richard E. Cytowic has been out for awhile (1995) but is a good reference for learning more about the interaction between sounds and colours.

[hrant]

What about shapes and color?
And ideas and color?

hhp

[kromofons]

Actually, now almost every author will have to hire a typographer,
to help shape the NEW unique ways that their words phrases sentences passages and even whole pages look.

Kromofons, by NOT relying on the shape of the letter to tell the message, now frees up the shape of the message, to be used for second layer messaging, graphic impact.

Even new unique fonts to represent each characters dialogue, well you get the idea.

You guys are about to be in HIGH DEMAND !

Gear up !

In fact, the first 3 books are shaping up, (literally),
any takers ?

[hrant]

> by NOT relying on the shape of the letter

Been there, done that:
http://www.themicrofoundry.com/ss_uniglyph1.html

hhp

[kromofons]

Uniglyph is one shape.

So, no, you have not not
been there nad done that.
Quite the contrary!

Kromofons allows for any and all shapes.
Please go to kfons.com
choose kreators
you will find at least 5 typewriters with over 13 different shapes, some even animated that change shape constantly.
allowing for expressions to be unlimited in their variety of look.

A serious look at this,
instead of a quick dismisal will show a new area of typgraphy undreamed of til now.

OPEN YOUR MIND.
That is why we also call the learning to read and thinking in KF as interdimensional shifting.

Later,
Lee

[Jongseong]

Just when I thought typography was the one area of the graphic arts where my red-green colour vision deficiency was not a significant drawback, I'm about to discover that I'm kromofonally dyslexic.

[kromofons]

Are you suggesting that there is a relationship NOW between the shapes of the letters and the sounds that they represent ?

Color is closer than shape in being able to match the spectrums of sound light. That approach was tried and rejected.

Sanscript is said to have been created by monks meditating for months on the sounds of their language.

Have you seen Sanscript, No connection at all.

The shapes of the alphabet evolved and are still.

The pointr to this medium is that it uses the systems employed by the technology of alphabetic applications while freeing us from the restrains of rigid set shapes. Like plastics, fluids, or molds.

Try to draw out a single sentence from a new story line in KROMOFONS. What does it look like ? A HAH ! And the words with in, or the phrases ? They are all now free to contain meaning or spacial relationships, or just be ART. Combined, interwoven, 3-D, the list is as endless as the shape of the fluid, after it is poured into the empty vessel.

[hrant]

You really thought Uniglyph is serious?
Didn't you even bother to click to the second page?

hhp

[timd]

Power, Corruption and Lies – Peter Saville did something similar, people are still puzzling over it.

Tim

[Thomas Phinney]

Too bad the web site is down. Still, the whole thing is so over-hyped given the limitations, that I had to blog about it.

http://blogs.adobe.com/typblography/2007/06/kromofons.html

Cheers,

T

[muzzer]

Jesus christ mate, this is one of the stupidest ideas I have heard in ages!!

what the bloody hell is a kromofonagrafur?? Did you just make that up?

-----------------------
Chopper Reid says "Harden the **** up".

[cerulean]

"Witness the first animated writing in history !"

LOL

[oprion]

Whee! I am not the only color-blind designer out there!
_____________________________________________
Personal Art and Design Portal of Ivan Gulkov
www.ivangdesign.com

[Theunis de Jong]

Do you spot the subliminal Kromofons message in the colored dots? I read "NLRVMOET" -- perhaps I'm supposed to 'think' something now.

"Yours is here" decodes as "RTILO IE TERM" -- smart product placement for the Microsoft browser?

[M.A.S.]

Is this the typographic equivalent of Scientology?

[Oisín]

«Sanscript is said to have been created by monks meditating for months on the sounds of their language.

Have you seen Sanscript, No connection at all.»

I wasn’t aware that meditating monks were prone to the creation of programming environments.

 

«Are you suggesting that there is a relationship NOW between the shapes of the letters and the sounds that they represent ?»

Why does that even matter? And how does Kromofons do anything to change it? The fact that you enhance (as you claim, though this is highly doubtful to begin with) the connection between the shape/colour of an individual letter and the sound it represents on its own doesn’t change the fact that individual letters frequently lose or change their inherent sound when used in conjunction with other sounds. You’d have to apply Kromofons to pure IPA for it to make any kind of sense, and even then, it would present no actual improvement, since two people will usually pronounce the same word differently.

And yes, o is a fairly good graphic depiction of the sound the letter represents.

 

A bit silly, perhaps, to be responding to (and even asking questions to) someone who most likely just signed up and disappeared again those 11 months ago. Best consider this a rant, I guess.