Experimental Type vs ITC Style
実験的タイポグラフィ / ITC様式
Experimental Type comes from Avant-garde and ITC Style from Type Classification. Both are read here as style. They are reached for with some of the same intent, which is where they get confused.
Experimental Type
Pushes letters from something read toward something seen and felt.
ITC Style
New York in the phototype era produced a style of huge x-heights and tightly packed settings. Lubalin's conceptual typography and U&lc magazine staged letters as pictures and gave the period its face.
| Experimental Type | ITC Style | |
|---|---|---|
| Era | 1980s– | 1970s–1980s |
| Family | Avant-garde | Type Classification |
| Kind | Style | Style |
| Cues | Distorted letterforms / Overlaps / Extreme letterspacing / Tension with legibility | Huge x-heights / Tight-not-touching settings / Swashes and ligatures on stage / Letters as image |
| Best used for | Making the title itself the visual · Breaking déjà vu in music and culture | Magazine feature openers where the headline itself must stand as an image · Cosmetics and music advertising giving the shape of a word gloss and lift |
| Type | Variable, stretched, dismantled — support with a plain text face | A large x-height face packed tight, with ligatures and swashes worked in |
| Composition | Run type to the edges and partially conceal it | The headline massed into a few lines, leading closed to make one shape |
| Material | Monochrome plus one color; warps and scanlines | Printed as flat color on glossy stock that tightens the letter edges |
| Caution | Break everything and the way in disappears. Always keep one readable layer. | Tracking pushed until the letters touch turns the line into pattern rather than reading and the headline stops working. |