Generative Art vs Variable Font Design
ジェネラティブアート / 可変フォント・デザイン
Generative Art comes from Digital Art and Variable Font Design from Type Classification. One is style and the other technique. They are reached for with some of the same intent, which is where they get confused.
Generative Art
Art that delegates production to rule and randomness, the artist designing the system. From Nees's and Molnár's plotter drawings, coded repetition and chance became the source of design's generative methods.
Variable Font Design
Gives one font continuous axes of variation, moving weight, width and slant in response to content and data.
| Generative Art | Variable Font Design | |
|---|---|---|
| Era | 1965– | 2016– |
| Family | Digital Art | Type Classification |
| Kind | Style | Technique |
| Cues | Rule and randomness together / The plotter's line / Variation through repetition / The work as system | Continuous weights / Variable axes / Data-driven type / Type in motion |
| Best used for | Letting a machine make identifiers or one-off tickets that must all differ · Exhibitions or works where designing the rule is what is on show | Covering headline to footnote with one file and a lighter page weight · Letting weight and width move in response to a number or a state |
| Type | Letters handled as coordinates and repetitions with the face itself fixed | Design both ends of every axis first, then test the interpolation |
| Composition | Seed and random range set, outputs laid side by side to inspect the spread | Use the width axis to fit a fixed frame without cutting words |
| Material | Lines assumed at a plotter's constant weight, tone made by overlap density | One file carrying several masters, with safe default values set |
| Caution | A random range set too wide widens the gap between good and bad results and leaves a pile of output instead of a work. | Every extra axis makes the intermediate shapes more likely to break, so decide what the movement means and how readable the text must stay before the variation becomes the show. |