Archive for the 'layout' Category

6/52: Typography toy

Friday, February 15th, 2008

I wanted to start on a software tool for playing with typography (text) in a casual, bullying sort of way. Hence this typography toy, which I have stopped fiddling with now…

There’s a set on flickr of random pics I made with it. It’s more fun to play with it than look at the results, though…

It’s written in Processing again. It’s downloadable via the following links:

  • Windows: download (approx 300K. Java must be installed on your system.)
  • Mac OS X (and possibly earlier versions): download (approx 300K)
  • Linux: download (approx 300K)

The Processing source code is included with each download. If you download it, please read the readme.txt file – or else you’ll probably just scratch your head and go “whaaaa?” before resorting to a life of crime….

Again I’m reminded that Processing isn’t the most natural seeming choice for software where you need some sort of complex interface: it doesn’t seem to come with the ability to add buttons etc. to your UI (although you can implement them yourself – doh!) – hence the large amount of key presses possible to control this thing. Of course, with some effort, a nicer interface is well possible…

“Typography” probably isn’t an accurate word for what this thing is – but somewhere a man is being eaten by a gruffalo, and that is much more important, don’t you think?