Comments on: Comments on 15033

Post number 15033

thirteen — Sat, 23 Feb 2002 11:17:18 -0800

The Alphabet Synthesis Machine uses a generative algorithim to allow you to evolve letterforms for your own nonexistent langauge. Once you've tweaked it to the way you like it, you can download it as a TrueType font, and it's added to an archive of available alien fonts. Via socialist superstar JBushnell

By: Hildago

Hildago — Sat, 23 Feb 2002 12:17:41 -0800

Fascinating little application, and fun to tinker around with. My one qualm would be that no matter how different the original glyphs I drew were, the resulting sets of letters looked pretty much the same. And they all looked like squiggles. I'm no linguistics expert, but it seems like no real-world character set would look like it was created by someone who was testing their pen.

By: realjanetkagan

realjanetkagan — Sat, 23 Feb 2002 13:54:01 -0800

This is fascinating. I can't wait to see what happens when a couple of artists find it. Thanks, thirteen.

By: dong_resin

dong_resin — Sat, 23 Feb 2002 15:15:23 -0800

Cool as hell. Now I can type in a made-up language like twins use, but with myself. Sort of like I do here, come to think of it.

By: kfury

kfury — Sat, 23 Feb 2002 18:35:24 -0800

This is very cool. Yes, a lot of the results look repetitive, but a few of them look totally viable. Keep in mind that cursive or messy printing looks similarly implausable when looked at by someone who only reads Chinese or other sufficiently different script. The easy generation of actual Truetype typefaces is really impressive on the back end. Supercool.

By: Spoon

Spoon — Sun, 24 Feb 2002 15:22:49 -0800

Browsing through the examples made by visitors to the site shows a few nice sets of characters - sure, some of the characters look similar, but this is true for nearly all real world character sets, for example; qpbd - eaoc - tflji etc. i like it, and as soon as I get to work tomorrow i shall be playing.