Skip to main content

Evotype: Towards the Evolution of Type Stencils

  • Conference paper
  • First Online:
Computational Intelligence in Music, Sound, Art and Design (EvoMUSART 2018)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNTCS,volume 10783))

Abstract

Typefaces are an essential resource employed by graphic designers. The increasing demand for innovative type design work increases the need for good technological means to assist the designer in the creation of a typeface. We present an evolutionary computation approach for the generation of type stencils to draw coherent glyphs for different characters. The proposed system employs a Genetic Algorithm to evolve populations of type stencils. The evaluation of each candidate stencil uses a hill climbing algorithm to search the best configurations to draw the target glyphs. We study the interplay between legibility, coherence and expressiveness, and show how our framework can be used in practice.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Subscribe and save

Springer+ Basic
$34.99 /Month
  • Get 10 units per month
  • Download Article/Chapter or eBook
  • 1 Unit = 1 Article or 1 Chapter
  • Cancel anytime
Subscribe now

Buy Now

Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. Lupton, E.: Thinking with Type: A Critical Guide for Designers, Writers, Editors, and Students, 1st edn. Princeton Architectural Press, New York (2004)

    Google Scholar 

  2. Martins, T., Correia, J., Costa, E., Machado, P.: Evotype: evolutionary type design. In: Johnson, C., Carballal, A., Correia, J. (eds.) EvoMUSART 2015. LNCS, vol. 9027, pp. 136–147. Springer, Cham (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16498-4_13

    Google Scholar 

  3. Martins, T., Correia, J., Costa, E., Machado, P.: Evotype: from shapes to glyphs. In: Proceedings of the Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference, GECCO 2016, pp. 261–268. ACM, New York (2016). https://doi.org/10.1145/2908812.2908907

  4. Machado, P., Romero, J., Manaris, B.: Experiments in computational aesthetics: an iterative approach to stylistic change in evolutionary art. In: Romero, J., Machado, P. (eds.) The Art of Artificial Evolution: A Handbook on Evolutionary Art and Music, pp. 381–415. Springer, Heidelberg (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-72877-1_18

    Google Scholar 

  5. Butterfield, I., Lewis, M.: Evolving fonts (2000). http://accad.osu.edu/~mlewis/AED/Fonts/. Consulted Nov 2017

  6. Lund, A.: Evolving the shape of things to come: a comparison of direct manipulation and interactive evolutionary design. In: International Conference on Generative Art. Domus Argenia, Rome (2000)

    Google Scholar 

  7. Levin, G., Feinberg, J., Curtis, C.: Alphabet synthesis machine (2001). http://www.flong.com/projects/alphabet/. Consulted Nov 2017

  8. Unemi, T., Soda, M.: An IEC-based support system for font design. In: Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man and Cybernetics: Washington, D.C., USA, 5–8 October 2003, pp. 968–973 (2003)

    Google Scholar 

  9. Schmitz, M.: GenoTyp, an experiment about genetic typography. Presented at Generative Art Conference (2004)

    Google Scholar 

  10. Kuzma, M.: Interactive evolution of fonts. Master’s thesis, Technical University of Košice (2008)

    Google Scholar 

  11. Yoshida, K., Nakagawa, Y., Köppen, M.: Interactive genetic algorithm for font generation system. In: World Automation Congress, pp. 1–6. TSI Press (2010)

    Google Scholar 

  12. Kindel, E.: The ‘plaque découpée universelle’: a geometric Sanserif in 1870s Paris. In: Typography Papers 7, Department of Typography and Graphic Communication, University of Reading, pp. 71–80. Hyphen Press (2007)

    Google Scholar 

  13. Craig, J., Scala, I.K., Bevington, W.: Designing with Type: The Essential Guide to Typography, 5th edn. Watson-Guptill Publications, New York (2006)

    Google Scholar 

  14. Eiben, A.E., Smith, J.E.: Introduction to Evolutionary Computing. Natural Computing Series. Springer, Heidelberg (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-44874-8

    Book  MATH  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

This research is partially funded by Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (FCT), Portugal, under the grants SFRH/BD/90968/2012 and SFRH/BD/105506/2014; and is based upon work from COST Action CA15140: ImAppNIO, supported by COST (European Cooperation in Science and Technology): www.cost.eu. We would also like to express our gratitude to NVIDIA for providing us one Titan Xp GPU to support our research.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Tiago Martins .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2018 Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature

About this paper

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this paper

Martins, T., Correia, J., Costa, E., Machado, P. (2018). Evotype: Towards the Evolution of Type Stencils. In: Liapis, A., Romero Cardalda, J., Ekárt, A. (eds) Computational Intelligence in Music, Sound, Art and Design. EvoMUSART 2018. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 10783. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-77583-8_20

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-77583-8_20

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-77582-1

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-77583-8

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics