[HN Gopher] Word-as-image for semantic typography
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       Word-as-image for semantic typography
        
       Author : GaggiX
       Score  : 97 points
       Date   : 2023-03-06 03:28 UTC (19 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (wordasimage.github.io)
 (TXT) w3m dump (wordasimage.github.io)
        
       | world2vec wrote:
       | This is so neat, well done!
       | 
       | My parents own a small construction business and their logo is...
       | well, not very good IMO and relatively old and outdated. It's
       | just "Family Surname + Construction Co." with the surname having
       | a vague suggestion of a house. It wasn't that cheap back then, so
       | they never want to change it because "we spent some money on it,
       | why do it again?".
       | 
       | Can't wait to try this and see what comes up, bet I can improve
       | it a bit and I have zero typography/design skills.
        
         | seumars wrote:
         | I can assure you they're not going to need another wordmark
         | with another vague suggestion of a house in it. Just write the
         | business name in a solid and readable typeface.
        
       | kiru_io wrote:
       | This is pretty cool!
       | 
       | If the author is here. Is there a way to try it myself?
       | 
       | The Demo[0] link is broken and the GH repo is empty[1].
       | 
       | [0] https://huggingface.co/spaces/SemanticTypography/Word-As-
       | Ima...
       | 
       | [1] https://github.com/WordAsImage/Word-As-Image
        
         | Y_Y wrote:
         | The paper is attributed to "Anonymous Authors" and the GitHub
         | has an image saying "comming soon" [sic] added five days ago.
         | Of course the image is generated using this technique, but it's
         | anyone's guess what it represents, a person sitting for
         | meditation?
         | 
         | This is pretty cool, but also spooky. For example it seems like
         | this has good commercial promise, as well as a serious amount
         | of work invested, very strange that there's no person or
         | company taking credit yet.
         | 
         | (edited to add, I see now that "comming soon" uses the "o" from
         | their "Ashtanga Yoga" example)
        
           | erostrate wrote:
           | There is a likely innocent explanation: authors are required
           | to stay anonymous while an academic paper is being peer
           | reviewed.
        
             | O__________O wrote:
             | Yes, their names are listed here:
             | 
             | https://arxiv.org/abs/2303.01818
        
         | tristanho wrote:
         | Hmmm yes, I wonder if this project was discovered/shared here
         | before it was really ready to be published.
         | 
         | Very excited for the code/demo when they're ready!
        
       | O__________O wrote:
       | Someone might want to ping the authors to let them know paper is
       | on HN's home page:
       | 
       | https://arxiv.org/abs/2303.01818
        
       | giraffe_lady wrote:
       | Are the chinese examples as legible as the english ones? The
       | english transforms are comprehensible because only one letter was
       | changed, if more or all were it would get difficult to
       | understand.
       | 
       | To me it looks like proportionally more of the content-carrying
       | form has been modified in the chinese. But I can't read chinese
       | and so can't evaluate.
        
         | mshockwave wrote:
         | the Chinese examples are legit. Though the example on the far
         | right (Chong Lang ) is a word comprises of two characters,
         | which means surfing only when the word is read as a whole.
         | 
         | Also noted that that is simplified Chinese, used by mainland
         | China, that is, well, simpler than traditional Chinese used in
         | Taiwan and maybe Hong Kong. For instance, Chong Lang  is
         | written as Chong Lang  in traditional Chinese, which is more
         | complicated and I'm wondering how they handle it.
        
           | giraffe_lady wrote:
           | Cool, thanks for the info.
        
         | elil17 wrote:
         | (Not a native Chinese speaker). Tu /rabbit is marginal to me -
         | I don't think I would even register it as a character unless it
         | was in the right context. The others are perfectly legible. For
         | the bold-face Mao /cat (the first one), you do technically lose
         | some "content carrying form" as the Tian  becomes a shape that
         | does not appear in Chinese (sideways Yue ), but I don't think
         | that would actually confuse anyone in the context of the rest
         | of the character.
        
         | enoch2090 wrote:
         | Native Chinese speaker here. All transformations seem legit to
         | me, the Tu /rabbit one was especially good since it is
         | beautifully transformed, and I would say it still readable for
         | a native speaker. For the Mao /cat and Chong Lang /surfing
         | cases, I feel like the transformation is too intentional, or
         | less natural compared to the other cases (including the English
         | ones). They are more readable though than Tu /rabbit.
        
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       (page generated 2023-03-06 23:00 UTC)