[HN Gopher] Random Font - a typographic experiment exploring ran...
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       Random Font - a typographic experiment exploring randomness [pdf]
        
       Author : misone
       Score  : 45 points
       Date   : 2025-11-06 09:04 UTC (9 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.ilcovile.it)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.ilcovile.it)
        
       | misone wrote:
       | A printed essay where each paragraph is rendered in a different,
       | randomly selected typeface. Found on Il Covile, an Italian
       | publication exploring typography, philosophy, and design. The
       | text is presented in both Italian and English.
       | 
       | The text is presented in both Italian and English.
       | 
       | The authors also created a LibreOffice extension that applies
       | random fonts to any document, allowing users to experiment with
       | the same generative approach directly. It's called "Patina":
       | https://www.ilcovile.it/V3_p_patina.html
        
         | MultifokalHirn wrote:
         | cool, thank you!
        
         | rgovostes wrote:
         | The technique applied is not randomly selecting a different
         | typeface per paragraph, but tweaking the glyph shapes when a
         | character is repeated. Glancing at the LibreOffice extension,
         | it seems to slightly vary CharScaleWidth by 90-110% and
         | CharEscapementHeight by 97-100% of the base height.
        
       | mock-possum wrote:
       | Delightful! I wonder whether I could achieve this effect in pure
       | css...
        
         | rgovostes wrote:
         | I made a brief attempt of splitting each character into a
         | separate <span style="transform: scale(<random>,
         | <random>)">c</span>, but it doesn't look good because the
         | transform is applied after the glyph is rasterized. I didn't
         | see a way to scale the font size itself in two different axes,
         | and applying a single scaling factor of 97-100% does not
         | perfectly recreate the effect. text-rendering:
         | geometricPrecision probably helps.
        
       | pgtan wrote:
       | Someone is reinventing PostScript and Metafont
       | 
       | https://www.moma.org/collection/works/139326
       | 
       | https://www.tug.org/TUGboat/tb09-2/tb21knut.pdf
        
         | kragen wrote:
         | METAFONT in particular does not have a way to write code to
         | produce different random variations for the same glyph, nor
         | does its output format have a way to encode those multiple
         | alternatives in its output. I'm not sure if PostScript Type 1
         | fonts do either, but I'm less familiar with them.
        
       | gus_massa wrote:
       | English version in page 7.
        
         | Fnoord wrote:
         | Clever to apply on a restaurant menu (like in example on page
         | 7). It makes the dishes feel more outstanding, special
         | therefore justifying the price. Which other examples could make
         | sense?
        
       | wkoszek wrote:
       | The effect is beautiful. Is there a way to easily get the very
       | same effect in TeX or some other text -> PDF format?
        
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       (page generated 2025-11-15 23:01 UTC)