Cobbled Paths at ISBA
A 3 days workshop on experimental DIY typographic tools using FIGLet and pen-plotters.
Cobbled paths is a FIGlet 2 Svgbob.rs 2 HPGL pipeline.
It makes a way from the blocky discontinuity of Ascii drawings, to the smoothness of bezier curves, to an anologic pen-plotter interpretation. Like cobbled paths, none of these technologies are new, and we've been walking on them for years. Like cobbled paths, it is a reminder of the permeability between the discrete and the continuous, and how regular stones can form tortuous paths.
In our daily practice we explore the influence of tools on our work, and experiment with different tool-constellations for making design. During this workshop we want to draw and design fonts collectively, we propose a text-based recipe based on etherpad, figlet and svg bob. With figlet we will generate ascii art lettering, in etherpad, a collective writing, we will write together and SVG bob transforms the cobbles to smooth vectors, which will be drawn by a pen-plotter.
No programming experience is required. But you do need a laptop. The workshop will be mainly in English.
Agenda
day 1 - morning (9h45)
- introduction to ascii drawings and svgbob (45 min)
- ascii drawing 2 svgbob, individually, on the svgbob website (30 min, 15min sharing)
- at least one letter + any drawing experimentation --> getting a feeling for the tool
- ascii drawing 2 svgbob, collectivelly on a etherpad tab (inside cobbled-paths) (60 min, 45min drawing 15 sharing)
- first experiment at collective drawing --> by group of 5, each group has to do a map of something in the school (global, one room, one tool)
day 1 - afternoon (14h - 17h30)
- introduction to FIGlet (30 min)
- commandline example
- showing a bit the catalogue and how it translate to SVG
- they play within cobbled-paths by copy-pasting from the catalogue to the etherpad tab (60 min, 45min drawing 15 sharing)
- write the name of their map (either using or merging the letter you first designed, or by copy pasting from the cobbled-paths catalogue)
- we plot (1h)
day 2
- Look at font format within figlet (45min)
- Experiment with the font-format, draw individually. (60min, 45min drawing, 15min showing)
- Collective font: each draws a letter? Protocol: Agree on grid and style (choose one of the archetypes of the catalogue?). (60min, 45min drawing, 15min showing)
day 3:
- each group create a Figlet 2 plot font and make a specimen with it
Documentation
First days experiments
The cobbled path interface
Plotting the specimens
