Atypography - Art Movement Introduction
Вставка
- Опубліковано 9 лют 2025
- Art movement that graphically represents traditional writing systems in an unconventional way, creating an authentic design that remains readable while concealing text signs at first glance.
On the way to formalization...
IG: / atype_movement
FB: / atypography
Reddit: / atypography
Website: www.atypograph...
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One-time donations: www.paypal.me/...
Crypto donations: TBA
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Free eBook "Atypography 1.0": www.atypograph...
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Download fonts here:
1. BMAC: www.buymeacoff...
2. Gumroad: atypography.gu...
3. Website (PayPal only): www.atypograph...
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The Usual Suspects:
Graphic design: Svethe Grudi
Motion graphics: Avnojista Dizajniro
Audio wizard: Kolan Vanshinski
Manual & script written by: Nikola Milenović
Supervisor: Luvel Una
Voiceover: Humphrey the Grey (AI)
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Atypography © 2023
honestly quite sad this hasn't gotten more attention, i'd love to see this go further lol
thx and don't worry - I'm short on time currently but I'll be more active at some point to spread the word
Can't wait to read based on vibes
Penny: tbh that's most likely closer to what you do with standard words lol
lmao
Basically how East Asian calligraphy works ngl
@@kipper1668reading old academic work highlights this 😵
Then itd be like atipography without the tipography… we should call it…a…at…ar… art!
1) LOVE this. 2) it's wild to me that this video isn't like, 30-50% talking about the graffiti movement, which very rapidly gained this sort of aestheticized cryptography aspect, even early on.
good point
yes, the complete graffiti movevent but this kind of thing connect with the work of MR Paradox
this is great for videogames when you don't want the text to distract but also want to have texts in posters or something, like in kirby and the forgotten land
Kind of like aurebesh in anything Star Wars, although it won’t take long to learn to read that fast if one wants 😅
funny you mention kirby. The first game I noticed doing this was Splatoon! They're so ambitious with it that most of the language can be deciphered with diligent patience.
my eyes just progressively kept getting wider and wider as the video progressed. beautiful work.
Theres an indoor skatepark in Norway, Oslo Skatehall, that makes use of this. The buildings facade is covered in morse code retelling the 1978 Norwegian law banning skateboarding. The ban was lifted in 1989.
good to know, thx
That sounds really cool! Do you know the name of the skatepark?
@Electrolux219 Oslo Skatehall
Very very cool. Making reading optional by Disrupting the automatic reading phenomena is awesome.
The demonstration of how text takes up so much of the focus in visual or graphic art was jawdropping. This is both fascinating and terrifying at the same time. An artistic diamond mine.
Great video!
As an artist, this is really interesting to see - because I haven't really engaged much with typography in my work. I didn't realise the extent to which text steals the emphasis from other visual elements. It makes sense, because it's often the highest contrast element in a piece to be readable and usually has the strongest edges, but this video really pointed that out in a way I'd never think to consider.
Actually one of the solutions to that is just to make the normal text less readable. Like make it super transparent, vague or make the text smaller, or use some geometric, stretched font, like they did it on the edge of 2000 (actually it's close to what atypography is trying to achieve)
as a graphic designer indoctinated in the idea that "stuff must be easy and quick to read", this is... revolution. Totally gonna experiment with this concept, thanks!
extremely cool what :0
i need to start messing around with these
yoo imagine making a secret message using chords and midi notes
this explains why i saw this video
no way
@@bestboisoupsoupsame lol, even though i actually like typography
bro azaler
loved the aphex photobomb at around 1:57
I think we have all been getting glimpses of this feature of unreadable fonts from movies and anime shows and metal album covers but now watching this video we can finally have a name for this. Its like asemic writing but with actual meaning encoded in decorative bits.
@@griggiorouge Yup, I think so too
this needs a hell of a of a lot more views.. love it
Thx and worry not! After three years of working on this, I'm finally starting a more intensive sharing of Atype with the world this August. Recently, the project won a competition, and its first exhibition will be on October 15 in Novi Sad, Serbia.
i expected this video to come from a big name youtube channel, not 400 subscribers, damn! great video!
Do more please, this is gold
This isn’t an art movement.
This is a product.
If something has a certain style, philosophy and goal, I believe that it should be unified under one term and standardized so that people can understand it more easily. That's what happened here. It's not as if it's too important to me what it actually is, the more I experience it, the more it's an invention. But by definition it falls under the art movement. Honestly, I don't like the term "movement" because it's taken lightly these days, but it is what it is. Like Cubism, Futurism, Dada, De Stijl...
Feel free to call it a tool, product or whatever. For me the only thing that matters is that I demonstrate the possibilities of this to others, that they clearly understand the concept, apply it in their work and have fun.
it really feels like a scam hiding beneath the ai geneated voice and the ai generated script and the ai generated images
ai generated art movement
zero substance
btw buy my fonts
@@BulletHeadPLI kindly ask you to judge by following my work through the years to come, and until then you can suk ma ballz
@@atypographyshow em’!
@@lightcaretaker-km6jh The ballz?
After further looking, this seems like purely a marketing campaign for their fonts and not really a movement. I like the idea a lot, but I would like it a lot more if it was organic and if all the art and voice in this video wasn't AI
There are six people listed in the description credited with the various aspects of production of this video. Do you have any evidence of the utilization of AI? That voice sure sounds human to me.
AI does harm in art. I think there’s another type of harm its ubiquity has created. These surreal and intriguing efforts with mixed media and great effort are deprived of attention and due consideration. Quickly dismissed.
If this is AI somehow, my apologies. But it really doesn’t seem that way to me.
Alright… I think you’re right. Quite uncomfortable that I’m so unsure of what is or isn’t the work of a human here. I’ll leave my previous comment as is.
@@evanmagill9114 primary tell that it's an AI voiceover is that the speaker has a uniformly even cadence and striking lack of variation in tone
Seems that way, yeah
1. This is very clearly not a work of AI.
2. Selling fonts is standard practice and they are fucking cheap anyways.
3. Are you so unable to parse and appreciate an idea on its own that being wrong about (1) and (2) nullifies the meaning of what is presented here?
I think I now understand the fascination with death metal band logos and artwork. By making logos at the limits of legibility, there is more space for the beautifully gruesome artwork to come to the foreground of visual attention.
Some atypography examples that come to mind:
Aphex Twin's Selected Ambient Works Volume 2 cover (kinda)
David Bowie's Blackstar cover
Hey, I happen to be in contact with Paul Nicholson about the whole concept (designer of the Aphex logo and typography) so you hit the mark.
Bowie's cover type is nice, but I would actually do it slightly differently.
Throw some more here if you come across. Thx!
to say it is practical is quite an overstatement. I can't read anything in that video. And making design less busy is also not a point if you use a text. but if it is unreadable, whu use it at all? Estetic value is great though, not sure about design.
right, this is art, not design. It's completely inaccessible, not actually functional
Do you understand the example at 1:17 ?
("if you can read this then you are the next miss universe...")
*aesthetic btw
I think the point of this philosophically is exactly to increase the barrier of understanding to put the pure visual element first. Thus some readability is sacrificed, but it can still be decoded if you stop and take a second away from the distraction of your life to figure it out. I enjoy how it’s very intentionally anti commercial in this aspect.
I think the argument that it’s practical is definitely more of a marketing statement but the creators of these fonts, but that doesn’t mean that they’re useless because the whole design goal is to be exactly anti-practical
Yes UA-cam, show me more of this.
the encryption possibilities with this are endless! and fashionable at the same time
Wow, this is truly unique. I have been inventing and designing visual ciphers for years and this is the first time I've seen something so similar to what I do defined as an "art movement". Inspiring!
6:44 Threw me off so much. Such a good video and I will be creating my own atype
same, I had a biblical sized revelation when I saw "tree"
There's several points here I have to contend. As with all art movements, of course there's going to be certain suppositions and even presuppositions. The first is labeling all contrast as distractions. I shouldn't even have to explain how that's just bad artistic ideology, without even getting into the artistic utility of distraction. Moving on to that. Do words distract necessarily? Yes, but that distraction can be taken advantage of to generate communication unto itself. Several of those images become more powerful when trying to ignore the text. If you tell me there's nothing to be had in trying to ignore the word "burden" in the image at 2:48, I don't know if I can trust your artistic opinion. And there's something special when you can actually get your mind to ignore that visual information completely. I would argue that is a meditation exercise worth investing in.
The next point I have to challenge is the idea that removing data allows the artwork to communicate with the viewer. That's literally not possible, by any sense of metaphysics. The viewer is communicating with themselves at that point because all that's left is the audience's own presupposition about the meaning of the visual information. The idea that taking away data and context lets there be "more to say" really relies on a huge assumption about the idea of "more". Yes, the audience is free to have a larger number of thoughts as there is total freedom of interpretation, but are any of those isolated thoughts, happening without communication from another person, more valid, more meaningful, more informative, more inspiring, more evocative, more shocking, more banal, more boring? Do the images have more to say, or does the audience have more freedom to talk to themselves? There's quite a bit of assumption that there's even a conversation with a picture happening. I'd argue that's nothing more than a perceived gestalt born from the ego of the audience. There is no instrinsic meaning to the image. That's deconstruction 101. The entire point seems borderline narcissistic in the pre-social media sense of the word.
I think this is my overall issue with the thesis. The typogrphy is only atypographic until we know what it says. Up until that moment, it isn't even language to us. The second we can recognize it as glyphs, it starts to become distracting from the image around it exactly as language does. Once we can see it as language, the very moment we discover the decoding process necessary to understand what it says, it simply becomes typography to us. In the same way the squiggles you're looking at right now transform from pixel-light images of squiggles into words in your mind. That is exactly what happens as you explain indexing with the Vitkovac font. The very moment I achieve the stated goals of atypography, it reintroduces all of the problems it ostensibly solves. The refined design hidden in architecture just returns to kitschy labeling on a wall. The thesis is self-contradicting.
I would also argue this is pretty bad encryption because the cipher contains the decryption key in itself, which is the encryption equivalent of installing a lock with the key built into it. Sure, I have to turn the key, which is more security than if it was a door without a lock at all, I guess. The problem is that if it doesn't contain the decryption key, it violates the stated goals of atypography. You're either violating basic security principals or you're violating the movement's principals.
The only point that stands without some massive presupposition is that it's fun. That's 100% valid for an art movement. But you can't argue against kitschiness and then argue for fun for its own sake. That's just down right petty and self-important. It's perfectly fine to make puzzles for friends to solve. It's okay to have hobbies, it's fine to have childish fun for the sake of it. Entertainment is valid unto itself. All of these things are vitally necessary artistic statements in the early 21st century as we've become burdened by late stage capitalism and data dominance. They need to be made. But don't dress up the self-indulgence as anything else. You shouldn't dress it up as anything else. Let it stand on its own for the value it needs to give us.
I would personally include a much stronger argument about exercising passivity, detachment, and impermenance. The very fact that atypogrpahy is self-annihilating might let it be one of the greatest exercises in practicing radical acceptance that Western art has produced. That, to me, is much more valid than the first 3 stated goals. Have fun. Learn to accept the self-defeating nature of intent. So much better of a goal than a lock that opens itself.
For me, the most interesting part of typography in this manner is that you have to take the time to figure out the meaning, which makes you spend more time contemplating the artwork and in general rejects the fast culture of social media and advertising, taking on a little bit of an anti capitalistic bent. I also agree that the theory of atype risks becoming simple font if overused, which is why I personally would envision the use of multiple bespoke atypesets, with this great variety combined with the wildly differing styles allowed by abstracting letterforms providing a pretty high barrier to fluency imo.
In general I think that most intentionally designed pieces would have their own design matching with their visual language as a whole, making it so that there’s no specific atype that you would become fluent in.
8:15 Although it is a very moving poem, it is wrongly attributed to Borges, but, in fact, is from Nadine Stair. Nice video..
Wow, just checked it and you are right. So weird, thx for this.
Loving this
Didnt know I was waiting for this
hahahaahahah
I like the format of this video
👍
(We need more videos about it!)
A nod to the sound editing 👌
This is so bold and wildly creative! Love it!
I am so glad I stumbled onto this
Excited and hopeful to see this art movement develop and "happen", hopefully getting expanded upon by other inspired thinkers.
This is cool. I might include some of this in my album art I make.
I'M IN!
for a version less demanding of decryption time: see bar or qr codes
I'm sold. I'm gonna be looking into this like a rabid dog. What a way to start my 2025, bravo!
i was surprised to find out this video only had ~5k views when i looked. great work!
Very cool and exciting! Beautiful design work and very eloquently explained. I will be spreading the word of atypography
this is insanely beautiful. well done. eager to follow your future work.
Enlightening! I learned a lot about how I perceive text and the way it interacts with my perception. I’m excited to see where this movement leads.
OK, I give a thumbs-up, not for the content, but for the presentation of it.
Unexpected video, it was really interesting and of great quality.
I love finding people who share their passion in such a pure way. Thanks!
Brilliant! The world needs more atypography (and less readable text)
Wow you just invented braille and discovered the Morse code, brilliant! Darwin Award 🏆
THIS WAS SO INTERESTING AND FUN !!!!!
Incredible video, I also found fun to read the "IT’S NEVER TOO LATE TO CLIMB A TREE SO KEEP THAT IN YOUR MIND AND NOT OUTSIDE OF IT"
Someone was faster, sorry. :D
your broad point about the near impossibility of preventing oneself from reading text in a language one knows how to read is fine - but most examples given suggest that the work should have been presented without any readable content at all and isn't improved by the addition of "atype" either
Very nicely made! Inspired me
1:55 “IT’S NEVER TOO LATE TO CLIMB A TREE SO KEEP THAT IN YOUR MIND AND NOT OUTSIDE OF IT”
Aaaaaa!!! Reach out to my mail, I have a gift for you. Btw, after that, there is also "STU": a tribute to the Serbian graffiti team, which is known for the fact that their graffiti is found at every step on the territory of Serbia, "even in this video". I love inserting "easter eggs" here and there.
Fascinating video! Thanks for making this!
glad this got recommended, what a beautiful discovery for the new year.
okay i saw this video in past few days by a youtube recommendation. But it just struck me today. This could be the new braile.
I’ve no idea how I stumbled across this.
I’m glad I did.
me too!
such a well made video!! atypography is so cool
this is perfect for my art. Im all excited about this.
Leaving this for people that will try to find it form search engine:
Incomprehensible Font
Strange Font
Unreadable Font
I've been designing for twenty years, made a draft of a truly abstract logo design for a client today (maybe my first ever, since I love meaning and symbolism), and then I see this video later on the same day. It's the type (pun intended) of coincidence I could get used to experiencing more often
I love the work
You're confusing encryption with encoding, which are two very different things.
@@johnredberg Mm, no, I don't think so, but feel free to elaborate.
@@atypography Assume, for example, the dots and dashes of Morse code have been turned into an atypographical font. Writing any message in that font, you have essentially encoded it into Morse code. To read the message, anybody who knows Morse or has a code book can look up each pattern (or /glyph/) of your font and turn it back into its original /character/.
"But didn't they use Morse code in WWII?" Yes, but they /encrypted/ it first. They used elaborate machines to turn the initial plaintext into ciphertext which (in principle...) only the intended recipients could /decrypt/. Only then did they /encode/ that now garbled text into Morse for radio transmission.
(Btw., even if only two people in the world new the font, the message could be decoded (not /decrypted/) using simple frequency analysis if the message is long enough.)
This is amazing… can‘t wait for more
The section where the album artworks and posters had their fonts removed was nice, however, think about adding in a section where you then replace these with some of your "atypography" glyphs. would drive the point home
Not really, and I say that because the whole idea of atypography came from there - I wanted to design a title design for my music pseudonym and nothing suited me, so the first scribble on paper (which later became the "Schaltkreis" font) appeared.
This design is aesthetically satisfying, but it carries the same problem as classic typography: humans will eventually incorporate and read these symbols as text in plain sight. The abstraction only goes so far.
it should be unreadable in plain sight thats kind of the point, there are many fonts not shown in this video that have much less or no resemblance to latin characters that do it better
1:45 saying _letterforms_ are "misused" is as absurd as saying _breaths_ are misused - you're thinking at the wrong level of scale for your claim about misuse to be sensible
it sounds a bit harsh and tricky, that's why I said that they are 'inherently fascinating' (one of the greatest inventions of the human species), but my personal impression is that their rootedness in our perception is misused by marketing to the extent that it sometimes creates tension by bombarding us wherever we turn around and we (at least I) need a rest
to be clear, in no case do I think that they are generally a bad thing, it is of course absurd on so many levels, it's just that - we live in an age when it can be offensive and tiring
i love that you guys are getting more attention via Instagram, this is an amazing project
More content! Great video.
Brilliant content. Thank you!
The interesting thing about this is that even if this gains popularity, atype is meant to take effort and time. It's open for all but not for everyone.
I absolutely love all of this.
This is amazing!
I love it!!!
I feel like I got here because of posies video segment displays, Also, I inadvertently made in an atypographic font because of that vid. Can’t wait to see what this inspires
I love this idea!
love this, so glad it was recommended
This is beautiful
Справяте се страхотно, нямам търпение да използвам това в бъдеще
This needs more traction, I feel as someone with ADHD my mind races fast as it is, always swapping from one thought to the next without hesitation. This, at least makes me think and am able to interact with what I'm reading or trying to decipher. To me this is a more intimate experience with what you're trying to consume and that it's more of a choice and effort instead of the default the mindless gaze when you run your eyes across words to unconsciously read and make out words.
Cool procedural fonts. Narration feels hoity toity.
This is fun but I cant decode any example 😢
Wow… i mean… brains in hands, mouth on skull and table.
🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯 - litterally my reaction to this information. THIS IS SO COOL OMG🔥🔥🔥
the only limitation to this movement that it is very geometrical and that's why it cant be calligraphic like Arabic so it will remain mostly in the geometric area
stylizing letters to a almost non readable form isn't anything new. It was widely used in islamic decoration trough centuries. From architectural decoration to ceramics, book decoration etc. Although recreating the concept in a contemporary way is fun i found the whole concept a little elitist.
how is it elitist hahahahahaha
Bro what
(And unrelated but Turkish ppl spotted lol)
It’s like another language infused with the principles of abstract art, honestly it’s really engaging
You also find that in graffiti and also those damn metal band names haha
I would disagree that it is more ubiquitous with the design. People can become frustrated when the meaning of an object can't be perceived or interpreted. When you make that claim that it is up to the person to decided to engage with the text, the presentation is still there regardless if the viewer wants it to be. A good designer can manipulate how the native language is displayed within the image. This fully pushes the functionality of anything out the window. From a "fine art" sense fine, but any respectable designer would not use this.
amazing video
This an incredible video on an incredibly beautiful movement! (how do I get making this stuff??)
Really love the concept! I'd recommend checking out the Brazilian artist duo Detanico Lain. They have some amazing explorations of atypography, including in tridimensional space.
Thx for sharing. Interesting work, but I can't find anything specifically related to typography. Can you help me and point me to some specific work of theirs?
encryption is different from encoding
I enjoy the idea. I dont agree with nearly any of the justification for widespread use. I do not believe the english alphabet is aggressive nor do I believe that too much typography "clouds a consumers judgement" when making decisions. I believe the opposite is true. This could have real world applications I suppose, but mostly novel ones.
this is so inspiring. i wonder what else we can encrypt - music, etc. I wonder also how this compares to glyphic languages like all of Asia use - the key is private rather than public
yes!
thx maestro
so cool to discover and put words on stuff i've created when young and watching starwars i created alien fonts based on this kind of research but with no knowledge,
this feelings i've been trying to implement in my digital work without understanding. Later i've been interested un cuneiform and all old way of the script hyeroglyph and all, and recently i've thought about it still had it in mind when visiting japan and being surrounded with kanji , hiragana and katakana. In a way these fit in atypography to have messages in a different from roman type , putting you uin an effort to read or solely being a graphical object if not focusing on it.
Very glad the ebook is free but i would have been such a client for a hardcover version this is the stuff i want in my library place between my brutalist architecture books haha thank you ! following and sending best regards from france !
great video, thanks!
this puts a name onto something i already do for my album covers, very cool video!
So good, please make more
i feel like this video changed my life
The problem is your hieroglyphs also look bad on pictures.
I strongly disagree with the album covers example. If the glyphs are there to convey a meaning, like an idea, artist's name, or album name on an album cover, it makes the artwork more restricted by default, as the artwork is eventually bound by the rules of grammar. The grammar might not be very typical, but it still must adhere to predefined rules of some sort. Squiggling glyphs inside of or around an artwork is interfering with the meaning, you will have to either make an effort to include atypography as an afterthought, or make a huge effort to convey a message through atypography itself, making it the core of the artwork.
Either an artwork is all about atypography, or it's none about atypography, as two ideas try to clash for our attention.