Counterform » Journal of Typography » Spring [01] 2006 » Interactive & Printed Typography

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1. There is a feeling that an Interactive design limited for multimedia is entering the printing projects from the screen ones, let's take for instance, OpenType - a format in the print which allows applying alternative signs with layout features automatically, or other projects where it is possible to change a composition step by step within the programmed framework.

I’m not really sure if I understood your point (question…?) here. I will try to comment your above sentence thought I’m not sure if that is the intention.
I think the war between these two worlds – interactive vs print – concerning with design approaches has influenced each other. Advances in technology made possible to change the design process in a more automated/controlled way. Interactive tools, programming, can be useful also in the process of design for printed matter in the way it opens up more possibilities. By programming a computer to deal with some automated task you’re preventing the boredom of doing the same thing fifty times, over and over again.
Dealing with typography I'm hesitant to call OpenType technology ‘intelligent’. OpenType has some special features that makes the design process more, lets say, clever (for instance, adopt a particular behaviour when some words are typed or respond to context), but it is certainly not intelligent. OpenType technology won't be able to come up with new ideas or learn or make aesthetic decisions. Aesthetic decisions are made by those who programmed the OT font to work that way. Some interesting experiments have been done in this field like Amy Papaelias ‘TypeTalkFonts’ or Christina Schultz ‘PicLig’, or even, HouseIndustries random approach in OpenType fonts.
But one thing I know for sure – more and more parts of the design process itself, whether for interactive or print media, get somehow automated.

2. May we really suppose that after the postmodernism intuitive approach we could talk about a new structural approach in the graphic design where this very structure is specified not only by the shaping principle, but also by a "smart" instrument too?

I think 'smart' only depends on the project. ‘Smart’ instruments, as you say, are here to stay if you’re thinking of programming machines. But let me clarify my point here. Graphic design is about communication. The means which you use to get the best end result, if you’re searching for it, just depends on your thoughts, strategies and concept – not on your tools, thought it could help you a lot.
Nowadays I believe that some emergent concepts in typography, like random machines, ASCII engines, OT features, can be part of the process. Why not? I don’t see a problem letting the medium influence the aesthetics of a project, because I feel that programming is always a process. In some way, design and programming are parts of the process. The most important thing is the concept. I also believe that good programming has some inherent mathematical and formal qualities – simplicity, elegance in the solutions which could help us to think of them as 'art'.

3. Can we say that nowadays there is a noticeable growth of the role not of the end product but of the instrument which may be used quite in different ways, for example, "live" interface where user has a possibility to move objects as he likes?

Well, I believe that depends on the objectives again. Typography has been a very conservative field, but nowadays there are a lot of designers and artists trying to broaden the frontiers. We must consider the ‘machine’, as I said before, as part of the process. Computers can be programmed to generate any state we want. Computers don't have aesthetics, but they have some inapt appetence to challenge you to interact with them. Computers have those capacities historically. The things that are generally accepted as computer aesthetics are the things that we make with computers. Conceptual Art is one field where the process is more important than the end result. Many of these pieces assume a number of instructions to create an object. There are also a lot of design pieces that explore these kinds of concepts. The roles of algorithms are getting more and more important, and in some pieces we can inclusively look at them as an ‘art’ piece in itself. The desire for interactivity is there, designers want interaction, the users want interaction, and everybody is expecting to add his part to the project and have fun. In that sense I think we could say the process is growing vs the end result. That’s the democratization of the process. To make it open for others to modify it, to contribute to it. Thought I think that the balance is the most important thing. Remember that even if you give the user the opportunity to change your project, you were the one that programmed that capacity.  
That's where the real work is, discovering how to balance all these concepts in a meaningful way. The main difficulties you might find in some projects are in separating what is structure and what is expression, but I believe that’s going to fade out within some maturation process that naturally and hopefully the years will bring.

4. Recently, namely with computer programmers based on "friendly" interface, the programmers' authors have been trying to make them perfect and to bury the insides - the programmer machine itself - in order that the user worked not with the programmer itself but with the object. But now such things as Drawbot and NodeBox have appeared, and they are quite different. On the contrary they have broken" this programmer machine (Python, JavaScript) for the user to find a common language. Question: what do you think is it possible that scriptable languages will become co-authors in the working projects too, not only in the research ones?

I have been wondering about this question myself for quite some time.
First of all let’s conceive that the range of expression, the objectives and the time constrains of a personal and commercial projects are very different.
I believe that being trapped within the same tools only gives you more or less the same results, but if those are what you really dominate, than try to use it in the best and innovative way to better convey the message you want to communicate.
Others seek for innovative programs or new scripting languages that can manage different states, some personal achievement that couldn’t be done by, let’s say, conventional tools. But saying that these languages will become co-authors, I believe we are talking about the same thing. I don’t see the process of design as a dichotomy of separate tasks – design and programming. Design and scripting can be exactly the same language conceptually speaking. In that sense, it’s obvious that scripting languages can be part of the design process as well as Photoshop filters can be if you use it, but is what you do with it that matters.

We can’t say it’s a trend, in the more euphemistic way, in the way everybody is experimenting with a bunch of different scripting languages. The taste of technology and control has always been there. On the other hand, we are not trying to make software or scripting patterns. Nowadays you can do everything you’d like with a computer, assuming you have some knowledge of how it could be done. Thought programming your own tool can be very fun. You have full control of the features, so you fully understand the constrains if there are some and you possibly know how it could be solved.

One of the drawback of most of these languages is that it is hard to use them in short running projects where the emphasis is on rapid production rather than making some kind of machine to automate the task. It’s also difficult to implement it in a short period of time. But there are some excellent pieces developed in research centres that are today publicly available.
There will always be limitations in the designer's work, but the software you use, the way it looks, more ‘engineered’ or more object oriented ‘designer’s view’, shouldn't necessarily be one of them.

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Essay by Vítor Quelhas on April 2006.
Published in Counterform Journal of Typography, Spring [01] 2006 - Interactive & Printed Typography
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