ECAL MATD Beyond Bézier

Questioning industry standards

This research project started out from a simple observation: every industry pro­duces standards which enable efficiency, collaboration, interoperability, simplifying to some extent the working processes of the people involved. However, questioning and reevaluating such standards is cru­cial to improving shared knowledge and moving forward. This is particularly true for creative industries, such as type design. The majority of digital typefaces are currently produced with three different types of software, namely Glyphs, Robofont or FontLab. The working process with all three relies on vector drawing, using a curve-calculation technology known as ‘Bézier curves’ which has been the industry standard for the last forty years, borrowed from car and aircraft design where streamlined curves are essential.²

As with any other tool, the Bézier curve operates in its own paradigm, imposing its peculiar way of drawing. Drawing with Bézier makes some things easier and some more difficult, when compared to drawing by hand.³ Additionally, in recent years some of the drawing programs have started to integrate tools that automatically ‘improve’ a design, essentially by smoothing out any quirks in the letterforms. The design process thus complies with the algorithmic logic of the tool that is being used to produce it. One can then wonder about the extent to which the use of standardised tools tends to homogenise shapes produced by different designers. 

On this basis, the Beyond Bézier project was formulated as a critical investigation into the existing approaches to letter drawing. It aims to encourage experimenting with new methods of drawing and creating. As type designers and type educators, we began to experience the dead ends that vector drawing and contemporary software bring to type design, generating more and more fonts that just look the same. With Beyond Bézier we planned to look past established modes of production and aesthetics, to develop innovative tools, ideas and processes that go ‘beyond’ designing only with Bézier curves. In the end, we are returning to the basic question of ‘How do we create?’ – and the answer to this we hope to find in experimentation rather than in moving Bézier points around on a screen.

Beyond ‘trying things out’ and the paradoxical ‘return to Bézier’

Throughout the eighteen months of the project, the research group has been simultane­ously working on five different axes, each covering a different methodology of drawing type: Axis A: The Mathematics, Axis B: The Stroke, Axis C: The Surface, Axis D: The Collective and Axis E: The Robot. While Axis A and Axis B ques­tion traditional ways of creating fonts, mostly looking at the tools and instruments involved, Axis C and Axis D look at who designs, and in which contexts, through collaboration and exchange; and Axis E is transversal. The researchers met monthly and exchanged their findings, and while the individual research continuously progressed, two concerns were regularly brought up: How do we move from ‘trying things out’ into something more productive?; and: How do we deal with the paradoxical nature of everyone trying to work outside of a Bézier-based approach, but needing to produce a font file…?

Cultivating rather than creating

Regarding the question of simply ‘trying things out’, the continuation of the project made clear how the working process required stepping out of pur comfort zones and fighting automatisms. When vector drawing becomes automatic (either by muscular memory of the designer or by software-induced choices), a whole area of creativity disappears, so drawing with different approaches can trigger new ideas and shapes, in the same way that the physical limitations of your tools can help you to arrive at new forms.^{5 6} It also meant forcing ourselves to move away from plainly systematic approaches, and to include unexpected, unwanted results and combinations. 

Yet, reinventing your working process can be painful at times – it’s less comfortable and is usually inefficient and frustrating. The imbalance of time and effort, of resources and focus, cannot be ignored. A certain lack of efficiency needs to be tolerated, and ideally balanced with the outlook of possibly creating new, innovative forms – which is the aim here after all. More and more, the definition of what constitutes a typeface shifted to something much looser altogether. A letterform, as suggested by Kai Bernau, may be made up of a collection of code, an open system that does not need to run in Adobe InDesign or Microsoft Word, but as something that can be dropped into software to work with it.⁷ The acceptance of the fact that whatever could be produced within the framework of the project wouldn’t even come close to a perfect font family, but would always stay experimental or a thought-provoking proposal, led to a new kind of vocabulary.

Going ‘Beyond Bézier’, Matthieu Cortat-Roller suggests, is not a method to allow us to work more efficiently, but is rather about ‘maturation’, about solving formal problems or tasks with more time. Because yes, we can always retreat to Bézier curves to help us finish sketches and smoothen weird analogue corners. But if we put our relationship with Bézier on hold and start to flirt with other methods, old or new, we can create unexpected letterforms and enrich the discussion about industry standards and technological restrictions. As Radim Peško summarised, in the end it’s not about going against a standard or a stubborn urge for new forms – rather we aim for an idea of ‘cultivating’, of continuity and trust in the tools we already have.⁸ Regarding the initial question of ‘What inspires the creation of new letterforms?’ the answer here may be that creation is sparked by looking backward and forward, referring to history and the future at the same time, a certain balance and experience of tools, craft and technology.

On the gradual construction of thoughts while speaking

This website collects video recordings of five lectures which took place at ECAL on 17 December 2024. Each Axis had been asked to present their questions and findings to the audience. The recordings, we were convinced, would be representative of the project not only in the way that it evolved in part through exchanges in conversations, meetings and various digital communication platforms (emails, Slack, Are.na, et al), but also because the lecture format offered an ideal setting to summarise our findings while at the same time developing some of the thoughts in real time while speaking. All of the lectures took place on the same day, and the speakers began to refer to each other’s presentations – echoing, confirming or contradicting statements by their colleagues. As a result, the initial plan of branching out the research question into five different axes, instead coalesced almost as one string of thought, with many shared further questions. These recordings are accompanied by edited and richly annotated transcripts, allowing the reader to watch, listen or read selectively or simultaneously, and to use the annotations to continue the thought-strings, whenever they’re interested, by following the links to other websites and resources.

With all this material now collected and presented, it’s apparent that Beyond Bézier is not proposing a collection of new typefaces, but rather new tools, methodologies and vocabulary that will enrich the discussion about technological restrictions.