Stempel Garamond
A typographic explanation of the fundamental processes that govern our world.
04 — Contents 06 — Chaos Theory 08 — Aa 10 — Bb 12 — Cc 14 — Dd 16 — Ee 18 — Ff 20 — Gg 22 — Hh 24 — Ii 26 — Jj 28 — Kk 30 — Ll 32 — Mm 34 — Nn 36 — Mandelbrot 38 — Oo 40 — Pp 42 — Qq 44 — Rr 46 — Ss 48 — Tt 50 — Uu 52 — Vv 54 — Ww 56 — Xx 58 — Yy 60 — Zz 62 — Garamond 64 — Stempel Garamond
noun
noun: chaos theory The branch of mathematics that deals with complex systems whose behavior is highly sensitive to slight changes in conditions, so that small alterations can give rise to strikingly great consequences.
The images in this book have been inspired by the story of ‘Chaos Theory’ and how it has come to explain some of the most basic questions that mankind has been asking for thousands of years. Many of the images are developed from what are called ‘Mandelbrot Sets’; a stage on the path to our understanding that produces some truly fascinating images. The wider story however is set out as an accompaniment to the images.
For hundreds of years figures of religion, philosophers and academics have attempted to answer the fundamental question: How did we get here? But in recent years science has overtaken religion and philosophy in daring to answer this most fundamental of questions. The story involves a series of mysterious and interconnected discoveries that start to explain how life on our planet has evolved from the basic particles of inanimate matter that science has helped us to understand. Woven into nature’s simplest and most basic laws is a power to be unpredictable and yet, almost simultaneously, inanimate matter can spontaneously create order and exquisite beauty. The same laws that make the universe chaotic, spontaneous and unpredictable can turn simple dust into human beings.
The natural world is just one great mess of buzzing confusion. It is a mess of quirky shapes and blotches. What patterns we see, are never quite regular and never repeat exactly. The fact that scientists now think that all this irregularity is determined by mathematical rules is at odds with our previous knowledge, scientific laws and understanding. Until the early 1900’s Newtonian rules of understanding explained the workings of the universe as a giant clockwork type mechanism based on predictable mathematical rules that can’t change. But Alan Turing, famous for his code breaking exploits during the 2nd World War, was the first person to question whether the laws of nature could also be understood using mathematics. Turing was interested in the idea that mathematics could be used to describe biological systems and ultimately intelligence. This fascination gave rise to the modern computer, and later in Turing’s life, an even more radical notion that simple mathematics could be used to describe the mysterious processes that take place in an embryo, called ‘Morphogenesis’.
The cells start out identical, but then start to clump together and change. How do cells know what part of a being to become, an eye or an ear or what? This was an example of something spectacular called ‘self organization’. Turing published his paper in 1952 explaining through mathematics how morphogenesis worked. Turing’s equations described for the first time how biological systems could self organise. An example of self organisation is how a sand dune which is made up of billions of identical sand particles that have no knowledge of what shape they are formed into can organise into ripples and waves and dunes as a result of the wind. In the same way, chemicals seeping across an embryo can make identical cells self organise into different organs. The same processes explain the markings on animal skins such as cows and leopards and zebra.
Turing’s work was tragically curtailed when he was convicted of gross indecency following an affair with a younger man, and as a sentence had to undertake a course of unproven female hormone drugs. This sent him into a spiral of depression and he committed suicide soon after. This is regarded as one of the most shameful episodes in the history of British science and the resulting loss to science remains incalculable. Turing was only 41 years of age when he died.
Before Turing scientists saw the universe as a giant complicated machine. The idea was that the universe is a huge intricate machine that obeys orderly mathematical rules. If you knew the rules then the machine should behave in an entirely predictable way. Find the rules and then you can predict everything – this was Newtonian physics. Irregular behavior was explained by outside forces. Self organisation seemed absurd. In the second half of the 20th century, starting with Turing’s work, the Newtonian dream was shattered and the scientific community was literally plunged into chaos.
Another scientist, Edward Lorenz began working on weather systems using mathematical systems that could predict the weather. He started by using traditional thinking in a Newtonian manner, but he found he could make no reliable predictions. Lorenz hit upon the idea that very small changes in the starting position of a prediction could result in very major differences further down the road. He captured his ideas in a now famous lecture called, ‘Does the flap of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil set off a tornado in Texas?’ This led to a new phrase in our language, ‘The Butterfly Effect’. The discovery of chaos was a real turning point in the history of science and the tearing down of the Newtonian dream. Scientists started to look carefully at Turing and others work, and the sense that there could be links between the chaotic nature of the butterfly effect and natures strange power to self organize began to grow.
Benoit Mandelbrot was a largely self taught mathematician and a maverick, but had a talent for seeing patterns and form in things where others saw just chaos. Mandelbrot’s belief was that there was some unique equation that described all the shapes in nature. He believed that underlying nearly all the shapes in the natural world lies the mathematical principle of self similarity. The same shape is repeated over and over again at smaller and smaller scales. The idea applies to trees and leaves and blood vessels in our bodies. Mandelbrot realised that self similarity was the basis of a new geometry and gave this a name, ‘Fractals.’
Mandelbrot took up a job at IBM in the late 1950’s to use the latest in computing power to continue to study nature. He drew the Mandelbrot set, which has been called the thumb print of God. Baby Mandelbrot’s feeding on themselves going on for ever all coming from one very simple, equation z = z2 + c. Complex systems thus can be based on simple rules. A flock of starlings is a classic example, each bird follows a simple set of rules but the whole mass moves unpredictably and without any bird taking the lead.
Evolution has capitalised on natures self organising patterns and built on these by moulding and shaping these complex systems to match our environment. Evolution is based on simple rules and feedback. The simple rule is that the organism replicates with a few random mutations every now and then with feedback that comes from the environment which favors the mutations that are most suited to it.
Modern computers have been used to mimic evolution to demonstrate that using simple rules, evolution can modify software automatically and unconsciously to produce computer simulations much more superior than man could have designed or programmed.
Our journey through the work of Turing, Lorenz and Mandelbrot has shown how far science has come in explaining what has historically been the territory of philosophy and religion. The end result is the evidence that our ever evolving complexity is produced without thought or design.
There is a common misconception which still abides today regarding Garamond typefaces: that all Garamond types were based on the typefaces cut by Claude Garamond in the sixteenth century. In fact, the Garamond label is quite often a misnomer, as many of the Garamond fonts in existence today were in fact modeled after a later contributor to the world of type: Jean Jannon. Jannon, an engraver by trade, was born in 1580 in Switzerland – exactly one century after Garamond and nineteen years after the famous publisher’s death. His typographic life began after he decided to create his own type to avoid having to have an alphabet shipped from Paris or Germany which at that time was quite difficult. His existing type was also wearing out; a brand new typeface was finished around 1615, based on the Garamond of the previous century. Thus, the confusion around Garamond and Jannon began. Misidentification of the Jannon type as Garamond’s work, while flattering, was later proven inaccurate. Therefore the many Garamond variations in existence today are often based on Jannon or are a typographical hybrid of the Jannon/Garamond types. However, the Stempel Garamond font was based on a 1592 Garamond specimen by printer Egenolff-Berner, so the inspiration for it was indeed the original engraver and not Jannon. The Monotype Garamond™ font family, released three years earlier (1922) is an example of a Jannon-based typeface.
The many users of Garamond include the Nvidia corporation, who employ the font for their PDF science publications. The 1985 Nintendo games console used an italic variant of the font after the NES text to describe the individual console types. DTP Types – a British foundry – have produced an Infant version of Garamond, though it is hard to find. The Dr Seuss books are set in Garamond, as are all of the American versions of J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series. In fact, the Garamond type is an extremely popular font for print and has been since its original conception almost five hundred years ago. In 1984, the growing Apple computer company prepared to launch a range of computers known as the Macintosh. They would require marketing material production and after a number of attempts at manipulating the existing Garamond font, Apple commissioned ITC and Bitstream to create a condensed version for corporate use. The result was a font which kept the attractive characteristics of the original Garamond, while delivering the versatility necessary. The font delivered to Apple was named Apple Garamond. [credit: www.fonts.com/font/linotype/stempel-garamond]
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Design does not need an active interfering
designer‌
it’s an inherent part of the universe.