What is the Collective Type Project?
Collective is an interactive online art project whose emergence is dependent on the input of its users.
What would it look like if 255 people wrote the same letter in the same place?
This is the question that inspired me to create the Collective Type Project. It is my hope that visitors to this site will draw in the various letters and numbers of the Roman alphabet.
When you add a letter to the collection, it is averaged with everything else in the collection. The end result is an image that is dark where letters intersect, and light where they don't.
Each letter drawn in will be saved, and an average of everyone's letter will be maintained. In the end, each letter should look somewhat similar to its common appearance. However, due to everyone's unique writing style, variances will occur, causing the letters to have a ghost-like resemblance to their normal selves.
There are 90 characters to be completed, each with an allowance of 255 entries. At the end of the project, there will be 22 950 characters total.
The reason for 255 entries is because images on computer monitors allow for 256 different shades of grey. By limiting each letter to 255 entries, it is ensured that everyone who has added to a letter will be represented in the end result.
If 256 entries were allowed, the 256th would appear as white and wouldn't appear in the end result.
When the project is over, each letter will be added into a typeface that will be available for download.
Technical Stuff
This project makes use of Flash, PHP, the PHP GD library, and MySQL. Of the four, Flash is the only one that costs anything.
Frequently Asked Questions About Collective
Q: So anyone can add to this?
A: Yes. Anyone who wants to add their letters to the collective typeface is free to do so.
Q: When will this project be finished?
A: When each letter has 255 characters. Or when I feel there's enough input. You can see the letters to see how many of each letter has been inputted so far.
Q: What if my letter doesn't look like the other letters?
A: That's the point. In the end, everyone's letter will be added together and averaged. It's the combination of everyone's letters that will make the final typeface interesting. Celebrate diversity! As the project goes on, every letter ever inputted can be seen.
Q: What will the final typeface look like?
A: Who knows? It all depends on how people use this.
Q: Won't it be a messy and unusable typeface?
A: Possibly. No one ever said art was clean.
Q: Typography isn't art. It's craft.
A: That's more of a statement than a question, but here's my answer. Art comes in many forms. Your interpretation may be Trisha Romance paintings. Someone else's might be post modernism. I think there's art in everything we do.
What matters is the idea and how much love you put into it. I think this is a good idea, and I'd love it like a harlequin romance novel if I could.