It has been a while since I added any new material to this website. But at the 2025 ATypI conference in Copenhagen, I heard a talk that seemed to me to take all the concerns I’ve been expressing here – excellence in typography in flexible publishing – and kick it up a level.

Niteesh Yadav gave a presentation that he called “Typography as a Living Medium,”  which asked: “What if text could adapt to you – your gaze, your movement, your surroundings – in real time?” In other words, how do you bring the clarity that typography demands to the immersive worlds of Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality? This question connected with thoughts I’ve had for years about type’s context: where is it being viewed from and under what conditions? What requirements does the context impose, both in the physical environment and in our screen-based environments? Add in the possibilities of fluid, flexible virtual environments (VR), or digital overlays on our physical surroundings (AR), and the questions and challenges become manifest.

So I’ve asked Niteesh to write something for Scripta about this confluence of ideas and technologies. If he does, I’ll post it here. Time to carry the conversation forward.

June 2025