Scripta is both a typographic resource and an advocate for the improvement of typography in digital reading.
Our purpose:
- Set standards for typographic excellence in new media.
- Encourage development of new tools for digital typography, and the adoption & use of those tools by visual designers.
- Preserve traditional typographic knowledge and apply it creatively to digital media.
Our focus:
- Text and display typography for extended reading on digital screens.
Ergonomic typography | type you can read
Typography is central to the continuity of culture. It is an essential part of how we transmit our ideas and our voices across space and time.
Typography is the art and craft of arranging pre-formed letters to convey the meaning of a text. The text may be just a couple of words (“EMERGENCY EXIT”) or it may be a long, complex narrative (Moby-Dick); either way, the purpose of the typography is to communicate the words’ message.
The forms in which words are communicated keep growing and changing, as we invent new technologies to convey them, but the fundamental purpose remains the same. We need to find new ways to apply the old knowledge of how to transmit words and ideas, bringing the best of our typographic traditions to bear on the challenge of reading in digital form.
Type today is mostly digital and malleable, rather than hard pieces of metal arranged in fixed lines. But the patterns of arranging those letters, however they may be made, and the principles behind that arrangement, grow out of the traditions created for metal type.
Right now we are at a pivotal moment in the development of digital publishing. Now is the time to set high standards for the future — and to develop the tools to implement them. If we don’t set standards of typographic excellence today, our reading will be compromised for many years to come.