Tool / Medium
TouchDesigner
Process
I chose TouchDesigner because Ihave always been interested inmotion graphics, but I had very littleexperience with this type ofsoftware. I wanted to explore how Icould use it to create movingimages and experiment withtypography beyond traditionalgraphic design.
The reference work is a kinetictypography piece by pppanik onInstagram. I was particularlyinterested in how the letters aredistorted, stretched and transformedinto moving visual patterns. Thecombination of typography,movement and distortion creates avisual effect that feels very differentfrom static graphic design.
As I had almost no experience with TouchDesigner, I initially thought this effect would be relatively simple to recreate. I wanted to use thisproject as a starting point to learnthe basic functions of the softwareand understand how its nodesystem could be used to createdynamic visual effects.
I followed a YouTube tutorial to learn the basic workflow in TouchDesigner. I builtthe node network step by step, then adjusted some parameters and modified partsof the effect to get closer to the original work.
I connected the basicnodes and built a systemto control the visual effect.
I adjusted the text andparameters to explore different forms ofdistortion.
I combined visual effectssuch as noise and blur tocreate the final distortion.
my imitation:
Question
How does typographic distortionaffect readability?
How does typographic distortionaffect readability?
Does Touch designer prompt designers to shift from being’creators of graphic output’ to’editors of uncontrollable graphic design?
Experiment 1
How does typographic distortion affect readability?
Controlling Typographic Distortion
How does changing the parameters of a generative system affecttypographic readability and visual unpredictability?
Group 1
I changed one parameter in a singlenode while keeping the othersettings the same. This helped meobserve how one specific parameteraffects the distortion of the text andunderstand its role in the visualresult.
Group 2
I experimented with multipleparameters across different nodesto explore how their effects interact.Compared with the first group, theresults were less predictable,helping me investigate the balancebetween control and unpredictabilityin TouchDesigner.
Reflection
Through these experiments, I found that changing even one parameter could produce very different typographicresults. When I changed multiple parameters acrossdifferent nodes, the outcomes became more complexand less predictable.
I also found that typographic distortion could affectreadability. The text could become almost impossible torecognise, or remain partly readable. This made merealise that small changes in parameters can have asignificant impact on how typography communicates.
Through this process, I began to understand thatgenerative design is not only about controlling the finalimage, but also about exploring and responding to unexpected results.
In the next stage, I want to explore how I can balancevisual unpredictability with readability, and how much control a designer really needs over a generativesystem.
I chose this effect because it changes both the shapeand readability of the text. The blurred and obstructed areas create new forms within the original letters. This made me think about using TouchDesigner as astarting point to collect these altered letter forms and redesign them into a typeface.
I explored two waysof developing theletterforms. Iremoved the blurredand obstructedareas to createincomplete forms,and then kept theseareas to exploreanother visualdirection. These two approaches allowedme to see how thesame effect couldproduce different letter form structures.
I then combined the two approaches to explore how these different forms could work together. Rather than treating each letter as an individual experiment, I started to consider how the letterforms could accumulate, connect and influence each other. This led me to explore the possibilities of developing a typeface through the combination of different forms.
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