Description:

With the advances in AI capabilities, especially in creating imagery, what are the opportunities for design? Can AI be a tool for creative practice?

The Lorem Ipsum Typewriter is an experiment exploring the potential and possibilities of generative AI at this moment in time.

Designers often reach for lorem ipsum when they need text to fill a gap—but what if there was a visual equivalent?

A formalised model and tool for artistic output where words are created with a self-referential form, taking shape as they are typed?

When prompted, the Lorem Ipsum Typewriter generates letterforms from anything.

To push its limitations as a specific and purposeful graphic design tool, the user can specify any typeface to be used as the underlying structure.

In the Lorem Ipsum Typewriter’s universe, you can have the uniformity of Helvetica constructed from croissants. The angular points of Signifier can be rendered with rugby players.

The rendered image can be adjusted on a scale from abstract to defined. Letters can be formed from pencil sketches or photorealistic pencils. They can be abstract shadows or architectural photos. They can be everything in between.

Unlike other models that decorate within the edges of a character, the typewriter operates with a higher degree of creative licence.

If a liquid is the prompt, it won’t simply fill a vessel; the tool will twist the material itself into the letter. A glass of milk becomes a pouring and splashing letter ‘f’.

To enable precise control, kerning and tracking are fully adjustable along with weight. The colour of the output image can be changed.

A single letter can be picked and re-generated on its own out of an entire word. Compositions can be saved to the library to be tweaked later or pulled into After Effects for animation.

Each rendered image is output as letters in separate layers, within a .psd composition, ready for editing.

The development of this tool was an experiment with a specific output in mind—a lyric music video as part of the AGI Open conference.

Two pieces of music were commissioned from composer Sam Trevethick, who took the ‘generated’ and the ‘digital’ as his input and inspiration.

The lyrics? A rendition of the infamous lorem ipsum text, run through the typewriter and brought to life on screen—a recursive double-take on giving shape to text.