This is the first time that the Design Department of Győr and its Graphic Studio are participating in the Typozone exhibition. Our art education at the Faculty of Arts of the Széchenyi University of Győr was started in September 2021 by nearly twenty artists with decades of experience in design and the education of graphic art. The activities of the Design Department are complemented by the Design Campus, the catalyst for the emerging creative center in Győr, which generates connections in the field of education, technology and research and development in the region.
The new program provides a broad interpretation of the concept of design and an open, experimental, people-centered vision, thus representing an interactive, dialogue-based, and continuously renewable education. We believe in the cooperation of different disciplines, in complex design thinking, therefore we try to create multidisciplinary situations in education, from which we hope for outstanding design achievements. In our design activities, pictorial thinking, design culture, and spatial creation are organically connected and shape each other. Openness is not only realized between professions, but we are also increasingly realizing the need for a transition between printed, classical appearances in the physical space and virtual interfaces.
In the society of Zuckenberg’s meta-vision, traditional experiences are transposed into the cyberspace. Its lifelike appearance, structure, and layering seem limitless and now depend solely on the ingenuity of AR / VR developers. At the same time, the concepts of viability and realism may also lose their raison d’être at this point, but at least they will be questionable, as the basis of reality is uncertain, from which we take our samples. In our interpretation, the meta-space is a reflexive imaging of this hybrid world, that is, an interpretive structure that seeks to create a meaningful system of connections – knowledge – between isolated information and phenomena that may be found at different points in a network of uncertain interpretation.
The font is also one of the basic units of this meta-world. As a graphic artist, it matters to us whether a font can be considered as the virtual avatar of the designer, a message carrier that the designer shares on print and screen surfaces. Nowadays, digital came to the fore: a font is popping up earlier today and has a greater impact in the digital world than in the Gutenberg galaxy on its traditional print surfaces. The fonts of the online universe are juxtaposed in virtual spaces in both planned and unplanned ways – for the metaverse the interpretation is very complex, yet it is essential because today’s students arrive in the online universe before they can read, understand, and use typography. Today’s young people first learn different hand gestures on online platforms than handwriting. Therefore, in this metaverse, the role of these font avatars is even more important. Designers learn and apply how visible typographic tools reinforce the message.
In the metaverse new issues arising for designers. Is the toolbox of typography suitable today to shape and improve independent, critical thinking? Does the user cope with misinformation and false news? What can we do when the images in the metaverse look more and more realistic, and at the same time the textual content is believable? The reality of the metaverse is an uncertain reality, but learning about the new space is a very real magnet for designers. However, truly sensitive creators linger away from the high level of visual noise and, using invisible typographic tools, let the silence – the white space – serve the text.