3/11/2024 0 Comments Arabic Numerals Fontand humans!Į13B, the subject of my experiment, was invented in the 1950s by SRI International (these are the same folks that brought you Siri!) as part of a project called ERMA. We see these two frequently, some of us on a daily basis, on cheques and banknotes, but they almost never register on our minds as anything special. The prevailing MICR typefaces are E13B and CMC7. The material limitations of the time gave birth to typographic anomalies, the aesthetics of which are now deeply emblematic of computing throughout the 60s and 70s, legends of fraud, retrofuturism, and dystopian world imaginings. In type design, this phenomenon is clearly attested by Magnetic Ink Character Recognition (“MICR”) typefaces which were developed for the banking industry in the 1950s to facilitate automated processing of cheques. Inside a 1970s Olivetti typewriter: daisy wheel featuring an extended Arabic alphabet for Persian markets. Bound by technological constraints, iconic avenues of aesthetic emerge, as though by fate, in dignified defiance to domain standards of beauty. Each informs the other, but design is what most visibly reflects the limitations of our tools, materials, processes, tastes, and objectives. Naturally, technology and design are coupled in some inextricable, amorphous, yet curious ways.
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