Design Translation · 2011

Spinning Type

An experiment in how spinning changes the shape of letters.

Object: Spinning letter disks
Letters: Roman and Korean
Light: Lightbox, two 15 watt fluorescent lamps
Recorded with: Camera and video
Year: 2011

Five frames of a black vertical bar, the letter I, spinning faster from left to right: a still bar, a slightly tilted bar, a blurred bow tie shape, a fainter blur, and a small black dot — The vertical stroke of the letter I, from still to a dot.

Illusions

Human and machine errors reveal graphics we'd never see otherwise

A car wheel spins forward but looks like it's running backward at certain speeds. Helicopter blades appear frozen in digital footage. Spinning objects cause optical illusions everywhere.

I experimented with how these human and machine errors affect Roman letterforms from A to Z. An objective observer might not exist. But the imperfect interpretations reveal beautiful graphics we'd never see otherwise.

Setup

A letter on a disk, a lightbox, and a camera

Round white disks printed with black letters, one with an H sitting on a square of cardboard wired to a battery pack, beside a keyboard

A disk with a black W under a lit lightbox, with a camera on a tripod pointed at it — The spinning disk set under the lightbox with two 15 watt fluorescent lamps that split colors out of the spinning black W.

Recordings

Every character on the disk looks different, and none are readable

All characters on the spinning disk look different. Of course, they are not readable.

The transition from the vertical stroke to a dot in spinning. At first thought, we should view a 6cm diameter black circle when the 6cm tall letter I spin. In the experiment, I saw a smaller than 6cm diameter circle; furthermore, my camera recorded it even smaller.