Due to a complete reconfiguration of my web server, YMMV.


Slitscan Type Generator

Slitscan K
Slitscan K Collection
Slitscan J Collection
Slitscan J
I created an Illustrator script that types a letter (in this case, ‘J’ & ‘K’) using every font installed on a computer. It aligns all the letters and then cuts slices out of each letter based on width. The collections are the results of 18 computers that friends and I tried this on. They range from 97 to 6607 fonts.
If you’d like to try this on your computer:

Pre-requisites:

  1. Adobe Illustrator (CS or CS2. This may or may not work on CS3. If it doesn’t, let me know exactly what happened and I can try to debug.)
  2. Some patience (amount depends on size of font collection)
  3. Willingness to e-mail me the two files when you are done
  4. Acceptance that this may produce an error and not work for you the first time

How to use the Slitscan type generator (as verbosely as I can think) :

  1. Download the Slitscan zip file
  2. Unzip it. This will extract two files: a jpeg of what your output should look like, and a javascript file (.jsx) that Illustrator will use.
  3. Open Illustrator
  4. Go to the ‘File‘ Menu and choose ‘Scripts‘ >> ‘Other Scripts…
  5. Navigate to the unzipped javascript file titled ‘J_K_slitscan_script.jsx‘ and select it.
  6. Wait
  7. When an alert pops up telling you how many fonts Illustrator thinks you have, click ‘OK
  8. There will be two files that remain open in Illustrator and should look similar to the jpeg file. Look at them if you feel so inclined, but don’t touch! ;)
  9. Close the files
  10. Navigate to your home folder or do a search for ‘Slitscan
  11. There should be two files with the prefix ‘Slitscan-JK-‘ in your home folder
  12. If you can, zip or stuff them into one archive file.
  13. E-mail me the archive file. Please use ‘Slitscan’ as the subject line (this way I should see it if my e-mail program labels as spam).
  14. Wait again
  15. I run another set of scripts on this file which will get a final result.
  16. I will e-mail you the two files back so you can have them for posterity’s sake. You are free to use them however and wherever you like as well.
  17. Bask in the warm feeling that you are a vital component of this project

12 Responses to “Slitscan Type Generator”

10 Comments

  1. On April 23rd, 2006 at 02:34, Dave Knoph said:

    Hey, I was looking on your website and I think this project is amazing. I’d like to try this on my compy. I am a student at CCS and I was scheduled to meet with you guys from Cranbrook in Danielle Aubert’s class but sadly I got a flat tire. Anyway…this stuff is great, and I’d love to try it.

    Thanks,

    -D

  2. Hi! I’d like to try this thing on my computer!
    Its funny that it creates kind of the same K every time…

  3. On May 19th, 2006 at 12:19, doctor scotland said:

    this looks very very cool - i’d like to try it please!

  4. On October 3rd, 2006 at 02:52, Jonathan said:

    Very cool.

    The gateway to my learning about scripting Adobe.

    Could you send the info please?

  5. Jonathan: Links to various PDFs on the following pages.

    Scripting in Illustrator

    in PhotoShop

    in After Effects (pdf link on page)

    There’s also always Google.

  6. On March 7th, 2007 at 23:53, jessica said:

    ausgezeichnet!
    & the animated use of it in Jumpers Bumpers was quite fabulous as well.
    Don’t know if you’re still handing the Slitscan Type script out, but if you are, may I play?

  7. Hi!
    very cool
    Id love to try it out, i want to experiment!

  8. I have added instructions and a link to the zip file above so that people may use this for themselves. Hopefully it will not kill anyone’s machine (shouldn’t), and I make no warranties that it won’t.

    I’m just sayin’.

  9. Thats realy cool
    thanks for the instuctions

  10. On May 28th, 2007 at 12:46, katie said:

    pretty rad - though I’ve always had a soft spot for typography.

    an e-mail with my additions is on it’s way :)

    -k-

2 Trackbacks

  1. stimmelopolis blog » Blog Archive » luck

    [...] name from Cranbrook ) Jonathan Keller’s daily photo project as well as a project called Slitscan Typeface Generator which uses scripting ( i guess some kind of javascript ) in Adobe Illustrator…. i [...]

  2. JK’s daily photo project « atemporal siempre

    [...] es un cajón de sastre lleno de proyectos interesantes relacionados con el diseño, las artes plásticas, la fotografía y el paso del tiempo [...]

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