“Words and Characters in the Age of Electronic Performativity” presented by Holzheid

What are the influences digital technologies are about to exert on our concepts of written language? For some time now animated design has become state of the art in new media typography. Abundantly, language in TV news formats, advertisements, and video clips is being set footloose. Thereby it seems that the playful novelty of the choreographed formation wears off rather quickly. However, they are not symptoms of pure entertainment tendencies of commercial culture either. Used in a skillful way animated letters enact a new stylistics based on typographic rhetoric. They are beneficial as part of a rich multimodal texture together with sounds and images to generate information that appears semiotically and sensually gripping. All in all the various kinds of animated markup (dynamic changing of letters in size, color, position, or speed and direction of flow) serve traditional functions of communication (getting and keeping attention, highlighting hierarchies or relations within the information given, enhancing visual pleasure and affirming the memory effect).