osp blog - live

Soap slides in the sun

2018-06-20T14:10:00+02:00

Another type of tool practice.

Dirty variables workshop

2018-03-27T17:00:00+02:00

Dirty variables workshop is about variable fonts with some distance and manual interpolation (with stroke fonts inside), with La Cambre master students in type media, Brussels, on the 26 + 27 March 2018.

We are using Fonttools and the ttx format, which is a clear xml dump of every table present in a (variable) font. See github.com/fonttools/fonttools.

The custom made inspector web tool displays the content of ttx files, including all deltas. The repository is on http://gitlab.constantvzw.org/osp/workshop.dirty-variables

All the documentation we gathered before and during the workshop follows, in a quite rough way!

Variables fonts past and present

OpenType Font Variations is the new feature of the OpenType Font Format specification version 1.8. The first public announcement of this new version happened in Warsaw during ATypI 2016.

To be a bit more clear on what and who :

OpenType format was developped by Microsoft, Apple and Adobe since 1996, to stop the war between Postscript (Adobe) and Truetype (Microsoft + Apple) formats. Because of their need for emoji fonts, Google join the group more recently. Apple and Microsoft share the same concern.

«The new OpenType format allows for a single file to contain an entire family, or multiple related families, of font instances. Previously if you wanted to license an entire font family with a range of weights for your website (like Light, Regular, Medium, Bold, Extra Bold, and Ultra) the type foundry would generate a separate font file for each style. But now it's possible for type foundries to put all of these styles into a single file.» — from cjtype.com/dunbar/variablefonts, an article on Dunbar “n”, a single glyph font 'n' as the "first" var font !

The "historical moment" by Roxane Gataud on Twitter @RoxaneGataud at Studio Dumbar with @kupfers @youknowcj @tassiana_costa #variablefonts"

Variable fonts are also called “responsive typographies”.

For the moment, this font format is mostly working on the web. Compatble web browsers are listed on https://caniuse.com/#feat=variable-fonts

For the print world :

Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator now support Variable Fonts and the user can find the controls in the font panel by pressing the Variable Font button next to the Font Style menu
Colorfont support in Photoshop - link to find one day
A recent announcement from Inkscape
You can buy The Zeitung Flex InDesign extension by Underware for Adobe suite, to play with Zeitung Flex variations

Design spaces, axis, tables?

To dive into the variable fonts also brings us to revisit the different spaces and tables that are around and contained in a font.

In the mid-nineties, Adobe has proposed Multiple Masters fonts, an interpolation system to generate fonts from two masters embeded into the font itself. In the same time, Apple introduce a more refined but similar system called Apple Advanced Typography (AAT). Both system proves the technical feasability but were not largely used by designers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_master_fonts - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Advanced_Typography

Designers have not catch up these tools, but type designers begon to use the same kind of tools, but externally of the font, in the font editors* mainly. The designation “design space” one of way to name it. This space gathers or deploys the informations describing the relations between the masters, the sources of a font. It defines for exemples the relations between the light and the bold version of a same font. A design space store all the datas needed for variable font interpolations. It it was is not into the font, meaning it is not about the drawing of the font, the meta infos...

We could say that now with Open Type 1.8 specification, this design space become more concretely embeded into the font and not depending on extrapolation tools. The design space is called variation space in the specification and it is the range of variability in the variable font.

The design space is defined by

axes (names and dimensions of the axes)
sources (links to the ufo, otf, ttf...)
instances (the steps you wants to generate)
rules (sketche on how conditional stuff could work)

And those element are tidy into tables :

glyph - Glyph shapes → table containing the shape data for the glyphs https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/typography/opentype/spec/glyf
gvar -Glyph Variations→ table containg the delta's of the glyphs https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/typography/opentype/spec/gvar
fvar - Font Variations → table desribing the variation axes of the font, and describing instances (pre-set values per axis) - https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/typography/opentype/spec/fvar
avar - axis variations → table allowing to modify how a variation behaves, mainly the 'speed', it can become non-linear - https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/typography/opentype/spec/avar
cvar - CVT (control value table) variations https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/typography/opentype/spec/cvar
stat - style attributes → ? https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/typography/opentype/spec/stat

Axis names have to be a string, that can't be longer than 4 letters. Axis tags are predefined axes. 'wght': weight, 'wdth': width, 'ital': italic, 'slnt': slant, 'opsz': optical size.

See a talk by Erik van Blokland at TYPO Labs 2017 about designspaces

More complete introductions

To ensure a good start of the technology (everyone was remembering the failed attempt of MM and AAT...), the four giants agreed to announce it in one go, along with external commenters

Introducing OpenType Variable Fonts, John Hudson (W3C), Sep 14, 2016
Adobe annoucement
Microsoft annoucement
Google annoucement
Apple annoucement (is there an Apple annoucement?)
From TrueType GX to Variable Fonts, Tom Rickner, Head of Tools at Monotype - 29. 11. 2016
Why Variable Fonts Will Succeed, Thomas Phinney (FontLab, ATypI) - 27. 01. 2018
OpenType variable fonts discussion on TypeDrawers - search for "[otvar]"

Documentation

The very clear Microsoft documentation of the OpenType® specification is on https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/typography/opentype/spec/font-file#otttables
More general, a blog post with some details - https://simoncozens.github.io/fonts-and-layout/opentype.html#opentype-font-variations
And 99 articles from 1991 (!) to 2018 on https://www.axis-praxis.org/resources

(All-male) actors

Here are some profiles to follow that document and follow all the rebounds of the variables

Laurence Penney (Bristol, UK)
Nick Sherman (New York, USA) - At the occasion of Robothon 2018 (8–9 March), Nick launched https://v-fonts.com, a website collecting and displaying variables fonts. On twitter Nick is on https://twitter.com/NickSherman and https://twitter.com/variablefonts
Erik van Blokland from Letterror, part of the OpenType 1.8 comitee
Just Van Rossum from Letterror, (probably) the creator of ttx, neffew of Guido van Rossum, programmer who creates Python
Thomas Phinney, font and typography expert and consultant. In his day job, Thomas is President of FontLab, the font creation/editing software company. He is also treasurer of ATypI, the international typographic association. From 1997-2008 he did type at Adobe, lastly as product manager for fonts and global typography. After that he spent five years as senior technical product manager (a.k.a. “guru”) of fonts and typography at Extensis, including managing the font library for the WebINK web font solution. His typeface Hypatia Sans is an Adobe Original (with help from Robert Slimbach, Miguel Sousa and Paul Hunt). His latest typeface is the Kickstarter-funded Cristoforo.
John Hudson of Tiro Typeworks, design wonderful top-of-the-line fonts in Vancouver. Tiro is increasingly involved in font technologies, and are avid advertisers for OpenType and work often with Microsoft and Linotype on projects. John has created or collaborated on typefaces for many writing systems. He is an expert contributor to Unicode, and a member of the W3C Web Fonts Working Group.
Adam Twardoch and Yuri Yarmola : programmers of FontLab
Georg Seifert and Rainer Erich Scheichelbauer : programmers of Glyphs

(Yes, Twitter remains a good node for typographic discussions)

Some critical approaches

Le point de vue de Jean-Baptiste Levée aux TYPO Labs 2017
Boring font is the title of a conference Indra Kupferschmid recently gave at typemedia.org/robothon2018 - “Warning: type family regularization (that interpolatable outlines encourage) is BORING!”
["Of course there are skeptics and believers. A very interesting statement from Indra Kupferschmid in her talk during this year’s Robothon (2018) was when she warned type designers of the sometimes boring results of this new technology. I’m one of the believers and in this article I’ll try to explain why" - Irene Vlachou] (https://www.type-together.com/index.php?action=portal/viewContent&cntId_content=3614)
Causticity from "the department of silly demos"

Usage exemples

A variable font that responds to sound on goertek.kontrapunkt.com/online/
Web use collection of Mandy Michael codepen.io/collection/XqRLMb/#
Fake on website Dumbar studiodumbar.com and on github.com/RoelN/Color-Variable-Emoji

Toolkit

Fonttools
github.com/fonttools/fonttools
groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/fonttools
On Mac, where every install is a bit more complicated, install Fonttools with brew on terminal
PyGObject
pygobject.readthedocs.io/en/latest
To install it, you'll also need libgirepository1.0-dev and libcairo-dev
Fontforge
Non-free : Fontlab, Robofog, Robofont, and Glyphs.

Relearn 2015

2015-06-28T17:36:00+02:00

Relearn is back for 2015!

We're very happy to see the summer school continue and morph into a new being again this year, with a new set of people taking care of the organization. Quick recap: OSP set up the first edition of Relearn in 2013. In 2014, Relearn was a jointed venture with all the Variable labs taking part, just before we had to vacate the house. This time, there are no immediate ties between the organizers, yet there is a very solid body of exciting and able people taking care of this summer's school.

This year, we go to Zinneke, to broaden our horizons.

You can read all about the selected tracks on relearn.be/2015/ and peruse through the archives for /2014/ and /2013/

!Applications close on the 1st of July!

See you there?

Seoul fonts karaoke

2014-01-29T00:54:00+01:00

This print party was wildly exciting.
Thanks again to the collectif SIN and De La Charge gallery.
Find the recipe and generic of the event on the README page of the workshop and download the 2 hits interpreted by our voice Ms. Funzie Korocr, 다누보강의 작울결 Remix 1 and 다누보강의 작울결 Remix 2

OSP Public Meet #3

2012-04-17T12:54:00+02:00

The next Osp Public Meet will take place on Monday the 23rd. For this third edition, we will try to precise our exhibitionist experiment of talking internal affairs in public. Here below are the few code lines of the new version.

Thank you Sarah Magnan who was with us the past two weeks!

18h00 ¬ This is an OSP meet. It's a regular meeting, it is not presentations (let's repeat it : normally these meetings are internal). We have all trivia to discuss, but these trivia bring us to discuss things that seems to be more broad and could be interesting. A lot of people ask us what is OSP and how we work, and one day we thought that maybe a way to enter in contact with us is this strange operation of doing an internal stuff in public. It could be frustrating, but we've decided to push it further than the presentations we've done in the two previous public meets. Read the ordre du jour, come, take a seat, don't expect to understand everything, but we hope that some stuff could interest you. The hardcore core! We smoke!
As ordre du jour, keypoints in the agenda, some current jobs such as Danslab, Stuttgart workshop, osp website and server, aether9 publication, OSP summer school, Relais Culture Europe, Spion and Link.

19h30 ¬ React to what you've seen/heard, bring some projects that you want to show us, we present some stuff we want to share with you (and between us), we discuss. Table ronde! And we drink beer, bring some! We continue to smoke!

21h00 ¬ We eat something, bring some food and more to drink. We continue to discuss, but the music -free- begin with some volume. And dance!

OSP public meet

2012-01-20T18:15:00+01:00

January 30th

Finally a moment of meeting with you for 9000 km of drawings, tools, stories.
Interested in the libre? Curious about our practice? OSP studio welcomes you for a first public session at Variable.

18h30 - Welcoming
Presentation and discussions around recent and ongoing OSP studio works.

19h30
Exiled Cuisine (Ivan Monroy Lopez, Mexico City)
Lecture/performance + dinner.
Cookbook files are open when there’s a chance of working. The work is not technological in that nothing of this has not been done before. The literature that feeds into this has been contentionally written in the shall we say mmh street. The public space of technical forums is related in some way to network protocols. It could be good that these HTML files be exported into cookbooks. I don’t like it when these books are sold. A standard regime of the kitchen is easier for the exiled to understand.

Variable rue Gallait straat 80 1030 Bruxelles

Building archives landscapes plotter

2011-10-22T11:37:00+02:00

Invited at Interpunctie project van Bolwerk, we excavate into the 10+ years of archives by building the first bricks of tools to draw a landscape thanks to bash and python scripts + the legacy Fontforge scripting language.

[gallery link="file"]

Gallibre

2011-08-24T21:23:00+02:00

We moved.

VoidCon 2011

2011-07-08T10:13:00+02:00

Saturday July 16: find OSP at VoidCon 2011, organised by the Antwerp hackerspace VoidWarranties.

OSP Mexican branch

2011-04-09T15:49:00+02:00

Next Tuesday our co-worker Ivan Monroy Lopez relocates to Mexico City to set up the first Latin American branch of OSP. Using 10 hours of time difference in our advantage, we now can serve Free, Libre and Open Source design (almost) around the clock! If you want to join the Mexican revolution, please write to mail@ospublish.constantvzw.org and we put you in contact with our local representative.

BXL (meanwhile)

2011-04-03T15:52:00+02:00

[caption id="attachment_6075" align="alignnone" width="400" caption="Ready to discuss unbound books and utilitarian type"][/caption]

PA/PER VIEW: Assembly

2011-03-28T11:26:00+02:00

Assembly: Friday April 1 (18:00 - 20:00) at PA/PER VIEW art book fair
WIELS, Avenue van Volxemlaan 354, Brussels (Belgium)

This Friday, OSP participates in a discussion initiated by Agency. Agency is the generic name of a Brussels-based agency that was established in 1992 by Kobe Matthys. Agency constitutes a growing “list of things” that resist the binary division between culture and nature, expressions and ideas and consequently between creations and facts, subjects and objects, humans and non-humans, originality and banality, individuals and collectives, etc...

Agency calls things forth from it’s list via varying “assemblies” inside exhibitions, performances, publications, etc... Each assembly explores in a topological way a different aspect of the performative consequences of the apparatus of intellectual property for an ecology of art practices.

For Assembly (PA/PER VIEW), Agency will call things forth, speculating on the question: How to include book making in art practices? How are typeface designers, book binders, lay-outers, etc... taken into consideration by copyright law? Thing 001452 (Orion) and Thing 001535 (Introductory Language Work) will convene an assembly at PA/PER VIEW in order to bear witness. On April 1, 2011 Agency will invite a diverse group of concerned guests to “translate” on these things: Thorsten Baensch (publisher Bartleby), Sari Depreeuw (legal scholar VUB), Manuel Raeder (graphic designer), OSP (Open Source Publishing: Ivan Monroy Lopez/Seb Sanfilippo/Femke Snelting/etc..), Ziga Testen (graphic designer), etc...

Read The Fine Manual

2011-03-09T19:34:00+01:00

Today, 1st day out of 3 of workshop at Royal College of Art in London.

We are doing collective remote publishing by sending commands to Scribus from an IRC channel. We are on irc.freenode.net, channel #rcaws if you want to have a glimpse at it, or do blind design! From 10am to 5pm, London time.

Tomorrow, we'll pass as many versions of Gill Sans through Fonzie!

We all worked on the same document to make a poster to announce our public presentation on Friday at 3pm.

+ 4

2011-02-03T21:29:00+01:00

[gallery link="file"]
Last night, we piped 4 Mac into Dual-Boot Mac OSX and Ubuntu.
To follow the steps is now quite a routine which can be combined with cheap beers and pizza.
1 install rEfit;
2 create a new partition using Disk Utility;
3 reboot on a Ubuntu 10.10 dvd.
-
→ 3 Wins - 1 failure
Myriam, Sebastien and Pierre M. switched their machine to the other side.
-
notes - to be able to partition is better - to have a working cd driver can help (the USB drive didn't work).

At the end of the night, relieved, freed, flabbergasted and more.

l'Atelier

2011-01-06T12:32:00+01:00

In collaboration with Jérôme Degive (Pica Pica), OSP is pleased to announce the upcoming launch of the new Atelier de Création Sonore Radiophonique website.
Tracks details and generic to follow.

Territorial practice

2010-12-09T11:50:00+01:00

It's hard to believe that we are back for more than three weeks from Tel Aviv, where we participated in Open Code Versus Military Culture? Aspects in Israel Digital Culture. It feels both close and very far away.

[caption id="attachment_5416" align="alignnone" width="400" caption="Arriving late night at Dizengoff square, Tel Aviv"][/caption]

Open Code Versus Military Culture? was initiated by digital artist Tsila Hassine, asking pertinent questions about the relationships among technology, politics, culture and art. These questions are obviously ultra relevant in the light of the political situation in the Middle East and even more pressing in Israel where technological culture is largely shaped by defence industries and commercial software corporations.

The conference and work session gave us the opportunity to sense the connections between military, culture and commerce in the Israeli context. It happened through the voices and gestures of the very people involved in the decision making, each having different interests.

Two-day conference: Open Code Versus Military Culture?

The morning sessions came as a bit of a shock, especially for those of us who had just arrived in Israel. A retired brigadier spoke about the importance of 'Thinking out of the box' in response to security threats, and an entrepreneur explained how the civilian market could profit from military research and innovation in a nice way. Their understanding of the dynamics of technological development had a lot in common: both the military and the entrepreneur impose the emergency of a 'time to market' to developers, thinking in an abstract world. Through this phraseology, the cost of human life, in the case of the military, is understood in terms of commodity and the presence of a product delivered timely on the market, for the industrial, as a military operation. Logically then, the computer industry in Israel would sell security-related services, benefiting from the reputation of its army. And due to a constant assimilation of war and marketing, as a response to immediate threat, the Israeli industry would lack time and investment to create infrastructure. As the military culture is one of secrecy, no wonder that it doesn't provide a fertile ground for open source development. As a contrast, a second entrepreneur representing the RedHat-Israel company came to present their open source model for the computer industry. This capitalist with a friendly face celebrated the rebirth of centralized mainframes through the buzzword of cloud-computing, arguing this was the first true innovation driven by F/LOSS. The first question mark was expressed in a presentation about Tsofen, an organisation trying to open up the labour market of the Israeli High Tech Industry for qualified Arab IT engineers living in Israel.

By the time the second session Critical Perspectives on the Uses and Discourses of Digital Technology and the Military had started, entrepreneurs and military representatives unfortunately had already left the premises. Dr. Eyal Weizman (flown back to London right after his lecture before any questions could be asked) held a stunning talk on the issue of proportionality, presenting the design of the separation wall on the West Bank as a form of collaborative design. "Our algorithmic society has become irrevocably obsessed with calculating and reducing the evil it has itself perpetrated" ((Talk partially overlapped with this text: http://www.allvoices.com/s/event-6743881/aHR0cDovL3d3dy5vcGVuZGVtb2NyYWN5Lm5ldC9leWFsLXdlaXptYW4vbWF0ZXJpYWwtcHJvcG9ydGlvbmFsaXR5LXBhdWwtaGlyc3QtbWVtb3JpYWwtbGVjdHVyZS0yMDEw))

Sheizaf Rafaeli from Haifa University toured us through Digital Culture in Israel and showed that it is at the same time vibrant, diverse and dispersed. The reality of the World Wide Web in fact allows very different communities to exist in parallel, without being connected at all. The presentation by Eran Sachs was both impressing and moving, as he related his experience in military service (where he was taught signal theory and analysis by ear as part of his service with the IDF Electronic Intelligence unit) to his art sound projects, connecting both with his ad hoc slogan "want + can → will": about driving habits of israeli roads; an art sound project in the evacuated buildings of Hebron where he produced sound to visualize space by throwing stones on walls; a precise, humorous and detailed explanation about what the convolution of waves means; to a sudden final, beautiful and vibrant assembly of some of these parts in a call for convolution as a civilian strategy of smooth but strong counter-power to current politics. After that, the Minister of Improvement of Government Services talked to us about the new government website for a while until he finally was called away to appear on tv. The day ended with an exposé from Professor Langdon Winner about how Open Source might in the end be the only hope for saving democracy in The United States.

The second day of the conference was devoted to cultural practice. The first panel was called Cultural and Artistic Approaches to Code Practices and as you might have guessed, this was the panel we were in. Matthew Fuller started off with Executing Software Studies, and the need to look at software as a culture. For the OSP presentation we had decided to speak through very concrete and detailed examples about the ways F/LOSS tools help unimagine practice. We were trying to be sincere but it also felt rather futile. Ayelet Karmon and Yair Reshef gave an informative overview of various projects applying code-practices to physical objects and the session was concluded by Mushon Zer-Aviv ((based on ideas discussed here: http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/09/01/the-case-for-open-source-design-can-design-by-committee-work)), a graphic designer based in Tel Aviv. He ended his talk Towards Open Source Design with the statement that "[T]he substantial parts of design that still cannot be easily quantified or assessed on shared rational ground should be managed through trust and leadership. A resilient community of practice must be able to develop design leadership whose work and guidance is respected and appreciated even without the convenient meter of coding meritocracy.", an idea we tried to challenge at the dinner table (with not much success yet, but we might have another chance at an upcoming LGM). The last sessions were devoted to data visualization. It started with a short presentation of openknesset.org, a group of activists monitoring the Israeli Parliament. In the same vein, Roberto Therón stated that data visualization is a tool to foster change. Interestingly, his practice of data viz is related to collective methodologies as the ones developed in collaboration with Media Lab Prado that welcome open contributions, modifications of the project through a dialogue with the participants; the production of data visualisation is the occasion for an exchange within emerging communities of researchers ranging from academics, hackers, activists and artists. Ted Byfield impressed with a sharp analysis that ended with a call for politically oriented graphs ((some of it can be found here: http://streamingculture.parsons.edu/parsons-the-new-school-for-design-050710-0516pm/)). Vinca Kruk from Metahaven Design Collective did an attempt to unravel the Eden Abergill case, but unfortunately only managed to scratch the surface of the complicated context in which these images continue to appear.

Worksession: Territorial Practice

The two day OSP-workshop Territorial Practice took place in Holon, a suburb south of Tel Aviv. As we hoped, working collectively with maps proved to be a productive interface to speak with participants on different levels.

[caption id="attachment_5407" align="alignnone" width="400" caption="Francis Alys, The Green Line. “Sometimes Doing Something Poetic Can Become Political, and Sometimes Doing Something Political Can Become Poetic”"][/caption]

We discussed perspective, delieniation, territory and cartography as a subjective process. We consequently tried to construct the map of the Holon neighbourhood through observation and notetaking on the ground and than combined our observations into multi-layered collective images.

We were happy to have a chance to work for two days with Nira, a retired urban and regional planner who used to work for the government in Jerusalem; with Orna, a photographer, architect and activist living with her daughter in Jaffa and with Sva, a multidisciplinary artist whose activities range from dance to practical philosophy.

[caption id="attachment_5414" align="alignnone" width="400" caption="Orna gave us a selection of her beautiful textile-mounted maps of the area, now de-classified but in use by British military in the 1910-20's"][/caption]

The second day, a group of interaction design students from Shenkar School of Art and Design joined. They energetically updated the OpenStreetMap data on the Holon area and stated that 'they will never look at maps the same way again'.

[caption id="attachment_5434" align="alignnone" width="400" caption="Notes on Walking Paper print"][/caption]

The Open Street Map project and the wonderful Walking Papers project ((http://walking-papers.org/)) proved to be interesting tools for dialog. They provided us with a provisional and fragile basis for a conversation between participants, but also helped understand better our own approaches/practices/sensibilities vis-a-vis questions of mapping.

[caption id="attachment_5415" align="alignnone" width="400" caption="Participants re-enact Esther Ferrer's performance: Walking is the way"][/caption]

More images: http://ospublish.constantvzw.org/image/index.php?level=album&id=48

Examples discussed in the workshop

Francis Alÿs, The Green Line: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/13/arts/design/13chan.html
Peter Westenberg, Op, van, -se: http://westenberg.constantvzw.org/?p=57
The Towards project: http://www.towards.be
Text: Cartography as a common good http://www.towards.be/site/spip.php?article367
List of Free, Libre Open Source cartographic resources: http://www.stormy-weather.be/wiki/index.php/MappingRessources
Animation of 2008 commits to Openstreetmap: http://vimeo.com/2598878
Jaffa, Autobiography of a City: http://www.jaffaproject.org/
Map Compare, comparing openstreetmap to Google Maps: http://tools.geofabrik.de/mc/
Ben Fry, All streets: http://benfry.com/allstreets/
Esther Ferrer, Walking is the way: http://www.arteleku.net/estherferrer
The relation of territory to maps: http://www.wordiq.com/definition/Map-territory_relation
Ohad Matalon:
http://www.taviartgallery.com/ViewExPhoto.php?p=0&n=84&pic=956
OpenStreetMap of our small area in Holon after edition by us, the Hebrew version of streetnames were added by Talkat.

Notes

Archipel Opening

2010-12-01T22:43:00+01:00

Archipel is both a permanent collection, a website and a travelling exhibition. It intends to propose an intuitive exploration of adventurous music and images appeared since the early twentieth century.
Archipel has chosen to group these discs and films as "islands" involving artists (or works) that share similar creative practices.
An archipel that can be visited, where one can get lost without being an expert or already initiated to art known as "experimental".

A project by the Médiathèque de la Communauté française de Belgique.
Graphic identity - Harrisson OSP
Website through SVG interface - Michael Murtaugh
Installation, furniture and plans - Mathieu Gabiot

Discover the third dimension of Open Source Publishing.
The furniture pieces will be released under a Free Art-based license.

Wednesday December the 1st : www.archipels.be online (web site preview)
Thursday December the 2nd - 18:30 - 21:30 : Installation Opening
+ Baudouin Oosterlynck concert

Passage 44
Boulevard du Jardin Botanique, 44
1000 Bruxelles

446 Nancy A5

2010-11-04T18:41:00+01:00

[gallery link="file" orderby="rand"]

make art opening starts at 19 pm
Hurry up ! Dingbats Liberation Fest Characters are crowding the walls.
Get your D.L.F contributor certificate ✄

a poetic and political necessity

2010-10-29T19:17:00+02:00

Next week another delegation of OSP travels to Tel Aviv to present at the conference Open Code Versus Military Culture? Aspects in Israel Digital Culture organised by the Shenkar College for Engineering and Design. Following the talk, there will be a worksession at the Israeli Center for Digital Art.

From the conference description:

"The interest in the effects of technology on culture, and reciprocally, the effects of culture on technology, peaked with the unprecedented spread of the Internet. This conference seeks to promote public discussion about the significant relationships among technology, politics, culture and art. Israel has a very successful hi-tech industry. However, the local digital-technological culture is largely shaped by defense industries and software corporations."

http://www.shenkar.ac.il/digitalcultureconf/digitalcultureconf_eng.html

Talk description:
Unimagining practice
Contemporary creative work depends largely on software tools. Full of "accepted ideas" about the way things ought to be done, tools are unavoidably shaped by conventional models of production and distribution. In 2006, OSP decided to use Free, Libre and Open Source Software only. We had grown frustrated with the perceived neutrality of the default designer toolset and wanted to take part in the construction of software that circumscribes what we make. In this talk we'll go through some of the consequences of that choice: how it changed our habitual vocabulary, radically reorganised our workflow and in what way we engaged with the F/LOSS community developing those tools.

Workshop description:
Territorial practice
A two day worksession on F/LOSS cartographic tactics at the Israeli Center for Digital Art
Even if cartography is generally produced from a bird's eye perspective, details cannot be drawn from a remote location; they must be confirmed/corrected/added on the spot. The territory must be literally practiced by annotating and drawing.

Working on location with territories and the people living onto it, offers both beautiful and efficient ways of exchanging practiced of space, and builds connections while mediating localized knowledges. Being able to consult, create, publish and exchange maps, to have access to cartographic data and know precisely where the openings are is both a poetic and a political necessity.

On Thursday 10 November, in the morning, OSP starts with a presentation of maps we are interested in, some of the projects we have worked on and the questions they raise. For the afternoon session, we invite participants to bring samples of maps they like/dislike, data they think that deserves geo-location, ideas for maps or edits to existing maps.
On Friday 11 November, we will group participants according to their interests and work together in response to needs, questions and ideas.
Depending on the input of the participants, the work will concentrate more on practical issues or conceptual ones.

Tools and materials we could decide to work with on day 2: OpenLayers, OpenStreetMap, drawing, geonames, GPS-tracking, gpsbabel, web services and API's...

on the track of the Bauhaus

2010-06-05T09:32:00+02:00

Yesterday, OSP was on a road trip to Weimar to give a talk at the Typogravieh Lebt symposium organized by the Bauhaus-university of Weimar.

We are now at the venue, about to start... It's going to be great!

LGM radio

2010-05-26T23:45:00+02:00

The Radio Panik show "Good morning Stallman" interviews 3 LGM fellas. Audio condensed. Listen to the podcast.

LGM Day zero — LG-school

2010-05-26T23:12:00+02:00

[caption id="attachment_4527" align="alignnone" width="400" caption="Beehive at Constant the night before"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_4528" align="alignnone" width="400" caption="*Something* in preparation"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_4530" align="alignnone" width="400" caption="Last junk food before LGM refined catering!"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_4531" align="alignnone" width="400" caption="OSP gang"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_4534" align="alignnone" width="400" caption="Ginger presenting her workshop — no computer, no slides, just sharp sentences!"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_4536" align="alignnone" width="400" caption="HD swing : Windows > Linux for the workshop > Windows (1/2h for 10 discs)"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_4535" align="alignnone" width="400" caption="Lunch contacts exchange..."][/caption]

SILEX-LEX

2010-04-08T15:18:00+02:00

Exhibition: 8 May → June 4 2010
Opening: May 7 18:00-21:00
De Pianofabriek, Fortstraat 35, 1060 Brussels

What if a team of talented artists, illustrators, graphic designers and graffiti writers starts working with Free, Libre and Open Source softwares for the first time? What if their trials and errors are printed on the Plus-tôt-Te-Laat Rhizograph and then handed over to students of the Ecole de Recherche Graphique (ERG) for a make-over?

Results of this serial experiment on show until June 4 at De Pianofabriek in the context of the Libre Graphics Meeting 2010.

With: Nurse, Laurent Baudoux, Manuel Falcata, Gwenola Carrere, Lodovico Corsini, Jerome Degive, Julien Meert, Martin Meert, Benoit Plateus, Jonathan Poliart, Emilie Seron.
Assistants: Harrisson, Pierre Marchand, Ludivine Loiseau

An initiative of OSP (Open Source Publishing) in collaboration with Plus-tôt Te Laat and support of De Vlaamse Gemeenschap, De Vlaamse GemeenschapsComissie and http://www.multiseatcomputer.be.

Nancy -1

2010-03-24T23:22:00+01:00

OSP se prépare à my.monkey
Dessin/grattage Unicode à la mine de plomb, scriptage Scribus vers étiquettes, collection d'objets, préparation d'un mode d'emploi et suivit du projet en place en ligne.

Encore beaucoup de quoi s'occuper. Demain premier tests debuggage de Nancy.

A beautiful compliment

2010-02-27T11:00:00+01:00

[](http://gallery.constantvzw.org/main.php?g2_itemId=30910)

"Livre de texte dense, a priori sans soucis de graphisme, et je découvre que c'est tout l'inverse." (("Book of dense text, a priori without concern about graphic design, and I discover that it's quite the opposite" Ariane Bosshard in: Prix Fernand Baudin: les plus beaux livres à Bruxelles et en Wallonie 2009))

More pictures: http://gallery.constantvzw.org/main.php?g2_itemId=30910

Exhibition Prix Fernand Baudin

2010-02-08T09:57:00+01:00

26 February – 10 March 2010

Exhibition in Brussels presenting the bookawards and nominations of the Fernand Baudin Prize 2009, the prize of the Most Beautiful Books in Brussels and Wallonia.

BIP
Rue Royale, 2-4
1000 Brussels

Opening, award ceremony of the honorary diploma’s + release of the catalogue: 25th of February 2010 at 6 pm

For it’s second edition 2009-2010, the Prize was extended to the Walloon Region thanks to the support of Wallonia-Brussels International (WBI) and the Walloon Agency for Export and Foreign Investments (AWEX).

The international jury convened at the Erg to choose the most beautiful books that were designed, published or printed in Brussels and Wallonia in 2009.

The jury consisted of the following six members:
Roger WILLEMS, graphic artist, publisher, chairman of the Jury (NL)
Willem OOREBEEK, artist, teacher (NL)
Jean-Marie COURANT, graphic artist, curator, teacher (F)
David POULLARD, typographer, teacher (F)
Jan WOUTER HELSPEEL, graphic artist, teacher (B)
Drita KOTAJI, book historian, teacher (B)

The 83 received books, presented by category (general literature (fiction), general literature (non-fiction), artists’ books, art books and catalogues, architecture and urban planning books, books for young people and comic books) were placed at the disposal of the jury.

20 books were nominated and the Prize was awarded to 10 books, that were given the title “Winner of the Fernand Baudin Prize 2009”. The three parties of the award winning book; the graphic designer, the publisher and the printer, will receive an honorary diploma.

O S P double

2010-01-14T17:26:00+01:00

Pour le numéro de janvier consacré à la visualisation de données, le magazine français étapes: ouvre une double page à OSP pour notre carte Cinéma du réel 2009.

> voir +

Dingbat Liberation Fest II

2009-12-04T18:13:00+01:00

Friday December 11

Location: CASCO, Office for Art, Design and Theory Utrecht (NL)

☔ ✈ ❀ ☺ ❍ ✌ ☺ ✈ ❉

[caption id="attachment_3675" align="alignright" width="400" caption="Marzipan production at the Dingbat Liberation Fest I"][/caption]Next week, OSP is happy to re-play Dingbat kitchen with students from the Arnhem Academy of Art and Design.

"Dingbats have sneaked into most computers nowadays. They're as much a part of the Unicode Standard as the Roman Alphabet is. Dingbats are up for grabs; it’s just a matter of locating them on your harddisk. The font projects OSP develops and the dingbats they sample, function in a something that could perhaps be called a Commons. But how can we really get our hands on them? Let's find out and liberate (y)our dingbats!"

Ingredients

800 grams ground almonds
800 grams powdered sugar
a bit of water
almond essence
rolling pin
1 large bowl
1 large spoon
grease proof paper
multiple installs of Inkscape
cookie cutters
a beamer (preferably 2 that can project side by side)
an internet connection
natural food coloring (3 different colors)
a complete overview of the Unicode standard
a complete set of Unicode numbers 2700–27BF including their descriptions, printed on paper slips and folded inwards
200 sheets of black paper (A4)
200 sheets of white paper (A4)
15 cutters
glue
2 serving trays or 3 large plates
tape
3 digital cameras
cardboard or cutting mats

☔☺☔ ✈ ❍ ✌

2009-11-16T11:01:00+01:00

Thursday Jeudi 26/11

Dingbat Liberation Fest + Populated Fonts

@ Verbindingen/Jonctions 12: *By Data We Mean*
Zennestraat 17 Rue de la Senne, Brussels Bruxelles

Dingbat Liberation Fest

14:00 > 17:00

[EN] Dingbat kitchen! The fonts OSP started from and the dingbats that they sample come from a something that could perhaps be called a Commons. Dingbats have sneaked into most computers nowadays. They’re as much a part of the Unicode Standard as the Roman Alphabet. Dingbats are there for grabbing. It’s just a matter of locating them in your hard disk.

[FR] Un atelier cuisine autour des dingbats communs. Les polices de caractères et dingbats à partir desquelles OSP a travaillé, proviennent d’un échantillon de quelque chose qui pourrait être appelé un bien commun. Ces symboles se sont infiltrés dans la plupart de nos ordinateurs. Ils font partie de la norme Unicode comme l’alphabet romain. Reste à les localiser sur votre disque dur.

Populated Fonts

17:00 > 18:00

[EN] A presentation of the typographic design process that connects the Cimatics platform identity with Verbindingen/Jonctions 12: a development and extension of a pictures/glyph translation process. Around dingbats and into the em, Ivan et Ludi will present an attempt (crack) to develop images contained into data and Unicode standards (or its negative). The Showery Weather, the Have a Nice Day!, and the black blocks of the Unicode Standard are circumventing the old AsciiArt engine to generate matrix landscapes populated by text.

[FR] Présentation du design typographique qui relie l’identité de Verbindingen/Jonctions 12 au graphisme de la platforme Cimatics: le développement et l'extension d’un processus de traduction image/glyphe. Autour du dingbats, Ivan et Ludi présentent une tentative de révéler des images cachées ou contenues dans les données et les standards. Une bande de pictogrammes "temps de pluie", un smiley et quelques blocs noirs du standard Unicode contournent le vieux moteur AsciiArt pour générer des paysages matriciels, peuplés de texte.

In collaboration with En collaboration avec le Festival Cimatics 2009

Friting in Brussels 20 09 2009

2009-09-14T10:59:00+02:00

Organised by a little open source minded people crew driven by fixed gear bikes, this Alley Cat Race will occur next sunday in Brussels.

Starts
20/09/09 — 14:00 (day without car)
Rue de la Victoire 96 — 1060 Bxl map
Distribution of spoke cards + checkpoint map

Ends
Place du Jeu de Balle — Aperitive, music, results etc.
Inscription: 3€

Trip:
+/- 35km, 9 checkpoints (incl. 3 task checkpoints)

Recommended:
Lights, Water, Helmet, Lock, Pen, Map of Bxl (19 communes)

Registration:
www.fixedgearbrussels.com

Flyer done in Inkscape 0.46!

Runny technicolor

2009-05-28T00:55:00+02:00

Dans le cadre du festival "Imaginary Property", OSP vous invite au Novale jeudi 28 mai 2009 à 19 h. Au programme : le jaune interdit et le rouge bientôt libre, un décodage de morceaux de vie montréalais au LGM 2009, une projection vers des formats inconnus et un aperçu de montage vidéo en mode texte wiki party avec hacking d'Active Archives.

As a contribution to the Nova festival ’Imaginary Property’, OSP presents a selection of cutting video wiki party, real life LGM 2009 Montreal, instructional videos, live-drawing-from-far, interviews, color and colour clips, digital slide shows and other moving material for the screen. While serving Canadian cocktails, they’ll browse through some or their adventures in free software, open content licensing and collaborative work.

Reportage : day 2

2009-05-08T06:29:00+02:00

This foggy fog second day of LGM starts in the run to arrive on time for our talk.

In the middle of the day, Ginger Coons put the fluid into the audience, and his very vigorous talk bring a rare momentum of open and deep discussion at LGM. So just before eating, we have a more clear picture of the gradient of opinions on how to try to push publishing floss farther.

At the type workshop of the mid-day, we follow the steps to install always more fresh Fontmatrix and discover how to theme Fontforge (some OSP manuals to come) with full-of-energy Nicolas Spalinger and Pierre Marchand.

"Les utilisateurs de logiciels libres ne les utilisent pas, ils s'en servent." — Pierre Marchand, LGM 2009, Montréal, in the corridors

Retrouvailles and Alexandre

2009-05-06T21:45:00+02:00

Now that we cross Alexandre-Prokoudine-magic-glue-between-developers again in the corridors of LGM 2009, we've been able to physically get pictures taken by him in his sans-fatigue hunt for images at LGM last year! I don't know if he gimped the files but on the protraits we're looking like out of a shiny Rock&Folk magazine... (but it's a beautiful surprise, thank you Alexandre!)

Re-Print party: Quatre Quarts II

2009-03-30T23:07:00+02:00

Tuesday 31 March 13:00-16:00
Auditoire P7 • Erg, 87, Rue du page, 1050 Bruxelles

At Open course / Open source, OSP performs a second run of a Print Party that happened almost a year ago at the exact same location. This time we have changed roles to serve you another assorted collection of stories about engineered fonts, a live cooking lesson, design 9 new numbers in Inkscape and FontForge, prepare a fresh 16 page booklet in Scribus and of course end with commandline, cake and ... print!

Here's one we prepared earlier: quatre-quarts-multi-track-print-party

OSP + Open Source / Open Course

2009-03-24T18:23:00+01:00

mardi 31 mars 2009 @ ERG, Bruxelles

Open Course / Open Source : une journée d’information et de rencontre sur le logiciel libre dans le domaine de l’art. Présentations, partage d’expériences, print-party and more ...

Auditoire P7 • Erg, 87, Rue du page, 1050 Bruxelles
http://www.multimedialab.be/blog/?p=1204

De 09h30 à 12h00 :
Marc Wathieu : Open Source, une introduction.
Durée : +/-20 min
Web : http://www.multimedialab.be/

Lionel Maes : Présentation de son projet «Homeostatic»
Durée : +/- 60 min
Web : http://www.psykolio.com/flux/

Sébastien Denooz et Stéphane Noël : Dernières nouvelles de la planète SPIP
Durée : +/- 60 min
Web : http://www.workplace.lescorsaires.be/an12/

Harrisson : Présentation du travail de OSP sur le livre «CROSS-over»
Web :http://ospublish.constantvzw.org/works/kanttekeningen-sidemarks
Durée : +/- 60 min

De 14h00 à 17h00 :

Open Source Publishing : Re-Print Party (cuisine, mise en page et impression)
Web : http://ospublish.constantvzw.org/

OSP full scale in Beaubourg

2009-03-18T19:31:00+01:00

As a side effect of the BPI/cinéma du réel festival, OSP has been asked to "perform" the program map in full scale in the Centre Georges Pompidou main hall, where the festival occurs.
The map is a derivative from the printed one, folded into the brochure.
It networks the festival selected movies and the subjective links between them.

FONTS

DIN
As the Centre Pompidou graphic chart is very restrictive, we had to use the DIN font. But impossible to use the FF DIN from fontshop, licensed. So we encoded the first cut of the open source DIN, from drawing of 1932 we get in Berlin in our previous adventures. Only capitals yet, but work is in progress.

ATLAS
For the printed map, we used a font Harrisson designed few years ago: the Atlas font, with country shapes instead of letters as glyphs. This font will be soon released with OFL license. We'll tell you the inner story of this font later.

MONTAGE

The re-drawing of our file "en dur" was a very strong and singular experience. We had the feeling of being into the file, and re-interpreting SVG code

It was like crossing the screen, and performing the choreography of the interface is a nice journey! The installation is the translation of the file into an object, the transformation of vectors into movements.

It is a new interpretation, a new version. It's the gap between the mouseclick and the gesture by editing on another support. We felt the distance and the similarities of the interface choreography and the gesture choreography.
A new articulation...

It becomes something human again.

FIX

Collaborators of this piece were convinced by the idea and came to help. Among them, FIX, a Paris renowned graffiti artist. Graffiti crosses our problematics in many fields.
First he tried to follow the original computer file to the maximum, but result was poor: all sensibility and spontaneity in the marking the piece was disappearing. Paradoxical situation for a tagger...
It was important that he could take the work for himself, and not being just an executant... So we simply redefined space of movement for him to translate the vectors with his feelings.

He could then confront his drawing and calligraphy experience to a new tool for him: 3M 471 model tape. And adapt his habits and talent. He found new ways to use it and we could all benefit from it.

The success of this job was to share a space of translation. And the interpretation gives a lively vibration to the general aspect of the installation.

It's an articulation.

With FLOSS, the resistance of the tool is now for us such a daily meal, that it has become a work field, an investigation space, and a playground.

Edit: Norms, formats and supports

2009-01-25T14:45:00+01:00

5 to 7 March, Bordeaux

We're preparing a journey to Bordeaux, France where OSP will contribute to the conference Edit: Norms, formats and supports with a workshop and a lecture.

From the conference description:

"Signs and pictograms which organize the flow of movement in cities and towns according to graphic “pie charts” and other diagrams, which serve to guide political decisions and economic diagnoses – a multitude of visual norms which are ignored and “invisible” and have been chosen by some unknown person at some arbitrary time – control and direct our daily lives.
Only when new supports appear (on internet in particular) is our attention drawn to this world of norms and codes which generally remain unquestioned. Why?"

Other participants include: Ruedi Baur, Bruno Latour, Edward Tufte, Robin Kinross, Steve Rushton and Norm.

More info at: http://www.rosab.net/edit

Views from the kitchen

2008-11-18T12:53:00+01:00

Recorded in FoAM's Open Kitchen, 15 November 2008.

Sounds (raw!): http://ospublish.constantvzw.org/documents/sound/kitchen
Playlist & credits: conduite.pdf
Images:
Peter Westenberg: http://gallery.constantvzw.org/main.php?g2_itemId=22398 (Free Art License)
Alex Davies: http://flickr.com/photos/alexdavies/sets/72157609143437321/ (All rights reserved)

Semiotics of the Kitchen Radio (update)

2008-11-12T10:00:00+01:00

Saturday November 15, 15:00 (doors open: 14:30)
Live broadcast from FoAM, Koolmijnenkaai 30-34 Brussels
Listen on-line: http://www.constantvzw.be:8000/kitchen.ogg
Emission en Français + English

Studio audience welcome!

As part of the ongoing series Verbindingen/Jonctions 11, OSP prepares a live radio broadcast in the FoAM Open Kitchen. Experimenting with the displacement of multi sensory experiences, we'll think out loud about the preparation and distribution of food as metaphor, structure, vocabulary and rhythm.

Download playlist here

Yi Jiang serves us black and green tea with fitting accompaniments while we listen to: an interview with artist Kate Rich about cooking and trade, a conversation with Nicolas Malevé about Cake PHP frameworks and other recipes, a reportage on Colruyt computer systems, Christophe Piette (R.O.T) playing kitchen sounds, Ivan Monroy Lopez performing his essay on man pages and manuals, a text-to-speech cookbook, pickles from Anderlecht, 'Comédie de moeurs' (readings by Rachelle Sassi) and of course a mouthwatering playlist.

Martha Rosler, Semiotics of the Kitchen, 7" (1975), CakePHP logo, Pickles et Frères, Pickles from Anderlecht (2008), Kate Rich & Kayle Brandon, Cube-Cola Poster Land (2006)

SHMN (Inkboard)

2008-10-26T19:55:00+01:00

Inkboard is an Inkscape extension that allows remote collaboration over the network. In inkscape-devel, there's a thread where people get all excited over it, and manage to bring down a server as a result :-)

It's hard not to get overexcited over tools that have collaboration built into them. They give rise to book covers that I'll repost again&again, and to LAN parties, like last week's Software History Mapping Night.

Strange, that the tech back kitchen for this was also about software history. As far as I could tell, Inkboard isn't part of Inkscape's lifeline at the moment. Nothing wrong with that. This was a constraint that Nicolas answered with very nice php.

Inkscape compiles fine with Inkboard support in both Ubuntu and Gentoo. We have been able to see the extra menu between Effects and Help:

We have been chatting away with the Pedro XMPP client, but we have not been able to share and work on a common SVG document, which was one of the ideas for the SHMN. Another idea: collaboration is not entirely in the tools :)

In Gentoo the Inkboard useflag is called jabber, and this is the recipe for compiling Inkscape with Inkboard support (and other things) in Ubuntu.

Tonight: SHMN (update)

2008-10-22T09:23:00+02:00

The OSP's have gathered around their respective working tables in Brussels and Barcelona, to prepare Software History Mapping Night, tonight from 20:30 - 22:00 (GMT+1).

For this occasion, Nicolas has created a rudimentary, quick, lo-tech collaborative mapping tool:
http://www.ospublish.constantvzw.org/map
http://www.ospublish.constantvzw.org/map/sandbox (crazy layers!)*

In a SVG compliant browser (Firefox works but Opera is more stable), this tool displays the SVG files that have been uploaded to ospublish.constantvzw.org/map/svg. It does this in order of upload, and allows you to navigate layer by layer!

We are drawing our map layers in Inkscape on A3 size, landscape (which is interpreted as 1488.19 x 1052.36 pixels for some reason).
If you want to add a layer yourself, be sure to not flow text in a box (will result in a black rectangle). Select text>unflow in Inkscape. You'll also need to use webfonts (times, arial, georgia, verdana, courier etc.)

To add files: upload them to map/svg (or to test use: map/sandbox/svg). Use this ftp info:

server: ospublish.constantvzw.org username: ospublish_map login: softhistmap

(The ftp access has now been disabled; if you want to contribute: e-mail us!)

For a webcam view on our working table, view:
http://www.giss.tv:8000/history.ogg
Sorry, there is no sound.

If you need help or want to stop by to say hello, we're all here:

OSP is looking forward to your layers!

*More about what, how and why in this post.

Software history mapping night

2008-10-13T08:59:00+02:00

Wednesday 22 October 20:30-22:00

In a first attempt to draw a collaborative map of the many different tools that together define the practice of digital design, OSP attempts to recollect facts and anecdotes gathered over the last few years.

At Software history mapping night we'll gather around the table to start a visual cartography of design software.

Fontlab, Fontforge, Pagemaker, Sodipodi or Ghostscript: When did it start? Who was involved? Where did it connect?

We will live-broadcast the session from a central Brussels location and if you have stories to tell, facts to add or experiences to share, you are more than welcome to join the discussion through video stream and/or chat.

[stream- and chat addresses announced on this site next week]

Radio Luz mixtape

2008-09-12T18:56:00+02:00

This was the playlist when OSP went on a radio station in Wrocław. A few months after, it's hard to reconstruct the exact sequence of events that led us there. It was something like this: there was a gig at an alternative space, David met us there, he had helped us set up the pre-LGM workshop at OPT, and he invited us to his friend's show on Radio Luz.

Our compilation was about the long tradition of appropriation in pop. Afrika Bambaataa sampled Kraftwerk, everyone sampled The Winstons, and M|A|R|R|S sampled everyone. Though I ~~didn't~~ find the pictures of OSP donning the big headphones [found them!], I did find a lofi recording of the show. The typography workshop had just taken place a few days before:

There was another font made with letters from around the OPT buiding. We took pictures of graffitti, of old signage, of shops, of these kinds of things. We extracted the letters of the alphabet, and we constructed a new alphabet with them. It's the same principle as the music that we heard. Music with samples. Taking things that others have made, and you create a new thing that then you can share and that others can modify and use again...

1. Kraftwerk. Trans-Europe Express.
2. Afrika Bambaata and the Soulsonic Force. Planet Rock.
3. Public Enemy. Fight the Power.
4. The Winstons. Amen, Brother
5. M|A|R|R|S. Pump Up the Volume.
6. Atari Teenage Riot. Destroy 2000 Years of Culture.
7. Pierre Normal. Attraction.

Print, flip, and turn

2008-06-29T15:11:00+02:00

At the Polish print party, we tried a possible automation of the nineteen steps. We gave out numbered tickets at the entrance, and at the end there was a numbered copy of the booklet for everyone. The booklets were all different via Python and Scribus. The imposition and printing was very simple Perl.

If you just want to print a number of copies of the same booklet, grab the modified versions of the scripts, and skip step 1. The $people variable is the number of copies to be printed, and the $pubName variable is the name of your pdf file, minus .pdf extension ;)

So and then:

Create a .sla file by following 1 to 7 of the nineteen steps. For the importing to pdf, use layout.py, or better yet write your own script for making all the pdf documents different :)
Steps 9-13 are now handled by the printprintprint.pl script. This is imposition and the printing of even pages.
When the printing is done, take the warm stack of paper and `flip and turn' it so that your printer knows that it's upside down.
Finally, the printing of the odd pages is handled by flip_and_turn.pl
~% perl flip_and_turn.pl

What this looks like.

Audio + screencast of our intervention at LGM 2008

2008-05-13T11:26:00+02:00

Kaveh Bazargan has patiently recorded the sound and the screen of every interventions at LGM. Here is ours: http://media.river-valley.tv/conferences/lgm2008/quicktime/0103-Harrisson.html. (At the end of the conference, we discovered that Kaveh is a TeX guy for 20 years, so we've asked him a few questions. Transcript will come.)

A postcard from LGM 2008

2008-05-10T16:12:00+02:00

The end of our participation in the Libre Graphics Meeting 2008 is in sight...

Over the last few days we have seen many intriguing, surprising and interesting talks; we discovered new tools, rediscovered 'old' ones and made connections with developers, users and standards-officials -- LGM has been again an inspiring adventure.

We interviewed Dave Crossland about the history of font editing software, Denis Jacquerye about internationalized typography, Ralph Giles about the story of Nimbus and Courrier, Michael Terry about Ingimp and usability development in Open Source and Chris Lilley about W3C standardizing processes and the way it facilitates (or not) interaction between developers and designers. All this we will make available at some point on this weblog.

Apart from that, Cedric Gémy has initiated a Free Software user group for graphic design professionals (most certainly needs a better name), we started packaging our first open font for distribution via the Open Font Library and thought of dozens of new projects to work on.

http://ospublish.constantvzw.org/image/?level=album&id=19

It will take us days, weeks, months to process all this material so please be patient :-) In the mean time, a big thank you to everyone and enjoy the growing collection of images as we upload.

Print party: OSP Cover Band

2008-05-05T20:09:00+02:00

We are preparing our print party for tomorrow... Introducing Not Courier Sans (a re-take font), serving Original Covers (a playlist specially prepared for you) plus homemade jiaozi, ravioli and/or pierogi. Join us at 19:00 in Café Mleczarnia, Wroclaw (Poland)!

Road to South-Wrocław

2008-05-05T19:42:00+02:00

This Wednesday, join us for our type workshop in the OPT cultural center in Wrocław from 11am to ongeveer 6pm. For those who arrive directly from the airport, you can begin with this path then please print this map, because it seem that it is not easy to find for taxi driver (our journey was epic) or even for Google Maps (just waiting for Towards).
See ya!

En route

2008-05-04T07:25:00+02:00

OSP on it's way!

Bruxelles - Berlin

Staying over at Alexander Negrelli's flat

Quatre/Quarts: multi track Print Party

2008-04-13T23:57:00+02:00

more images here: http://ospublish.constantvzw.org/image/?level=album&id=13
and here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/marcwathieu/...

Track 1: Narrate

Pierre guided us through his assorted collection of stories about engineered fonts.
→ Images

Track 2: Bake

With the help of Yi, Femke prepared a Quatre Quarts and explained what chemical processes where going on while mixing and baking.
→ Recipe (improved formula)
→ What Happens When You Bake a Cake?

Track 3: Design

Harrisson designed 9 numbers in Inkscape and FontForge, based on 4 different elements: a square, a circle, a triangle and a rectangle. Than he laid out a 16 page booklet in Scribus, and added the Quatre Quart recipe.
→ Download PDF
→ Download Font

Track 4: Print

The finished booklet after commandline imposition + printing.
→ 19 easy steps to print a booklet (version française: voir 'comments')

→ Ingredient list

Many thanks to the ERG tutors who helped us gather materials (cake tins, whisks, printers, mixing bowls, extension chords...)!

11 avril: Quatre/Quarts Print Party à l’ERG

2008-04-09T07:52:00+02:00

Info: http://ospublish.constantvzw.org/?p=407
Recette: http://ospublish.constantvzw.org/recipes

Pour faire une 4/4 Print Party, il faudra:

2 fours électriques
16 œufs
1 kg de beurre
1 kg de sucre blanc fin
1 kg de farine
3 tabliers
1 raclette en caoutchouc (pour racler les plats avec facilité)
1 rouleau de papier cuisson
1 pair de ciseaux
2 cuillères à soupe
4 fourchettes
4 spatules en bois
1 mixeur
2 maniques
1 tamis (pour la farine)
2 fouets de cuisine
2 grands saladiers
4 moules à cake identiques (qui rentrent dans les susdits fours)
36 assiettes
36 tasses
36 cuilleres
36 morceaux sucres
4 boilers électriques
400 g de thé noir
1 litre de lait
3 ordinateurs
1 imprimante laser
1000 feuilles A4
1 projecteur avec ses cables de connection
2 grandes tables stables
2 prises électriques
1 rallonge
1 triplette
1 planche à découpe
1 cutter bien affuté
1 agrapheuse
1 bout de carton

OSP on the Radio

2008-03-27T18:51:00+01:00

OSP va parler dans le poste
ce mercredi 2 avril,
19:00 - 20:30,
sur radio Panik (il y a du stream), 105.4 fm a Bruxelles.
dans l'émission "le Libre en Questions"

Bonne écoute!

Mixed Sources: Issue Magazine

2008-03-13T12:52:00+01:00

Issue Magazine launch: Friday March 21 18:00 - 19:30
Log on via: http://mixedsources.tk/

For the launch of Issue Magazine, Stéphanie Vilayphiou and Alexandre Leray are hosting an on line round table with Arie Altena, Jouke Kleerebezem and Harrisson.

Open Source Publishing Briefing

2007-11-18T16:03:00+01:00

With Mute's Simon Worthington and Laura Oldenburg, OSP participated in a NM-X network evening. Following our presentations, we discussed the problems and potential of installing free software on proprietary platforms, whether it was interesting to develop a free software 'design suite', the position of free fonts and much more. [Notes] [Images]

If you happen to be in London on Thursday November 22 and 29, feel welcome to participate in the workshop that follows this presentation: http://nm-x.com/event/2007/11/open-source-publishing-workshops

Pictures: Saul Albert

November 15: nm-X

2007-10-14T16:10:00+02:00

"What we make is often defined by what tools we can use to make it" is the motto of an Open Source Publishing event coming up in London.

OSP will assist Simon Worthington and Laura Oldenburg (Mute) at this event, which is hosted by Central St. Martin's College of Art and Design.

http://nm-x.com/event/2007/11/open-source-publishing-briefing

"What we make is often defined by what tools we can use to make it. This briefing introduces designers and publishers who are moving beyond the limited set of possibilities offered commercially available publishing tools.

"We will look at three key tools: 'The Gimp' (an open source bitmap graphics tool, like Adobe Photoshop), 'Inkscape' (an open source vector illustration tool, like Adobe Illustrator), and Scribus – an open source layout tool like Quark Express or Adobe InDesign.

But besides specific tools, this briefing moves beyond outmoded boundaries in the publishing process between writing, designing, and printing: between the page and the 'Net. Attendees will hear from presenters how dispensing with these boundaries creates immense creative and business opportunities for cross-format experimentation in the future of print and publishing.

This briefing will be presented by Simon Worthington and Laura Oldenbourg of Mute Magazine and Openmute."

November 3: OSP @ Integrated2007

2007-10-08T23:43:00+02:00

On Saturday November 3, OSP will lecture at Integrated2007 "a new vital international design conference taking place in deSingel Antwerp":

"OSP takes you on a trip into the wonderful universe of Free Software. We will meet alien devices and extraterrestrial tools, previously unknown to the world of graphic design. We like to imagine what would happen if we reinvented or remixed the softwares we work with. While conventional packages prevent such forms of use through extremely restrictive licenses, Open Source Software invites you to dive under the hood of your creative suite. Will we be confused by what we find, or open our eyes to new ways of making? OSP seizes the opportunity to think out loud about what other tools are possible and what is possible with other tools. On our return to earth, nothing will look the same again."

http://www.integrated2007.com

Pancakes & Python

2007-06-18T23:42:00+02:00

[

](http://gallery.constantvzw.org/main.php?g2_itemId=15696)

Impressions from Canadian Printing Breakfast in Nepomuk Bar, Brussels. More images in Constants Image Repository.

Special thanks: An, Wendy & Pierre (serving), Ivan (Python), Nurse (records), Peter (pictures), Nicolas (printing), Veronique (City Min(e)d).

Print Party Berlin

2006-09-18T09:33:00+02:00

A report from the whole day is here: http://www.stormy-weather.be/wiki/in...

For Wizard of OS Constant Printing Team members Harrisson and Pierre Huyghebaert showed that designing and printing booklets with Open Source software is nowhere near Science Fiction.

Wednesday the 13th of September, Pierre and Harrisson presented a Print Party during Wisard of Os 4. This event was taking place in Berlin. The critical panel, organised by Cornelia Solfrank and Nicolas Malevé at Tesla (former Podewil) gathered Laurence Rassel, Simon Yuill, Harrisson, Pierre Huyghebaert, Simon Worthington, Adam Hyde, Saul Albert, Gisle Froysland, Malte Steiner, Gordon Duggan, Eberhard Ortland, Hinrich Sachs, Aileen Derieg, Goran Djordevic, Gergers Petersen, Felix Stalder, Inke Arns, Jacob Lillemose, Annette Schindler, Dorothea Carl, Christian von Borries, …

This compact presentation was focused on the imposition of a 8 pages leaflet, that we succeded in printing, using non graphical interface softwares on Ubuntu. This little operation replaced what used to be done by a 10000 euro software 5 years ago.

Text set on paper is Femke Sneltings "Open Source Software for design" and OsBlogs "How To Print A Booklet In 19 Easy Steps", resulting in a "meta" publication on Constant Verlag.

Print Party 2.01 at Université Attac

2006-09-12T20:42:00+02:00

Conditions of production and cultural consumption
After Nicolas gave a brief history of how author rights have developed and how the free software and copyleft movements responded to its increasing restrictive use...

...while trying to be not to grim about the way copyright laws are currently used and abused...

This poster by Act Up (questioning the geneology of ideas put forward by French conservative politician Nicolas Sarkozy) was banned, because photographers' rights were supposedly violated.

...Harrisson and Femke offered the audience a small tasting of publishing, designing and printing with Open Source tools.

We used the opportunity to launch Retrospective Readings with a small edition of Richard Stallman's GNU Manifesto - twenty years later still worth (re-)reading.

How To Print A Booklet In 19 Easy Steps

2006-06-04T14:36:00+02:00

The focus of this recipe is on the last bit: rearranging pages so that you can easily print out nice booklets. For a quick-and-dirty solution you can use Abiword or OpenOffice for the page-lay out part but Scribus is essential when you want to be precise with typography.

The recipe is based on the How-To posted on the Scribus Wiki:
http://wiki.scribus.net/index.php/How_to_make_a_booklet.

To make this recipe, you need to open a terminal, shell or work in the commandline. If you have never done this before, have a look a this tutorial: http://linuxcommand.org/

You can of course print texts of any length, but folding and stapling more than 12 sheets of paper gets really hard so we suggest making booklets of 48 pages maximum.

The tools mentioned are all available in most software repositories, and can be installed using Ubuntu's Synaptic.

Download sample .pdf file; if you simply want to print this document, start the recipe at step 13.
The text used in this example is available here: http://www.constantvzw.com/cyberf/book....

Ingredients

Linux operating system* [Debian / Ubuntu]
Browser [Firefox]
A text available under an open license
xpdf-utils (includes: pdftotext, pdftops, ps2pdf?)
Texteditor [Gedit]
Lay-out software [Scribus 1.3.3.1]
Font [Bitstream Charter]
psutils (includes: psnup, psbook)
Printer
Paper
Stapler
A piece of soft cardboard (side of a box for example)

Print A Booklet In 19 Easy Steps

Choose any text that is available under an open license
Download the text to your harddisk in .pdf format or copy the text into a text editor
If you have downloaded a .pdf file, you need to convert the .pdf to a plain text file using the commandline:
~$ pdftotext infile.pdf
Clean up the file as much as possible (remove unneccessary white lines, check whether any other corrections need to be made) in a text editor and save the document as .txt
Open Scribus and start a new document with the following options selected: Size: A5, Number of pages: 48, Page Layout: double sided and Automatic Text Frames
Import the .txt file in the Automatic Text Frame and do the necessary lay-out; add page numbers etc.
Remove all empty pages so that you end up with a multiple of 4 pages (either 4, 8, 12, 16, 20, 24, 28, 32, 36, 40, 44 or 48 pages).
Save / export the document as .pdf with fonts embedded
Using the commandline, convert the pdf file to postscript:
~$ pdftops -paper match infile.pdf outfile.ps
Rearrange the pages so that when printed and folded, each page ends up in the right place (when your booklet has 8 pages, page 1 should be placed opposite of page 8, page 2 opposite of 7 and 4 opposite of 5). n is the amount of pages in your booklet.
~$ psbook -sn infile.ps outfile.ps
Arrange two A5 pages next to each other on one A4 sheet (-2 refers to the amount of pages on the A4):
~$ psnup -2 -PA5 infile.ps outfile.ps
Convert the document back to .pdf format (This seems a redundant step, but without it I had problems with placing, so...)
~$ ps2pdf infile.ps outfile.pdf
Also use the commandline to print first the even pages (myprinter is the name of your printer, n is the amount of copies)
~$ lpr -P myprinter -o page-set=even -#1 infile.pdf
When the even pages are printed, you need to re-arrange the order of the pages so that the first page comes last.
Put the pages upside down back in the printer
Now print the odd pages
~$ lpr -P myprinter -o page-set=odd -#1 infile.pdf
Fold the pages from A4 to A5
Fold the stack back open and place it on the piece of cardboard with the cover facing you. Click open your stapler so you can staple the stack in the middle
Gently remove the stack (which is now stuck to the cardboard) and fold the staples back in.

FINISHED!

*It should work on OSX too, but I have not tested this yet