Voice Fonts

I am by no means a graphic designer. I took one class in college and I'm moderately competent (I could probably make these, but not these.) with Photoshop and Quark, but my talents in this field are limited. I can recognize excellent graphic design, but likely not imitate it. I can recognize atrocious graphic design, but probably not fix it. Nonetheless, I am intrigued by graphic design as a medium, as a community, and as a communication form that is rapidly evolving. But I'll admit that I was surprised to discover that it had developed it's own sport. I discovered Layer Tennis via the suggestive powers of Twitter--when more than three of those people that you follow are talking about the same thing at the same time, it's probably something worth investigating. Layer Tennis is actually much more like figure skating than tennis. Points are awarded subjectively but technical elements and know-how are required. It's all in fun but the results can often be surprising and inspiring.

One of the things that Layer Tennis inspired was a desire to learn more about typefaces, particularly their historical context in early printing. This was one of those things I went down the Google rabbit hole on, falling through website after website until I found myself here several hours later, my original mission somewhat forgotten. During the course of my informational free-fall, however, I had learned that a documentary had been made on the Helvetica typeface, which I recognized only for its ubiquitousness. At the time an entire documentary on a single typeface struck me as excessive, but two weeks ago I mispelled Gattaca while searching for the movie with said name and received Helvetica as a search result for Hettica. (The "He" was clearly a typo of the standard variety, but the use of an "i" instead of an "a" is clearly a mispelling for which I am properly ashamed.) Remembering having come across this title before and seeing that Netflix offered it as an instant streaming download, I watched it. I was struck most by how many--nearly all--of our public signage and labeling is printed in Helvetica. It is an incredibly common type; the default for so much of the lettering we see. Since watching Helvetica it now pops out at me wherever I come across it. Then last weekend I heard a canned recording of a woman's voice while riding an escalator, reminding me to hold the rail. Her voice had a unique quality to it that struck me as decidedly un-Helvetica. And this got me thinking.

Since the technology behind sound systems and recorded messaging is both well understood and cheap, will we someday develop the auditory version of Helvetica? Could such a thing exist? I can conceive of a database of "noises" all recorded by the same human that a computer could--with the right references--properly synthesize into any word from any language on Earth. I am inclined to think that the tonal nature of language and hearing would prevent any one vocal pattern achieve such blanket acceptance across multiple languages. English and German are not much changed by being read in the same typeface. They are, however, much altered when heard spoken by the same person. Still, the possibilty that there is a vocal pattern out there that is to the act of listening what Helvetica has been to the act of reading is intriguing.