During this week’s reading kinetic typography was defined through the concepts of pictorialization, informalization, emotivization, and dynamicization. All of these concepts relate to previous readings we have discussed on the techniques and strategies that transform typefaces to have a deeper meaning and sense of completion.

To dive in more specifically, pictorialization reminded me of picture and text combinations on “Understanding Comics”, since in kinetic typography, the typefaces take the role of both the picture and the text and “express meaning both lexically and kinetically”.

Informalization and Emotivization reminded me of the Spiekermann reading on typefaces, where it discussed how a specific tone or emotion is evoked through details in the letters, by changing width, font, size, and other subtle or evident characteristics. Emotivization aims to have the typography become something that is “believed and felt, not just understood”. So for example, for a round soft font to be collectively portrayed as welcoming, soft, safe. Informalization is used as a “technology to enhance text with speech-like expressiveness” which is really getting at reclaiming the non-verbal and informal cues that are inherent to speech but not necessarily present in text to aid in the essence of the message behind the typography.

Finally, Dynamicization, adds a sense of movement, liveliness and just overall character to typography that can mimic our own human emotional responses. Like for example, the case when the word fear is animated to shake to emulate our shaking when scared.

All of these different elements contribute to creating a new language with its own grammar that can be universally understood and applied to tell stories.